Julian Koch

ID: 6029285

Made in India: Decolonization Why decolonization worked in India

Julian Koch
Introduction

ID: 6029285

Pakistans partition from India was declared August 14th 1947 and India became independent over night one day later. Despite having 1,652 mother tongues, according to the 1961 Census1, despite harboring three major religions Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs despite its partition, despite a multitude of ethnicities and despite violent clashes between Pakistan and India at the borders2 the rest of India remained stable.3 Why? In this paper I will focus mostly on what for us today is India. I am aware of the fact that the research question Why decolonization worked in India would have to be viewed in a very different light if I was talking about the territory of former colonial India, which has split into Pakistan, Bangladesh and modern India in the course of the last half-century. But, as I am interested in the measures taken to decolonize and their effectiveness in colonial India, the split of colonial India would be one such measure (see below). Additionally, India and Pakistan have taken different steps towards decolonization and are nowadays fully different societies in every respect: political, economic, religious and linguistic. In the face of this, any attempt to artificially bridge this gap within the given scope of this paper would not make sense. However, one has to keep in mind that the devastating massacres between Hindus and Muslims, the fact that Pakistan and India were foes from day one, and the fact that an instable Pakistan later split into Pakistan and Bangladesh4 bear witness that success is a very relative term and that the decolonization process was by no means an unproblematic one. In 1858, a few months after the suppression of the Sepoy Mutiny of Indian soldiers against officers of the East India Company over issues of negligence of religious rules on the part of the British, British Parliament passed the Government of India Act, which made India part of the British Empire and put it under the auspices of a Viceroy. Effectively, however, India was ruled by an elite class of Civil Servants, recruited from the top of the class from first-grade British universities. Three-fifths of India fell under British rule; the rest remained under the aegis of around 600 local kings, princes and nobility.5 Nonetheless, after the Sepoy uprising nationalism was on the rise and people became increasingly aware of the need for more political engagement and the National Congress party was founded in 18856. In 1915, the face of civil disobedience and passive resistance, the Britisheducated, internationally recognized Mohandas Gandhi returned to India and announced the beginning of a campaign for independence.7 In 1935, a new Government of India Act was decreed, allowing for more government participation of Indians, whereas the Civil Service meanwhile recruited a continuously rising

1 2 3

Mallikarjun, B. (2002, para. 1). Gayler, Alice, & Otto, Frank (2010, p. 160).

Fears of India breaking apart were so imminent that Mountbatten, Viceroy of India at the time, had originally planned to balkanize India (Rothermund, Dietmar, 2006, p 63)
4 5

Pakistan. (2011, subsection: Civil War). In Encyclopdia Britannica. Gayler, Alice, & Otto, Frank (2010, p. 157) 6 Rothermund, Dietmar (2006, p. 55). 7 Gayler, Alice, & Otto, Frank (2010, p. 158). 2

Julian Koch

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number of British-educated Indian natives, in part because of a lack of British applicants, who were questioning Indias future in the British Empire.8 During World War II India fought on the British side and the British government indebted itself morally and monetarily to India.9 After complicated negotiations, after decades of passive resistance, India declared independence on August 15th 1947 Jawaharlal Nehru becoming Indias first Prime Minister , todays Pakistan and Bangladesh seceded from India and almost instantly a war between Muslim Pakistan and Hindu India broke out. Gandhi, who had failed in his attempt to pacify the two religions and unify India, was assassinated by a Hindu nationalist, accusing Gandhi of having brought about Pakistans separation10. In 1950 the Constitution of India, borrowing heavily from the British Government of India Act of 1935, was passed by Parliament. Nehru began his socialist programs, focusing on heavy industry and building small-scale cottage businesses.11 The foundation of successful independence and decolonization of India, however, lies predominantly in the steps and measures taken towards independence since the turn of the century. Main section In order to scrutinize the Research question, I will center on a catalogue of problems, which, according to my different readings12, have posed serious threats to decolonization, if not even independence. (1) The arguably biggest problem across most of the colonies was the one of rivaling ethnicities, claiming the same territory and struggling for political prevalence.13 This problem was usually enhanced by the colonialists as they divided the occupied territories according to geographical landmarks and not ethnic divisions. For the most part the different ethnicities remained united only until the common foe, the colonialists, was gone and shortly thereafter the country fell into anarchy (as was e.g. the case in Congo14). Almost any democratization was inhibited from the beginning, since votes were only cast along ethnic lines and not according to the political qualities of the candidate.15(2) Another problem was the fact that little or incomplete pre-planning was done for what was supposed to follow after independence. There was little or no understanding of the democratic process and, as most colonies have either been ruled by indigenous autocrats or been under the foreign rule of the colonialists, rarely were there any democratic roots. (3) Yet another Predicament of decolonization, which in the context of India is tightly linked to problem (2), was that there generally wasnt any middle class and civic society outside government. (4) Though in the short term not necessarily the biggest dilemma, but all the more devastating in the long run was the ability for the former colony to economically stand on its own feet. In the
8 9

Singh, Anita Inder (1984, p. 195). Rothermund, Dietmar (2006, pp. 66-67). 10 Rademacher, Cay (2010, p. 146). 11 Chakrabarty, Bidyut (2008, p.22) 12 Namely: Ashcroft (2000) & Betts, Raymond (2004)
13 14 15

For reasons of structure, I assign numbers to the different quandaries.

Republic of the Congo. (2011, subsection: Congo since Independence). In Encyclopdia Britannica. Neuberger, Benyamin (2000, pp. 304-305). 3

Julian Koch

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wake of the celebratory exultations of just declared independence, people forgave the prevailing inequality, but when the daily grind of the fight for food and shelter set in people were asking and expecting sometimes pretentiously much of their governments. Most former colonies went through a period of too much dependency on the former colonialist country, to then in complete rupture with their former rulers turn away and break with the economic and political structures the colonialists had left. (5) As generally the case when the government has to balance on knifes edge, the military steps in to topple it. The military was oftentimes an already established institution, sometimes even the only native one before independence, since most of the colonies had to fight for their colonizers in one of the two or even both World Wars. (1) Indias core territory remained virtually unchanged during the British occupation from the 1850s on either it was ruled by one of the several kings and princes, which had traditionally been ruling India or it was under British occupation16. The territorial conflicts that broke out later were homemade and had not been caused by arbitrary borders drawn by the colonialists. Concerning ethnicities, India appears to take a very special role among the colonies. Even though India is among the ethnically most diverse countries in the world, the major splits were not along ethnic but religious lines. The society of the Hindu majority was (and still is) rigidly structured by the caste system and strict, sacrosanct rules. At the same time, unlike e.g. with Catholicism and Protestantism, there are extremely little doctrinal conflicts considering that there basically is no such thing as the Hindu religion, but thousands of localized sects and cults, sometimes varying from village to village, adhering to the same major gods and a similar social structure.17 The fact that none of these claims absolute truth lets them coexist peacefully under a common religious denominator18. The Muslims, though divided at the beginning, 19 soon grew closer together under the prospect of a soon-to-be independent India and being marginalized by the Hindu majority. The Sikhs, though only comprising little more than 1% of the overall population in colonial India, played a major role in the slaughters that were to follow Indian independence20. The Sikhs shared and still share a very strong sense of belonging. During the religious massacres they sided with Hindus.21

16 17 18

WHKMLA (2006).

Hombach, Marion (2010, p. 151) & (Robinson, James Burnell, 2004, pp. 57-58).

The Hindu hatred of Muslims had been incurred by the harsh actions of the Mogul kings in the past against what they thought was idolatry of the Hindus. (Robinson, James Burnell, 2004, pp. 129-130). 19 As can be seen by the voter turnout of the Muslim League during the first provincial elections in 1937. ( Singh, Anita

Inder, 1984, p. 202).

20

This was partially due to the fact that Sikhs were over-represented in the security sector and were thus armed and organized. (Rademacher, Cay, 2010, p. 132 & p.138). 21 They upheld a deeply rooted enmity against Muslims ever since the Muslim Mogul king Jahangir had executed the head of their religion in the 1600s Rademacher, Cay (2010, p. 141) & Sikhism. (2011, subsection: Guru Arjan). In

Encyclopdia Britannica. 4

Julian Koch

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These religious chasms resulted in some of the most brutal outbreaks of religious violence especially bloody in the province of Punjab in 20th century history. The partition of India along religious and geographic lines meant nonetheless that this violence could only be temporary. More than 17 million people fled from violence to the country, where their respective religion constituted a majority (as for the Sikhs, they mainly fled to India).22 Soon there werent many people left to kill. Both countries were now also socially and religiously separated and the ongoing hatred manifested itself in the conflict over the territory of especially Kashmir.23 Nevertheless, army-guarded borders inhibited and inhibit further massacres. The planned partition (as chaotic as it may have been) also meant that no constrained and failed attempt to keep India unified would rip apart government, lead to infighting within institutions and leave a mark of Cain that a country, still in its cradle, could barely have overcome. The scale of a conflict similar to the one in Punjab not only between parts of the population but also within the armed forces (and no borders to keep them apart) would presumably have been even more horrid. The partitioning of India resulted in an externalization of the religious antagonisms and set the stage for a functioning Indian government. (2) India was basically ruled and administered by the Indian Civil Service which consisted of about 2000 servants at about the time of Independence.24 At the beginning of the 20th century, the number of British Civil Servants gradually diminished and gave way to more indigenous servants.25 This was not only a contributor to a possible Indian administrative takeover and an important experience in the ways of due process and the arduous task of managing a country, but also a further obstacle for the British to continue their rule of India. Indians had also been allowed more and more government participation in democratic elections. In the three consecutive Government of India Acts of 1909, 1919 and 1935, Indians gained more democratic voting rights and more seats in the Imperial Legislative Council and the Executive Council surrounding the British Viceroy to be elected for. The legislative branch of government was transformed, resulting in a bicameral legislature, whose seats a more extensive number of Indians could now elect candidates for. Suffrage, however, was still based on status and affluence of the respective Indian voter. But not only the top level of government was reformed: More Indians were allowed to elect Provincial representatives for the Legislative Assembly. The executive branch was split into two, one part controlled by Indians, the other by the British governor the British keeping power over the two most important privileges of power: police and justice (this system was called Dyarchie). Indians
22 23

Rademacher, Cay (2010, p. 146)

The territory had been under the rule of a Hindu prince, but was inhabited by a Muslim majority. The 600 kings and princes were supposed to choose to join either India or Pakistan the prince had done neither, and so a struggle ensued that still could lead to war between the countries today. (Gayler, Alice, & Otto, Frank, 2010, p. 160) 24 Rademacher, Cay (2010, p. 132) 25 Singh, Anita Inder (1984, p. 195)

Julian Koch

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gained charge over the educational sector, health care and agriculture decisive factors in a still very poor, rural and backward India.26 Generally party leaders and officials had been educated in Britain and gotten into touch with liberal principles. Most of them were lawyers and were somewhat prepared for the bureaucratic haggling over political problems as can be seen that the three major faces of India at the time, Nehru, Jinnah and Gandhi, were all educated lawyers (and ardent hagglers). The successive build-up of reforms shows that India was slowly and steadily prepared for independence. (3) To say that Indians were prepared for independence, might not actually be the most felicitous choice of words. Indians had fought perseveringly for their share of power. Not unusual for a colony, India had a very small middle-class and an abundance of pauper masses spread out over the rural countryside. Any stable democracy in India had to seek its basis with the poor. And so it did. There is rarely a person in any country, who single-handedly had such an impact on democratization and building a national movement as Mohandas Gandhi in India. Gandhi arrived in India in 1915 as an already established moral authority and human rights activist due to his activism in South Africa27 and very effectively combined spiritualism and the unifying and highly symbolic force of rituals with politically and juridically explosive action without the use of violence. India was not only divided on ethnic lines, somewhat knit together by the three major religions, but also along the lines of welfare and affluence a division reinforced by the caste system of the Hindu majority. When he arrived, Gandhi could revert to an already established understanding of democracy within the National Congress Party28 but also the Muslim League those, however, did not reach out to a broad basis of voters.29 Unified, though, was none of these in what steps to take towards independence if independence was desired at all.30 Some even tried to force independence with acts of terrorism.31 It is an absolutely outstanding accomplishment by Gandhi and it is virtually impossible to overstate this to have overcome this lack of a middle-class and his very own roots of elitism32 in appealing to the poor by founding a symbolic, political movement living in ascetic, autarkic communities wherein all caste difference was abolished, but where traditional Hindu values and spiritualism were still the regulatory constituents of daily life without being exclusionary to other religions and beliefs. Most importantly Gandhi managed to spread a sense of unity, democratization and managed to curtail outbreaks of violence despite the obstacles of the little enfranchisement of the rural

26 27 28

India. (2011, subsection: Constitutional Reforms). In Encyclopdia Britannica. Gayler, Alice, & Otto, Frank (2010, p. 158) & Stempel, Johannes (2010, p. 112).

The Congress Party had been founded, as mentioned before, in 1885, with its democratic roots just as old. (Rothermund, Dietmar, 2006, p. 55). 29 India. (2011, subsection: Constitutional Reforms). In Encyclopdia Britannica. 30 Jinnah, the head of the Muslim League, for example was loyal to the British Empire and Crown. ( Rademacher, Cay, 2010, p. 136) 31 India. (2011, subsection: Moderate and Militant Nationalism.) In Encyclopdia Britannica. 32 He was a son of an Indian minister, sent to England to become a lawyer. ( Stempel, Johannes, 2010, p. 112).

Julian Koch

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population.33 Because rural voters were for the most part not eligible to vote, Gandhi sought to unite them politically in actions of civil disobedience fostering political activity outside government. Interestingly, having touched upon the issue of ethnicity already, politics as practiced by Gandhi seemed to be the outlet valve for the lack of a nationalistic identity: Indian consciousness, as we understand it today, crystallized during the national liberation movement. So national is a political and not a cultural referent in India.34 In the case of India, it seems, the state built the nation. The question why India didnt break apart after independence and that democracy prevailed can at least in part be answered with the fact that any sense of nationhood and unity was tightly linked to the functionality of the government, to political unity. (4) Gandhis assassination in 1948 marked a new order in India. Jawarhalal Nehru became the first prime minister after independence. While elevating Gandhi irrevocably to the ranks of the tragic hero and national icon, the assassination also marked the abating importance, if not the end, of his economics of self-sufficiency and backwardly rural self-confinement. Though, as judged by todays critics35, Nehru wasnt a champion of modern capitalism and not as successful as he could have been, these critics omit that he certainly could have done worse. Unlike Nkrumah with his megalomaniac socialist projects36, or Maos persistent and successful ignorance of the havoc he wrought by enforcing agricultural reforms, which were so absurdly escapist as to have seemingly stemmed right from the doctrinal pocketbook of the communist ideology37, Nehru was not a thoroughbred socialist ideologue and was willing to make amendments when needed.38 Nehru introduced planned economic development with five-year plans and a focus on heavy industry and agricultural development. Though his agricultural reforms had some substantial shortcomings and loopholes, they helped shake off colonial inefficiencies of food production, as his industrialization efforts broke the trap of economic stagnation which had marked the last decades of the colonial era39 per capita GDP grew by an effective 2% if adjusted for population growth. Importantly, Nehru managed to keep a benign relationship with China in the first decade of his tenure, stayed out of the Cold War and secured major technological and fiscal assistance from the East and the West. In his third five-year plan industrial productivity rose by a considerable amount and soon India belonged to the 10 biggest world economies concerning GDP.40 Even though poverty was almost
33 34

India. (2011, subsection: Constitutional Reforms). In Encyclopdia Britannica. Sen, Sarbani as cited by Chakrabarty, Bidyut (2008, p. 39) 35 Chakrabarty, Bidyut (2008, pp. 21-24) 36 Ghana. (2011, subsection: Independence). In Encyclopdia Britannica. 37 Mao Zedong. (2011, subsection: Maos Road to Socialism). In Encyclopdia Britannica. 38 Metcalf, Barbara D., & Metcalf, Thomas R. (2006, p. 243) 39 Metcalf, Barbara D., & Metcalf, Thomas R. (2006, p. 246) 40 India. (2011, subsection: Economic Planning and Development). In Encyclopdia Britannica. 7

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as ravishingly bad when Nehru deceased while in office as when he started his reforms, he managed to steer Indian economics free from major British influence and intrusion. Notwithstanding his different economic approach, Nehru never pursued any ruptive break with his former colonizer, not in economics India remained in the Commonwealth4142 and not in politics as can be exemplified by the fact that Indias 1950 constitution drew very heavily from the Government of India Act of 1935.43 This assured India an international standing in politics and economics while still keeping its avowedly neutral place on the international stage.44 (5) The military played an extremely minor role in the independence and decolonization of India. Because of the Sepoy Mutiny, the British had recruited increasingly Sikhs for the army, who had a history of fighting wars and being fierce and loyal warriors.45 The dyarchic system also kept the British in charge of security on any level of government undermining military uprisings from start.46 The scarcity of sources on the role of the Indian military in Indias independence only reaffirms the negligent role the military played, despite having been an established institution since World War I and having fought in the two World Wars.4748 Due to Gandhi and his willingness to turn the other cheek, decolonization and independence was associated with the peace movement and not military rule. None of the party leaders of the National Congress had any close affiliations with, or history in the military most of them pertained to the English-educated upper classes and sought meaningful fulfillment of their lives in political activism and not a military career.

Conclusion My argument that India decolonized respectively successful is based on six crucial points, which posed major threats to any countrys internal integrity and sovereignty while detaching from its former colonizers. All in all India had at least managed to avert the major dangers to democracy. It externalized, so to speak, religious
41 42

Singh, Anita Inder (1984, p. 199)

Severing economic ties with Britain would also not have been too reasonable, since Britain was highly indebted to India it had not yet paid India the duties it earned while fighting on the British side during World War II. (Rothermund,

Dietmar, 2006, pp. 66-67). 43 Chakrabarty, Bidyut (2008, p. 3)

44 45 46

With the exceptions of relations with Pakistan and later China.

Rademacher, Cay (2010, p. 141). India. (2011, subsection: Constitutional Reforms). In Encyclopdia Britannica. 47 India. (2011, subsections: World War I and its Aftermath & The Impact of World War II). In Encyclopdia Britannica.
48

The mutiny, nevertheless, remained very popular among Indian nationalists (though somewhat heightened to the levels of a more or less fictional myth), particularly Nehru, who purported it as the First war of Independence another measure of nation-building. (Metcalf, Barbara D., & Metcalf, Thomas R., 2006, p. 92).

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enmity and was administratively well prepared for independence. Due to Gandhi, democracy was wide-spread and even mobilized the poor. Thanks to Nehru, India handled the balancing act between political and economic separation and affiliation with Britain, while the military did not pursue any policies to influence the countrys politics. India was the Crown jewel of the British Empire and turned into the model, the jewel of decolonization for the rest of the colonies. India was the trigger of a flood of declarations of independence, though most would trail it in terms of economic and all would trail it in terms of political success. Today, India is by far the biggest democracy in the world and has, under the accomplished economist Manmohan Singh, achieved major economic development. The fact that he is a Sikh shows that, after some religious upheavals in the 1980s, India is a politically diverse and multicultural society, which has mainly overcome its ethnical and lingual divisions.

Julian Koch

ID: 6029285

References: Ashcroft (a.o., eds). Key Concepts in post-colonial Studies. London 1998. Definition of Decolonization (pp.6367) Betts, Raymond (2004). Gotta be this or that. In Decolonization. New York, NY: Routledge, pp. 65-77. Chakrabarty, Bidyut (2008). Indian Politics and Society since Independence. Events Processes and Ideology. New York, NY: Routledge Gayler, Alice, & Otto, Frank (2010). Zeitleiste: Der umkmpfte Subkontinent. In GEOEpoche: Indien, No. 41, pp. 152-160 Ghana. (2011). In Encyclopdia Britannica. Retrieved from: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/232376/Ghana Hombach, Marion (2010). Hindu-Glauben: Im Kreislauf der Wiedergeburten. In GEOEpoche: Indien, No. 41, pp. 148-151. India. (2011). In Encyclopdia Britannica. Retrieved from: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/285248/India Mallikarjun, B. (2002). Mother Tongues of India according to the 1961 Census. Language in India. Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow. Vol. 2. Retrieved from: http://www.languageinindia.com/aug2002/indianmothertongues1961aug2002.html Mao Zedong. (2011). In Encyclopdia Britannica. Retrieved from: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/363395/Mao-Zedong Metcalf, Barbara D., & Metcalf, Thomas R. (2006). A Concise History of Modern India. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Neuberger, Benyamin (2000). Ethnic groups and the State in Africa. In S. Ben-Ami a.o. eds. Ethnic challenges to the modern nation state. New York (pp. 294-308). Pakistan. (2011). In Encyclopdia Britannica. Retrieved from http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/438805/Pakistan Rademacher, Cay (2010). Unabhngigkeit: Der Preis der Freiheit. In GEOEpoche: Indien, No. 41, pp. 131-146. Republic of the Congo. (2011). In Encyclopdia Britannica. Retrieved from http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/132321/Republic-of-the-Congo 10

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Robinson, James Burnell (2004). Religions of the World. Hinduism. New York, NY: Chelsea House Publishers. Rothermund, Dietmar (2006). The Routledge Companion to Decolonization. New York, NY: Routledge. Sikhism. (2011). In Encyclopdia Britannica. Retrieved from http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/543916/Sikhism Singh, Anita Inder (1984). Decolonization in India: The Statement of 20 February 1947. In The International History Review, Vol. 6., No. 2, pp. 191-209. Stempel, Johannes (2010). Widerstand: Der Kampf des Mahatma Gandhi. In GEOEpoche: Indien, No. 41, pp. 108-118. WHKMLA (2006). [Maps of the successive appropriation of India by the East India Company or the British, respectively] History of India. Retrieved from: http://www.zum.de/whkmla/histatlas/india/haxbrindia.html

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