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'Another India' tells the story of the world's biggest religious
minority. Weaving together vivid biographical portraits of a wide
range of Indian Muslims--elite and subaltern, secular and clerical,
activist and apolitical--it brings the experience of the country's
Muslims under a single focus; and, by throwing light on the Indian
Muslim condition during the first thirty years of independence,
reflects on the true character of democratic India. What we have
here is a rather different picture from received accounts of the
'world's largest democracy'. Challenging traditional histories of
Nehru's India, Pratinav Anil shows that minority rights were
neglected right from independence. Despite its best intentions, the
Congress regime that ruled for three decades was often illiberal,
intolerant and undemocratic. Muslims had to contend with
discrimination, disadvantage, deindustrialisation, dispossession
and disenfranchisement, as well as an unresponsive leadership. Anil
demonstrates how the Muslim elite encouraged depoliticisation,
taking up seemingly noble but largely inconsequential causes with
little bearing on the lives of ordinary members of the community.
There was no room for mass protests or collective solidarity in
this version of Muslim politics. Another India explores this elite
betrayal, whose consequences are still felt by India's 200 million
Muslims today.
In June 1975 Prime Minister Indira Gandhi imposed a state of
emergency, resulting in a 21-month suspension of democracy.
Jaffrelot and Anil explore this black page in India's history, a
constitutional dictatorship of unequal impact, with South India
largely spared thanks to the resilience of Indian federalism.
India's First Dictatorship focuses on Mrs Gandhi and her son,
Sanjay, who was largely responsible for the mass sterilisation
programmes and deportation of urban slum-dwellers. However, it
equally exposes the facilitation of authoritarian rule by
Congressmen, Communists, trade unions, businessmen and the urban
middle class, as well as the complacency of the judiciary and
media. While opposition leaders eventually closed ranks in jail,
many of them-especially in the RSS-tried to collaborate with the
new regime. Those who resisted the Emergency, in the media or on
the streets, were few in number. This episode was an acid test for
India's political culture. While a tiny minority of citizens fought
for democracy during the Emergency, in large numbers the people
bowed to the strong woman in power, even worshipped her. Equally
importantly, Hindu nationalists were endowed with a new legitimacy.
Yet, the Emergency was neither a parenthesis, nor so much a turning
point but a concentrate of a style of rule that is very much alive
today.
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