How To Govern And Misgovern A Diverse Country - The Akbar And Aurangzeb Models

A recent news article reported that the BJP, which has had a comfortable majority in India's lower house of parliament, had just emerged as the single largest party in the upper house. In time, as the upper house numbers begin to reflect the strength of the party in newly elected state legislatures, the BJP could acquire an outright majority there too. With a weak and divided opposition, the BJP is expected to continue its winning spree into the indefinite future, leading many to conjecture that it will only be a matter of time before the party has the wherewithal to amend the constitution itself, and begin to institute fundamental changes to the nation's very charter.

Indeed, the party's vision, as enunciated by its president Amit Shah, is to dominate every elected body "from parliament to panchayat (village council)". It is a winner-takes-all, take-no-prisoners philosophy that seems to be spectacularly successful at present.

What will a future under such a powerful ideological dispensation look like?

Numbers do not always tell the whole story, and I believe the BJP will fail to hold the country in its grip if it ignores some fundamental governing principles that have nothing to do with raw power.

A diverse country is governed by a combination of hardware and software. The hardware is the physical apparatus of government -- the organisational bodies at the union, state and local levels, the office-holders, the machinery of reporting and communication, the means of enforcement, etc. The software is the set of protocols governing the functioning and interaction of these hardware components. The constitution and the set of laws on the statute books spell out these protocols.

The system of elections is the most critical element of software, because it bestows all-important legitimacy on every other element of software and hardware.

It is my contention that next to regular elections which constitute the fundamental protocol of representative democracy, the protocol governing centre-state relations is the most important element of the software of governance. The constitution of India divides the portfolios of government between the centre and the states by defining a Union List, a State List and a Concurrent List, and this is the basis of a federal system of government. My contention is that only a federal system of government will work in a diverse country like India, and any attempt at over-centralisation will backfire. Attempts at centralisation are a form of misgovernance, and will be punished by the electorate.

To illustrate that these contrasting models of federalism and centralised authoritarianism are not new, I will go back into history.

Indian history is ancient, and there are possible examples like the Maurya and Gupta empires. However, I will use a more recent pair of examples from the Mughal empire. Not only is a more recent example likely to be more relevant than an ancient one, but having two models from the same dynasty provides a more effective contrast. Besides, as we shall see, the two were in existence for an almost identical duration, which makes the comparison between them more meaningful.

The two governance models I will use are those of Akbar and Aurangzeb. Aurangzeb was the great-grandson of Akbar, and their reigns were almost exactly a century apart, aside from being of the same duration. Akbar ruled for 49 years from 1556 to 1605, and Aurangzeb ruled for 49 years from 1658 to 1707.

Here is my first exhibit - the extent of their respective empires when they died.

Akbar (top left) and Aurangzeb (top right), and the extent of their empires at the time of their deaths (click to expand). Aurangzeb's empire is nominally larger, but size doesn't tell the whole story.

A history of Akbar's reign reveals that the early years were characterised by tumult and challenges to his rule, but the latter half was remarkably stable and peaceful. A history of Aurangzeb's reign reveals that he was almost constantly at war throughout, not just conquering new territory but also putting down rebellions that seemed interminable. His empire was nominally larger than his great-grandfather's, but also far more fractious.

Perhaps the most striking difference between Akbar's empire and Aurangzeb's was in the area of durability. Akbar's empire lasted more than a century after his death. Aurangzeb's empire did not long survive his death. It broke into multiple parts a few years later.

It would appear that in spite of its smaller size, Akbar's empire was held together by much stronger software.

Much has been made of the difference in tolerance between Akbar and Aurangzeb. Akbar is widely believed to have been more tolerant of difference (especially religion), while Aurangzeb was believed to have been more hardline. However, the real difference between their regimes was the protocol that governed "centre-state relations", or in the language of the time, the relationship between the empire and its vassals.

Akbar instituted a remarkably far-sighted policy under which it was tremendously advantageous for rulers of smaller kingdoms to become his vassals. Not only did they continue to enjoy considerable autonomy in the running of their kingdoms, they were also protected from their external enemies by the formidable army of the empire. In return, all they had to contribute to the upkeep of that empire were monetary tributes and their own armies when the empire required them. It was a win-win system that kept all players vested in its success. No wonder Akbar's empire soon settled into a period of peace and stability after the initial wars he waged to establish his authority.

In contrast, Aurangzeb's need for centralised power alienated vassals and governors alike, and it is no wonder that he saw rebellions and revolts throughout his reign. The software of governance under Aurangzeb had become so flawed that it simply failed to function. It was the software of misgovernance. Sure enough, once his own forceful personality exited the stage, his successors were unable to keep his empire together, and it fell under the combined onslaught of its own internal schisms and external enemies.

The lesson is instructive, because it applies to this day. Only governments that respect federalism can govern a country of India's diversity effectively. Those that try to enforce centralised control will fail.

In the years since independence, India has seen many governments of different political hues. But remarkably, the Akbar and Aurangzeb models are not correlated with parties at all! They can both be discerned even within the same political party.

Consider these prime ministers from the Congress party.

(Click to expand.) Jawaharlal Nehru, Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh (left) are remembered as nation-builders because they respected federalism. Indira Gandhi and her son Rajiv Gandhi (right) are widely considered institution wreckers because they had an authoritarian streak that did not respect independent institutions or opposition-ruled states.

Jawaharlal Nehru could be said to have birthed several of the features of India's federal polity. The constituent assembly worked during his first term to write the constitution, which was adopted in 1950. It was during his time that the first of the linguistic states was created. And although he was initially loath to split the Bombay presidency into the linguistic states of Gujarat and Maharashtra, popular protests during his visit to Bombay convinced him otherwise. Both Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh were known as gentlemen and diplomats, who preferred negotiation and consensus to adversarial conduct.

In contrast, the mother-son duo of Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi took the very existence of opposition parties as a personal affront. Opposition-ruled states received blatantly step-motherly treatment by their governments, violating key tenets of the federal protocol. They did a lot of damage and weakened India during their terms.

A very similar theme can be seen playing out with the BJP.

AB Vajpayee (left) was a consensus politician who gave and commanded respect across the aisle. Modi (right) is an authoritarian personality who centralises decision-making and brooks no opposition.

AB Vajpayee, who was India's first BJP prime minister, was in office for a five-year term between 1998 and 2004. Another gentleman and diplomat, he was well-respected even by the opposition parties, and he reciprocated that respect in his dealings with opposition-ruled states. He is widely remembered with respect and affection to this day.

Narendra Modi, India's current prime minister, is cast in the Aurangzeb mould. Federalism is not a virtue in his eyes. He and his party president Amit Shah are cut from the same ideological cloth, and they hate to share power. From parliament to panchayat, the duo aims to impose their party's writ on every elected body. Their attitude is redolent of Mike Maples, Microsoft's Executive VP of the Worldwide Products Group, who said, "My job is to get a fair share of the software applications market, and, to me, that's 100 percent."

It should be clear from these historical examples that Modi's is the software of misgovernance. There is no win-win system that gives other stakeholders an incentive to be vested in its success. Even within his own party, the Modi-Shah duo has emasculated everyone, including cabinet ministers and chief ministers. All decisions are taken by "two-and-a-half men" (with Arun Jaitley contributing the half). Modi's India increasingly resembles Aurangzeb's empire, crackling with a million mutinies waiting to erupt.

Much as Modi would hate to be compared to any Muslim ruler, let alone Aurangzeb, the cap fits, both literally and figuratively.

And so the raw numbers that seem to measure the BJP's strength in various legislative bodies may not indicate the true extent of the party's power. Under Modi, the software of India's governance has been tremendously weakened. The BJP itself will inevitably pay the price in electoral terms, but in the meantime, the country as a whole will pay a steep price too.

Movie Review - Madras Café

This isn't going to be a comprehensive review, just a few "sound-bites" of my impressions.

We've seen lots of war movies from Hollywood. I've grown up with movies about the Second World War ("The Bridge Over The River Kwai", "The Guns of Navarone", "The Battle Of The Bulge") and in my youth we saw movies about the Vietnam War ("Apocalypse Now", "Coming Home", "Platoon") and lately, we've begun to see movies about the two Gulf Wars ("Courage under Fire", "The Kingdom", "The Hurt Locker"). 

What's common to all of them is that they are all narrated from the Western point of view, and they concern wars that have touched Western folk. The impact to the West is what makes these wars important, even if their impact on other people is far higher. And of course, wars that don't involve the West at all are never discussed, even if their impact to other people is enormous. Case in point: the Iran-Iraq war. As in all things, the Western view of the world dominates the media, crowding out other voices and other viewpoints. [There are exceptions. Sometimes, stories of human poignancy trump Western parochialism and break through the media silence, e.g., "Hotel Rwanda", "The Kite Runner". But these are only exceptions. As a rule, Western characters need to be impacted for a story to be considered worth telling.]

Measured as a cultural force, Bollywood and Al Jazeera are probably the only non-Western voices that command a significant worldwide audience. Bollywood is no stranger to war movies, since India has been shaped in a significant way by its partition and the wars with Pakistan. [My favourite story, a coming-of-age tale set against the backdrop of the Kargil war, is "Lakshya". A more comprehensive, if somewhat rambling, movie on the Kargil war is "LoC Kargil".] But in spite of some excellent storytelling, no one outside the subcontinent ever seems to be interested.

The East Bengal genocide that culminated in the liberation of Bangladesh is the single biggest South Asian tragedy since partition, with anywhere from a million to 3 million civilians killed. That story has been told on screen many times, but it has never had a significant non-Bengali audience. No Westerner was harmed in the course of that tragedy, and so, from the perspective of the world at large, it may as well never have happened.

The next biggest South Asian war as measured in blood and human suffering, and far bigger than most of the Indo-Pakistan skirmishes, is the Sri Lankan civil war. Grinding its way over 30 wasted years, it is a story of folly all through, with avoidable causes and lessons that have still not been learnt. It is another non-Western story that begs to be told. And Shoojit Sircar's "Madras Café" is the first attempt in that direction.

The very photogenic John Abraham and Nargis Fakhri in Shoojit Sircar's violent docu-drama

The official movie trailer

There are many factual errors that have been criticised in this movie, to be sure, ranging from the superficial to the substantive. But flawed as it is, the creation of this work is to be welcomed. It has started a conversation, if nothing else.

I have been an amateur student of world history for as long as I can remember, and have followed the Sri Lankan conflict since the early 1980s. I remember reading with horror about the Colombo riots of 1983, as reported in Indian newspapers. I also remember wondering why the Indian government was sitting by doing nothing while the Sri Lankan army was persecuting the Tamils in the north. And I remember feeling relieved in June 1987 when Rajiv Gandhi's government chose the middle path of airdropping food supplies over northern Sri Lanka, sending out a message to the Sri Lankan government that it would not stand idly by, and yet stopping short of actual military action.

It seemed at the time that President Junius Jayawardene's government saw the writing on the wall, since the airdrop was shortly followed by an invitation to India to send a peacekeeping force to Sri Lanka. But very soon, this became India's quagmire. Jayawardene, the wily fox, had seemingly trapped the inexperienced Rajiv Gandhi in a Vietnam-style guerilla war that India could not win.

Indian PM Rajiv Gandhi (left) signs an agreement with Sri Lankan President JR Jayawardene (right). The old fox died peacefully in his sleep at the age of 90. The brash young man stumbled into the old man's war and paid with his life.

However, even at the time, we knew that there was more to the story than this simplistic summary. Indira Gandhi had been fishing in Sri Lanka's troubled waters for years. While the Sinhalese did create the initial problem by deliberately disenfranchising the Tamils, Indira Gandhi helped the Tamil militant groups in a bid to keep the Sri Lankan government off balance. That was simply her DNA and her style, which she used against opponents both at home and abroad. The similar meddling she engaged in in Punjab created the Sikh terrorist monster that ultimately cost her her life.

Tamil Nadu's politicians were also enthusiastic partners of the militants, giving them the run of the state's coast, hiding places among the mangroves and a thriving traffic in arms. India's hands were thus hardly clean. It's one thing to support the rights of the Tamils against a very real political disenfranchisement in a neighbouring country. It's quite another for India to do in Sri Lanka exactly what it was accusing Pakistan of doing in Kashmir.

Even after the Indian Peace-Keeping Force (IPKF) landed in Sri Lanka and began to disarm the militants, stories began to emerge of Indian favouritism. There were many Tamil militant groups, of which the LTTE became the best-known in later years, but I remember others in 1989 with names like PLOTE and TELO. One of the smaller groups was called the ENDLF, and this was the group that India seemed to favour unfairly. While other militant groups had to hand their weapons over to the IPKF, the ENDLF cadres were seen strutting about with their guns. Little wonder that the LTTE grew alarmed at the selective disarming and pulled out of the peace accord.

So yes, the LTTE did break the accord, but it was at least partly because India didn't play fair as a referee.

The IPKF bungled its way through its peacekeeping duties almost from Day One. Its first commander was the flamboyant Maj Gen Harkirat Singh, who thought the whole exercise would be a walkover and loved holding press conferences. Once it became clear that Harkirat was in over his head, he was replaced by the vastly more serious and low-key Lt Gen AS Kalkat. But he couldn't retrieve the situation either, and the IPKF finally withdrew in disgrace.

There were a dozen other wrinkles to the conflict as well. In addition to all the militant Tamil groups, there was a moderate political faction called TULF, led by the mild-mannered Amirthalingam, who was rewarded with a bullet for his moderation. As in Kashmir, moderates who are willing to talk to the government are executed by the militants, and peace never really has a chance.

It's unrealistic to expect Shoojit Sircar's movie to go into all of these issues, especially when it pretends to be a work of fiction. Hopefully, other moviemakers, encouraged by its commercial success, will follow with more focused narratives. Given the limited time into which to squeeze fictionalised versions of real-life people and events, it's quite amazing what the movie does manage to do.

For example, it was only after some research that I realised there were strong parallels between the movie's journalist who interviews the militants' leader and the real-life Anita Pratap's interview with the LTTE's Pirabakaran. Even more striking is the parallel between the movie's Malayalam-speaking RAW Madras desk head Bala and the real-life KV Unnikrishnan, also RAW's Madras desk head, who had been similarly honey-trapped by foreign intelligence agencies, but whose story remains unknown to most. In retrospect, the conspiracy theory espoused by the movie seems increasingly plausible. According to this theory, foreign corporate interests with advisors drawn from the ranks of retired secret service men, rather than just governments, were responsible for arming the militants and prolonging the civil war.

As an Indian movie about Sri Lanka, "Madras Café" suffers from its own version of parochialism. In the minds of Indians, the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi towers over so many other events of that war, and Sri Lankans can be forgiven for viewing this as Indian self-importance and arrogance. But it isn't all parochialism. After all, it was Rajiv Gandhi's assassination that shattered the cosy romance between India and the Tamil militants, paving the way for the latter's eventual defeat by the Sri Lankan army, so that was a watershed event even from a dispassionate analysis.

One of the strengths of this movie is the depth of the "bench", i.e., the uniformly good performances by all characters in the movie, not just the leads. They were all very believable. And that's my definition of good acting. If I find a character authentic, it says to me that the actor has done a good job. By that token, all the actors in "Madras Café" were excellent. So I really can't understand the comment I keep coming across in multiple reviews - "John Abraham can't act." I think this is just a euphemism for "John Abraham is very good-looking and I'm jealous"!

Another notable aspect of "Madras Café" is the complete absence of songs and dances so characteristic of the Bollywood genre. I guess this burnishes its credentials as a "serious" movie. But by whose standards, I wonder. Different cultural traditions have different styles of telling stories, and it's disturbing that one culture's (i.e., Western culture's) yardstick of "serious" storytelling has begun to influence others. More on this in a separate post.

In short, I think "Madras Café" is more of a conversation-starter than a definitive documentary of the Sri Lankan civil war. I hope it opens the floodgates, because we need more non-Western voices talking about the events that have affected non-Western people. It may not gather much of a Western audience, even with its attempts to be a Western-style movie. But it will surely capture the traditionally large Bollywood audience in Asia and Africa, and that's a good thing. There are important aspects of world history that should not be neglected, and if non-Western people don't talk about the events that have affected them, no one will.

The Nehru-Gandhi Dynasty

I'm not a fan of India's Gandhi family (no relatives of Mahatma Gandhi), much less a fan of the Gandhi dynasty. I think a democracy doesn't need to look to a single family to provide continuing leadership. [Of course, I'm also against reverse-discrimination, so if members of the Gandhi family choose to stand for election and win, I don't see why they shouldn't be allowed to rule.]

Well, at any rate, since the international press is going on about Rahul Gandhi being the son, grandson and great-grandson of former Prime Ministers, I thought I'd put together a photo collection of the dynasty, and just for kicks, I've used postage stamps wherever available. We still don't know if Rahul Gandhi will be PM. Maybe his sister Priyanka will. At any rate, here's the clan:

Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister (1947-1964):


He's the only prime minister from the family whom I actually admire. The man was a true democrat. It was thanks to his idealism that India survived as a democracy during its difficult infancy. So many other "great" leaders of newly-independent European colonies went down a very different path (e.g., Nkrumah of Ghana, Soekarno of Indonesia, etc.) Lots of people today criticise Nehru for taking India down a socialistic path (more correctly, a mixed economy), but I think that was the right choice at the time. Government was the only agency with the funds and the vision to develop the country. It was also correct for India to liberalise and move to regular market capitalism after a few decades, once basic economic stability and depth had been established.

Indira Gandhi, Nehru's daughter, India's third and sixth prime minister (1966-1977, 1980-1984):
(I'm not counting Gulzarilal Nanda, who was twice stopgap PM)


I never liked her. Unlike her father, Indira Gandhi did her best to destroy India's democratic institutions. Fortunately, by then, Indian democracy was mature enough to withstand her attacks and ultimately outlast her. The postage stamp is from the former USSR. The Indo-Soviet love affair was at its height during her reign. Again, I think that wasn't a bad thing for the time. Better Brezhnev than Nixon.

Rajiv Gandhi, Indira Gandhi's son, India's seventh prime minister (1984-1989):


I didn't think much of him either. Indira Gandhi was undemocratic, but she was at least competent. Rajiv did not even have competence to recommend him. I was sorry, though, when he was assassinated by a suicide bomber of the Sri Lankan Tamil Tigers. [It must be doubly satisfying this week for Rajiv's widow Sonia Gandhi. Her party won re-election, and the Tamil Tigers were finally defeated and their leaders killed.]

Rahul Gandhi, Rajiv's son, future prime minister?



Priyanka Gandhi, Rajiv's daughter, future prime minister?


I don't know much about the Gandhi children. They seem decent enough. But then, so was their father Rajiv, until he became PM. In a few short years, he had turned from "Mr. Clean" into a cynical politician like all the rest.

Now we'll see if PM Manmohan Singh turns out to be a mere seat-warmer for Rahul or Priyanka. Well, the people get the government they deserve.

Benazir Bhutto and Rajiv Gandhi

It was very sad to hear of Benazir Bhutto's assassination last week. Like many other Indians, I have had mixed feelings towards Benazir. On the one hand, she was smart, articulate, Westernised (and I mean that as a compliment) and came to power both times through democratic elections. But on the other, she was not particularly friendly to India when she was prime minister of Pakistan. I don't know what peculiar property the seat of power in Pakistan has, but anyone sitting there tends to become anti-India. It's a bit like the mythical throne of Vikramaditya which conferred wisdom on anyone who sat on it, just in reverse. The memory of Benazir Bhutto to Indians is predominantly one of the hopes for peace belied.

I just want to record two thoughts here. I feel really bad for her young children. It must be absolutely terrible for them to lose their mother in this way. And now, with the nomination of her young son Bilawal (19) as leader of the party, there is fresh danger too. I hope and pray that they stay safe.

My second thought is about the many similarities between Benazir Bhutto and India's former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, some uncanny, some funny.

Both belonged to political dynasties and were the offspring of former prime ministers (Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and Indira Gandhi, respectively). Both were assassinated when they were in opposition, while they were campaigning before an election. Both their parents were assassinated too (I consider the judicial hanging of Z.A. Bhutto by Gen. Zia-ul-Haq an act of political vendetta and therefore an assassination). Both had siblings who died violent and unnatural deaths (Murtaza Bhutto shot dead in unexplained circumstances, Shahnawaz Bhutto found dead in a hotel room, Sanjay Gandhi killed in an air crash). Both had their sons enter politics as well (Bilawal Bhutto Zardari and Rahul Gandhi).

The two did meet when they were prime ministers of their respective countries, at least once that I remember. Rajiv Gandhi made a personal reference to the Simla accord signed by Z.A. Bhutto and Indira Gandhi in his speech when he said, "Your father and my mother..." This personal touch was later criticised by political commentators when the India-Pakistan relationship deteriorated again. It was sarcastically referred to as the your-father-and-my-mother diplomacy.

I think Benazir Bhutto and Rajiv Gandhi were both more comfortable in English than in their respective languages. Left to themselves, they would have been part of the elite of their countries who can easily survive without speaking any local language. But fortunately or unfortunately, politics in countries with large populations that don't speak English forces leaders to speak the local language - with hilarious results.

I remember watching parts of Rajiv Gandhi's speech in Assam after an accord was signed with the agitating Assam Gana Parishad. He said in Hindi, "Hum accord ko implement karenge, letter mein aur spirit mein" (We will implement the accord in letter and in spirit).

Likewise, I saw a short clip of Benazir Bhutto making a speech in Urdu to the Pakistani parliament, "Main is assembly ki floor par declare karti hoon..." (I declare on the floor of this assembly...)

I remember laughing out loud and exclaiming, "This woman is Rajiv Gandhi's sister!"

Neither could speak Urdu/Hindi without resorting to English on every alternate word.

Well, there ends another era. I wish the Bhutto children strength and courage in the days ahead. And I hope Pakistan comes out of its current turmoil and becomes stable, peaceful and democratic once more, if not for its own sake, then at least for India's. While India has always lived with the threat of a hostile and militarily strong Pakistan, a stable enemy country is far preferable to one where law and order have completely broken down and unpredictable violence can spill over the border at any time.