Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: The Indian state at fifty presents a picture of considerable strength fringed with traces of fragility. Its strength and durability are evident in its ability to maintain a reasonable degree of internal security and external defence. Regular, free and fair elections have endowed the authority of the state with a high degree of legitimacy. Nevertheless, the authority of the state is far from secure. Put to the acid test of religious fanaticism, this authority has often collapsed. Democracy itself collapsed in the authoritarian interlude of the Emergency rule of 1975-77. The Congress party, long an effective institution based on consensus and accommodation, drawing its strength from its ability to intervene between conflicting primordial identities, has left the centre stage of the state, bowing down to a motley collection of over a dozen different political parties. At the centre of this ruling coalition is the Bharatiya Janata Party whose advocacy of bharatiya samskriti as the core of India's politics is seen by many students of India as the portent of what is wrong with India's politics today. The direct entry of social ritual into the political arena, without its necessarily long apprentice to modernity, is seen as an assault on the secular structure of the state. On the other hand, the fact that culture and ritual, in their multiple local and regional ways have steadily voted their way into the public space, is an indication of the vibrancy of the political process that has steadily expanded the scope and depth of modern institutions. Often at odds with human rights activists, advocates of free trade and cross-border terrorism with the tacit support of the plebiscite lobby, the Indian state has shown itself capable of endurace and new initiatives.