Abstract
This book stimulates our understanding regarding the narratives of politics in India. Featuring prominently the degenerating Congress party, Manor builds a discourse on power, politics and leadership of the Congress era, to direct the reader’s gaze towards the development of democracy in India. The introduction highlights historical precedents of political power, society, culture and civilisation. It throws light on important key themes in Indian politics, specifically political awakening, the role of politicians’ skills, identity, political bargaining, patronage and clientelism (p. 15). Highlighting the role of Congress in the integration of institutions, the state and the agrarian social order, Chapter 2 discusses the arrival of the liberal political order in Indian politics. Manor seems to glorify the colonial intervention, suggesting it was more accommodative than the Mughal rule in India. The British were seen as legitimising and accepting the heterogeneity of Indian society because of their belief in pragmatism, which Manor calls ‘racial arrogance’ (p. 27). Britain’s ‘civilising rule’ is portrayed as the foundation of a liberal, more accommodative representative politics and the major source of developing a taste for the exercise of power within liberal representative institutions (p. 32), a carefully cultivated popular narrative among elected representatives.
Chapter 3 debates the emergence of Congress politics and the later arrival of normlessness within Congress, referred to as ‘anomie’ (p. 47), so that Congress became just a ‘political machine’ (p. 50). Here, while seeking to oppose a colonial elite, a new elite is being formed. Manor portrays a change in the political language of Indian politics due to the joint effect of persistent normlessness and the ‘calamitous’ moment of ‘emergency’ during the 1970s (pp. 49–50). Chapter 4 further discusses the decay in institutions under the Congress regime, seen by Manor as a conscious attempt of politicians, motivated by mistaken beliefs that this will strengthen their hand (p. 69). However, Congress gradually lost its grip on the electorate, for the emergence of ‘exasperations’ (p. 69) in people’s faith towards politics and politicians has motivated a significant regeneration in Indian politics after 2014. Manor portrays this in six different case studies, arguing that this has improved relations between political institutions, social groups, the state and society. This discussion also highlights the changes in leadership within political parties, with key impacts on the regeneration of politics (p. 77). This leads Manor to discuss decay and regeneration by highlighting the significance of bureaucracy, leadership and political bargaining in Indian politics in Chapter 5, while Chapter 6 examines the role and emergence of regional parties and their leadership. The decay in Congress, also discussed in earlier chapters, mentions P.V. Narasimha Rao’s criticism of the politicians’ loosening of behaviour, comparing the party with chaotic situations on a railway platform. Manor here leaves a question whether Congress caused economic liberalisation, or it was purely Rao’s crafting at his own risk, after discussion with Manmohan Singh (p. 89). Other major challenges faced by Congress during this period included the counterproductive claims of other backward castes and the emergence of assertive Hindu nationalism.
Acknowledging the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) emergence through reliance on technology, policy and planning, Chapter 7 specifically aspires to locate BJP’s weaknesses in connecting with the rural populace. Manor sees the BJP as a disciplined party concerning fundraising, while Congress fundraising is portrayed as ‘profiteering’ and ‘decentralised’ loot at state level (p. 113). He also claims that BJP and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) are not the same organisations, though it depends on time and place, given the examples of some states. He argues that the BJP lacks a cadre-based organisational structure which could penetrate below the district level (p. 125). Chapter 8 provides a short cultural history of India presenting ethnicity, language and religion in India in relation to politics. This emphasises the elite’s competition in relation to ethnicity and mobilisation of ethnic groups (p. 129). Indian politics in the Nehruvian era used accommodationist approaches to manage ethnicity by giving ‘substantial sharing of power and resources with people at regional levels’ (p. 140) to prevent the segregationist emergence of ethnic consciousness. Shortcomings in managing such conflicts are explored in Chapter 9, with reference to Punjab, Jammu and Kashmir and the Northeast. Manor highlights the importance of understanding how socio-cultural heterogeneity has utilised informal non-official institutions, giving birth to a politics of bargaining, closely related to the management of stable centre–state relations.
Chapter 10 discusses the role of unaffiliated people with skills to pursue bargaining for their personal interest, while helping the government to reach the grassroots. Manor calls them local fixers and ‘political entrepreneurs’, and provides a comparative analysis of various states and their local fixers (p. 194). This account relates closely to pragmatic politics, discussed in Chapter 11 when Manor highlights the pragmatic approach of Dr Devraj Urs in regional politics in Karnataka. Urs successfully used pragmatism to make state politics free from the dominance of landed groups, forging alliances with most of the less powerful groups (pp. 202–16). The significance of leadership in state politics is further identified when Chapter 12 highlights the ‘political awakening’, institutional decay and challenging role of chief ministers. Devraj Urs of Karnataka and Digvijay Singh of Madhya Pradesh serve as examples in Chapter 13. Singh reinvented the political shift from ‘patronage’ to the making of ‘post-clientelism’ strategies (p. 245).
As the difficulties in managing Indian politics have not yet been fully answered by the discussion at this point, Chapter 14 devotes five parts to broaden the reader’s gaze on understanding the shift in political power, introducing the notions of centralised power, legitimacy and recapitulation (p. 267). Chapter 15 then highlights inter-caste accommodation in rural India (p. 284), illustrating decline in the acceptance of caste hierarchies by disadvantaged groups. Here one finds a discussion on the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act of 1989, called a draconian law by Manor (p. 297). Since it shifts the burden of proof not on the accused but rather on the accuser (p. 298), this has actually led to a fierce debate about abuse of this act as highlighted, in early 2018, in the Supreme Court judgement of Dr Subhash Kashinath Mahajan vs The State of Maharashtra.
Manor seems to be worried about declining caste leadership hierarchy when he speaks about its accommodations, rather than trying to build faith in the complete erosion of the caste system. Chapters 16 and 17 discuss the significance of studying other political systems and the timeline of their politics. Focused on China, this highlights differences between the political and policy trajectories of China since 1949 and India since 1947. Overall, this book is an interesting attempt at political historiography. But despite its efforts to be comprehensive, it seems too focused on politics and particularly lacks consideration of other increasingly relevant related social phenomena, such as unemployment, poverty, education, industrialisation and urbanisation.