India has remained one country for past 62 years. Will it remain as one country or break apart like Soviet Union or Yugoslavia?
Why India has not Balkanised?
M D Nalapat
During the 1960s, it was not only the writer Vidia Naipaul who considered India to be an “area of darkness”. Several scholars made a living out of forecasting the imminent disintegration of a country that had an immense multiplicity of cultures, faiths and ethnicities. However, India survived as a united nation, and once economic reform got introduced in 1992, began slowly to thrive. This despite being ruled by a political class that saw personal enrichment as the only objective worth expending effort on, and a bureaucracy both corrupt and incompetent. Why did this miracle take place? Interestingly, it was because of decisions that were forced upon a reluctant executive.
The first such decision was to succumb to the pressure of linguistic lobbies and break up Indian states into smaller entities. Prime Minister Nehru was reluctant for years to accept the logic of linguistic states, hoping that different groups could function harmoniously in one big state. Thus, for years he ignored demands from the Telugu-speaking population of the state for a separate entity. Finally, the riots that broke out after the death by fasting of the Telugu leader Potti Sriramulu forced his hand, and Andhra Pradesh (a majority Telugu-speaking area) was carved out of Madras, which later got renamed as Tamil Nadu (Home of the Tamils). Soon afterwards in 1960, the Gujarati-speaking parts of Bombay State separated from the Marathi-majority region, and became Gujarat State. The Marathi speakers renamed their new state “Maharashtra” Afterwards, even states with a common language got divided, mainly because of administrative convenience. Thus, Chhatisgarh got separated from Madhya Pradesh, as did Uttarakhand from Uttar Pradesh and Jharkhand from Bihar, even though all six were Hindi-speaking. This division dampened linguistic resentments, and helped to contain such tensions to levels not harmful to the unity of India. Had Nehru been resolute in his opposition to linguistic states, tensions would have continued to fester, and thereby grow Apart from linguistic states, another factor that helped retain unity was the English language. Because this is a foreign language, no group felt disadvantaged at its continuance. Today, across India, a middle class has arisen that almost entirely is comfortable in the use of English. A Bengali professional can shift to Gujarat or Tamil Nadu and immediately find people who also speak English, who read the same (admittedly of spotty quality) magazines and watch the same movies. The leavening of “middle class culture” over the other identities of the country has helped to create a unity that was earlier absent in a country with a multiplicity of identities. Had Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri gone ahead with his move to banish English from India in 1964, the resultant tensions would have proved dangerous. But because the single state of Tamil Nadu resisted the abolition of English, the Government of India shelved the proposal to replace that language with Hindi. Today, it is because of their proficiency in English that so many millions of Indians are benefiting from the boom in computer software.
Pakistan Observer - Newspaper online edition - Article
Sadly, several politicians oppose English. Examples are Laloo Yadav of Bihar and Mulayam Singh Yadav of Uttar Pradesh, both of whom have educated their own children in the English language while seeking to deny knowledge of that language to pupils in government schools. Another anti-English state was Communist-controlled Bengal. However, public demand for educating young children in English - or at least ensuring that they know the language - has forced these leaders to dilute their opposition to English. At current trends, more than 500 million Indians will speak some variant of that language within the next fifteen years, thus getting enabled to participate in a globalised world. It is mainly in places where the international link language is not taught that local economies are still at subsistence level Apart from the English language, another factor that favours Indian unity is commerce. The need to access a larger market and enjoy a wider variation in the production base ensures that unitary tendencies are favoured by the business class, a group that is substantial in both numbers as well as influence. Most companies are based all over the country, and indeed, mamy are now setting up branches abroad. Even when a company is controlled by a family, the professionals working in it are almost always from different states, and these days, from different countries.
This is not to say that there are no longer any challenges to Indian unity. There are, and Kashmir is an example. Jawaharlal Nehru was an admirer of the Soviet model, and he adopted that model in Kashmir. This is separate development. The Kashmiri has since 1952 been segregated from the rest of the country, and given special laws and privileges, that all contribute to a feeling of alienation from the rest of India. Only the withdrawal of US activism over Kashmir following 9/11 and the change in attitude towards armed struggle after that event have taken the international pressure off India, while internally, the spreading of economic opportunity within the community has diluted much of the zeal for separation. Today, many Kashmiris want a separate state, but few are any longer willing to fight for it. Indeed, many more are ready to take advantage of the educational and business opportunities throughout India, and link with the rest of the country rather than seek to break away. However, decades of Kashmir-specific social and other policies have taken their toll, and there is no doubt that even today, several Kashmiris resent being part of India, a lot of them on grounds of religion rather than because of any other factor. For Indian policymakers, the “Muslims are a separate nation” argument was concluded with the formation of Pakistan on August 14,1947,and they are reluctant to once again divide on the basis of faith, fearing the impact of this in the hundreds of thousands of locations in the rest of India where Muslims and Hindus live and work together. Millions died during Partition, a tragedy that they are keen to avoid happening again. Interestingly, China too is following Kashmir’s “separate development” model in Xinjiang, where the Uygur are given educational and other opportunities different from those made available to the Han. Of course, unlike Kashmir, where other Indians are forbidden to relocate to, in Xinjiang, any Han can freely relocate. However, a bifurcation in policy based on ethnicity has meant that the PRC is beginning to face in Xinjiang the same problems that India has been contending with in Kashmir for decades. In the latter case, however, the economic rise of India has seen a migration of Kashmiris to different parts of the country, where several have set down roots, so that they have begun to have a vested interest in a united India. In Xinjiang too, individual prosperity has ensured that many Uygur become loyal to the PRC rather than to a separate State, as demanded by Rebiya Kadeer.
The north-east is another region where there is some alienation from the rest of India.Again,state policy is to blame. Nehru accepted the view of his friend Verrier Elwin that the people of the north-east “should be kept in their pristine state”. Thus, he banned large-scale development in the area, even of such basic facilities as roads. Even today, the north-east is one of the most neglected parts of the country, although from here too, people have migrated to other parts of the country once the economy began to modernize. For example, in Gurgaon near Delhi, several computer software professionals are from the northeast, where the popularity of English has spurred familiarity with Information Technology.
Will a wave of Balkanisation hit India, and the country separate into a Bengali, a Tamil and other parts? So long as the economy is humming along at a speed that gives jobs to millions each year, and so long as a single linguistic or religious group does not impose its dominance over the rest, this is unlikely to happen. China is not the only big country in Asia where stability depends on continued economic progress.
