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Struggle Against Power: Notes on Indian Political Behavior

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Myron Weiner
Myron Weiner
Affiliation:
Department of Politics and a staff member of the Center of International Studies at Princeton University
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Extract

INDIA'S experiment with democratic institutions is still only an experiment. Although India adopted a parliamentary system when she achieved independence in 1947 and has thus far been able to maintain her democratic institutions with much more success than some other newly independent Asian nations, no observer can have complete confidence in their stability. Indians have had to adjust from the role of natives in a country occupied by an imperialist power to that of citizens in a democracy, and the adjustment has not been easy. Traditional attitudes have a way of persisting and are not always readily accommodated to a parliamentary system of government.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 8 , Issue 3 , April 1956 , pp. 392 - 403
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1956

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References

1 Jan Sangh is the largest Hindu communal party and the fourth largest party in India. The odier three are the Congress Party, the Praja Socialist Party, and the Communist Party of India.

2 The one exception being the Communist Party, perhaps the most Westernized of all the Indian parties and one which is completely concerned with the objective of winning power.

3 Brown, D. Mackenzie, The White Umbrella: Indian Political Thought from Manu to Gandhi, Berkeley, Calif., 1953, p. 17.Google Scholar

4 See, for example, Gandhi, M. K., Gandhi's Autobiography—The Story of My Experiments with Truth, Washington, D.C., 1948, pp. 31–32Google Scholar, in which Gandhi says, “He who would be friends with God must remain alone, or make the whole world his friends.”

5 A disciple of Gandhi wrote that a central teaching of the Bhagavad Gita which played a major part in Gandhi's thinking was the ideal of nishkamakarma (action without the desire for result). Dhawan, Gopinam, The Political Philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi, Ahmedabad, Navajivan Publishing House, 1946, p. 13.Google Scholar

6 This and the preceding quotation are taken from Indian Press Digests, Berkeley, Calif., Bureau of International Relations of the Department of Political Science, University of California, II, No. I (October 1953), p. 81; reprinted from Harijan, September 20, 1952, pp. 253–55.

7 Although Gandhi personally rejected die use of government to achieve the kind of society he envisaged, he did contribute a device for channeling resentment against government. While he was apparently prepared, under any Kind of government (even in a democracy), to violate laws he considered unjust, violations were to be accomplished in a non-violent way. In a society such as India, where mere are few self-restraints to prevent violation of law and where the population is becoming increasingly aware of the existence of “injustice,” the choice is not merely between abiding by or violating law, but is frequently between non-violent and violent law-breaking. Gandhi's contribution was a special set of non-violent, albeit non-democratic, rules by which laws could be violated. The degree of violence might be far greater in India today had not Gandhi provided such a set of rules. As Lois Murphy noted in a recent study (Chapter 4 in Murphy, Gardner, In the Minds of Men, New York, 1953)Google Scholar, in a society in which there is a tradition of little violence and where consequently there are no rules that put some restraint on its employment (rules such as “Fight like a man,” “Don't hit below the belt,” and other canons of “fair play” and “sportsmanship”), when violence is committed, it may be even more extreme and cruel than in a society where its use is customary.