The Indian peninsula is quite used to attempts by those running the Union government to establish hegemonic dominance over the region. In medieval times, such attempts were easily foiled. Attempts to appeal to religion and ethnicity were largely futile.
The peninsula had its own Muslim rulers and Christian elites and delivered non-Brahmanical political settlements with greater ease than the rest of the subcontinent. Mughal governors like the Nizam quickly fostered autonomous kingdoms. The British, who secured the peninsula by a squeak, were careful to emulate the Marathas and establish collaborative and autonomous governance arrangements. The Madras and Bombay presidencies were substantially autonomous of Calcutta and, later, Delhi.
The Indian independence movement was a significant force in the peninsula, but most of its iconic leaders––Bhagat Singh, Gandhi, Nehru, Subhash Bose, Jinnah, etc.––looked northwards for their great struggles. And so, in 1947, the Congress and opposition leaders jockeying for power in Delhi lacked a mass base in the peninsula.
Peninsular politics was shaped by a curious mixture of differentiated opposition to, and political collaboration with, the powers in Delhi. The first popular uprising against central hegemony occurred immediately after independence, with a Communist insurrection in Telangana, soon followed by a popular mass mobilisation for a united Andhra Pradesh. The first non-Congress government was formed—and, setting a trend of disgraceful Governors, dismissed through gubernatorial action at Delhi’s behest—in Kerala. Periyar and his successors established a compelling Dravidian movement that effectively erased all Delhi-centric parties from Tamil Nadu’s political landscape in the mid-1960s. NTR’s Telugu Desam movement successfully challenged Congress hegemony in Andhra Pradesh, as KCR later did in Telangana. Ramakrishna Hegde did something very similar in Karnataka with decentralisation, the spear of his counter to hegemonic Delhi.
At the same time, the peninsula played a collaborative game with Delhi. The Congress rotated power with regional forces as an alternative or, as in Tamil Nadu, as a long-term minority coalition partner. The BJP has done so (albeit less successfully) when in power in Delhi, with the Telugu Desam, the AIADMK and the Janata Dal.
The sociological evolution of the peninsula was also distinct. There was no Brahmin-Thakur-Baniya twice-born hegemony in the peninsula. The cause of Dalit and OBC emancipation predates Mandal and was central to the original ideologies of all the peninsular parties. Caste obviously matters hugely in the politics of the peninsula, but the emancipatory outcomes did not await Mandalisation or use it as a political anchor. This relative autonomy in political and social formations allowed sufficient space for the peninsula to evolve its distinct economic path. The politics of collaboration and resistance combined with the presence of a credible autonomous peninsular alternative––communist, Dravidian, or regional––to the national hegemonic party allowed the peninsula to bargain for and secure considerable public sector investments in its two poorest states, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. This subsequently lifted manufacturing levels and provided a base for service sector growth, especially after economic liberalisation.
Tamil Nadu, the only state with a major presence of homegrown manufacturing industrialists, was able to do business under the hood without attracting the interest or pique of any “great” national political leader seeking a share of their rents to secure power in Delhi, as has happened at different times in Maharashtra, West Bengal and Gujarat. Likewise, Kerala was able to pursue its human development model and reap the benefits by eliminating extreme poverty, securing human development and gaining massive prosperity through remittances of an exported educated workforce. Bengaluru attracted a cohort of the old manufacturing and new service industries without government interference. All these states looked outward across the seas for growth and prosperity. They managed to avoid the extraction of rents to maintain a hegemonic central government in Delhi without engaging in costly conflict or civil war.
The current situation is alarming. The dishonourable behaviour of the Tamil Nadu governor, censured by the Supreme Court, and the previous Kerala governor (both from North India), reflects a breakdown in the political settlement between Delhi and the peninsula. Compliant governors like RN Ravi and Arif Mohammed Khan do not act in such a fashion unless their masters, in their arrogance, lose political control. The peninsula is much richer, has lower poverty, and higher human development than the rest of India. However, in the face of real and perceived attempts to impose central hegemony, especially a politically defenestrating delimitation, the peninsular states are for the first time protesting fiscal subsidies to, and questioning the lack of economic progress and the rise of bigotry in, the poorer but more populous parts of India.
However, to counter hegemony, there is work to be done. The peninsula must revitalise its ideological moorings in a strategy for economic prosperity, further annihilate, rather than accommodate, caste, and end discretion-based corruption in favour of better rules and systems worthy of the higher levels of income and human development that they have attained.
At this juncture, none of these is on offer. This vacuum, in fact, unites the politics of the Centre and the peninsula. It gives Delhi considerable leverage. Without an offer on inclusive prosperity, today’s overlords in Delhi, as the Mughals before them, offer compensatory freebies and subsidies to different parts of India. When the peninsula engages on this negative terrain, it is, in effect, choosing to play a zero-sum game, affording the Centre leverage to control, even enhance, its political footprint by appealing to primordial questions and playing a common, negative national politics of failed development and compensatory freebies.
The peninsula needs an ideology of economic prosperity rooted in inclusivity, less discretion, and further progress in the annihilation of caste if it is to leverage its economic gains to maintain its rightful political space. There is no escape from this reality, no soft option. It remains to be seen if the peninsula’s collective political leadership can, like their political predecessors, respond collectively and effectively to this existential challenge.
Rathin Roy | Distinguished Professor, Kautilya School of Public Policy, Hyderabad; Visiting Senior Fellow, Overseas Development Institute, London
(Views are personal)
(rathin100@gmail.com)