|
|
|
| Current Issue |
|
|
| Resources |
|
|
|
India: A Bubbling Political Pot
| Article
# : |
19841 |
|
|
Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
|
| Issue
Date : |
5 / 1991 |
2,696 Words |
| Author
: |
Edwin Hirschmann
Edwin Hirschmann is professor of history at Towson State
University in Maryland. |
India appears ready for another spin of that colorful carnival wheel called national elections. The last elections, in December 1989, produced a stalemate between the incumbent Congress-I Party and everybody else. Almost "everybody else" formed the reformist National Front ministry, which lasted less than a year. A fragile coalition led by Vishwanath Pratap Singh, it could not survive serious caste and religious disputes, along with a stab in the back.
The backstabber was Chandra Shekhar, a rival in Singh's own Janata Dal Party. Shekhar, a veteran politician with a record of changeable allegiances, split the party he had led for 11 years, formed his own breakaway faction, and, with the support of the far larger Congress Party, took the center of the political stage last November as prime minister.
Waiting in the wings--the right wing in this case--is the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which, having successfully aroused traditionalist Hindu sentiment, withdrew its needed support from the National Front. It anticipates new national elections that, it hopes, will yield it a rich harvest of political offices and Hindu votes, especially from the broad plains of North India.
Waiting in the opposite wing--though certainly not the left wing ideologically--is Rajiv Gandhi, bouncing back from the electoral defeat of November 1989, when his Congress ministry was accused of gross corruption and he himself of fumbling ineptitude. His "firm" support of Shekhar became such a bear hug that the new prime minister sent in his resignation and asked the president to call for new elections. Considered a diffident and easygoing man, Gandhi is still the leader of India's largest single party, the party through which his grandfather, Jawaharlal Nehru, and his mother, Indira Gandhi, governed India during most of the years since the nation won independence in 1947.
The political drama is an almost exact replay of the way in which Indira Gandhi undercut and split the last Janata government in 1979-80, so she could return to power. History never repeats exactly, but Hindu theologians take a cyclical view of the cosmos, and the politicians seem to also. Rajiv Gandhi virtually inherited the government when his mother was assassinated in 1984. Despite a landslide victory at the polls later that year, the inexperienced Rajiv was seen as lacking his family's political talents. The events of last November show that he has learned some things.
Thrust outside but
...
Read Full Article
Look for this article in Ask.com
|
|
