Indian polity: The story of two transitions

What Indian society desperately needs is a healthy combination of the hardware of economic growth which would create affluence and the ideological software of Statism, nationalism, secularism and democracy, which would distribute affluence and absorb the social poison produced by growth. 

—–

IT may be argued that the Indian polity has gone through two major transitions since independence.  These two transitions are not just different from each other. They stand in complete contradiction with each other. They do not constitute one big composite picture. Instead, the second transition stands in complete opposition to the first and threatens to undo some of the major gains made during the first transition. What is the story of the two transitions?

The period 1947-52 was easily the most transformative period of Indian history. Never before in the past had a transformation of such magnitude taken place in such a short duration. This was the period of Indian revolution. It was the Indian Revolution. 

Fundamental changes

Five fundamental changes occurred during this period. One, India became independent, ending two centuries of alien colonial rule. Two, India's internal boundary-lines were re-drawn and fixed with the integration of over 500 princely states into the Indian Union. Three, India ended feudalism in agriculture by abolishing the system of landlordism. This paved the way for the transformation in India's agricultural profile, with 20 million tenants getting ownership of land they had been cultivating. 

Also read: Undermining the idea of India

Four, Indian people gave to themselves, through their representatives, a progressive, modern and emancipatory constitution, containing the blueprint for India's social transformation. And five, India organized the largest democratic mandate held anywhere else in the world. India became the citadel of the democratic experiment in the world. 

This was the first Indian transition which created its own ideas and institutions that became the foundation principles of the Indian republic. Democracy was to guarantee peoples' participation. Indian nationalism was to reach out to all Indians irrespective of religion, language, region and culture. The State was to be the enabler of basic economic processes, ensuring both growth and distribution.