Eye on the rear view mirror

For school students in India, post-independence history and even much of pre-independence readings on the freedom movement in India are the history of the Congress party. Now called the Grand Old Party, the Congress dominated the academic discourse through its dominance at the hustings and therefore the way history was read by students.

The fact however remains that there are as many shades of political opinion in India as there are people. Throughout the fifties and sixties, parties like the Socialists, Jan Sangh and Shiv Sena provided a counterpoint to the Congress, albeit not in terms of actual challenge at the hustings. This book provides a sort of primer of these various shades of political opinion and the surprising journey made by several parties along the way.

Of particular interest are articles by Bruce D Graham on the meteoric rise of the BJP coinciding with a rightward shift in Indian politics, and Myron Weiner's account of how the Congress party became a tool for overarching national ideology as well as a platform for accommodating local aspirations. Yet the readings appear a little dated and some of the conclusions reached by authors a little hasty. For example, Valerian Rodriguez's exhaustive tracing of the Communist parties in India misses the point that after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the communist parties in India have also reinvented themselves as "secular" and "anti-communal" parties. How else can one explain their support to a government headed by the Congress whose economic policy is echoed by the BJP, whom the communists oppose vehemently.

The Communists' honeymoon with the Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh has less to do with Mulayam Singh Yadav being a socialist and more with his opposition to the BJP in the state. The fact that Yadav now openly hobnobs with Mumbai industrialists and the glitterati without repelling the Communists just proves the point. As does the conflict between reformists and old-style apparatchiks of the party as witnessed in West Bengal. Even more dated is Ramashray Roy's piece on selection of Congress candidates for elections. It stops at 1967, which is certainly a significant year for the Congress but does not explain the present situation, where a very centralised high command structure determines what local aspirations are, and hands down its decision somewhat in a dictatorial manner. The long-term trend of chief ministers being thrust on states and deep-seated dissidence in every local unit of the Congress, which shapes a lot of its politics, are not explained.

Despite all this, there are articles like the one of E Sridharan on electoral funding, timely and well-researched, and they provide a "real" view of the politician-businessman relationship. His description of how the Seshan effect of the 1996 elections shaped the way political parties sought funds for elections and also shaped the policy on funding makes for interesting reading.

For a volume like this, the important thing is to provide a balance between historical detail and contemporary events. While there will always be a need to look at the origins of political parties and thought, the value of a volume which relates it to contemporary events is always greater. A volume coming out in 2006 would have done well to have at least a couple of pieces on the development of bipolar coalition politics of the last 10 years and the cataclysmic election of 2004.

India's Political Parties

Edited by Peter Ronald deSouza & E Sridharan
Sage Publications
Price: Rs 450; Pages: 417