How Majoritarianism Based on ‘Divide and Rule’ Undermines Itself

The nation is not at peace. News of violence and protests have become routine. The result is diversion of the nation’s energies from tackling urgent long term national and international challenges that are piling up with implications for national well-being.

Internal strife reduces the capacity to tackle the challenges. Globally, challenges of environment and climate change, geo-political tensions and wars and rapid technological changes need to be addressed. Nationally, there is communal and caste strife, growing inequality and unemployment, persisting poverty, challenges to federalism, etc.

Lessons from colonisation

Hind Swaraj, written by Mahatma Gandhi in 1908, has lessons to offer in this regard. It not only presented a plan for India’s independence but a blueprint for the nation’s future. Why did the nation get colonised?

It answers, ‘The English have not taken India; we have given it to them”. Further, “…we encouraged them. When our Princes fought among themselves they sought assistance of Company Bahadur.” It adds, “We further strengthen their hold by quarrelling amongst ourselves.” On the divide between Hindus and Muslims, it says, “These thoughts are put into our minds by selfish and false religious teachers.”

Gandhi pointed out that the English practiced “divide and rule” and succeeded because the princes and the people were disunited. So, Indians themselves have to accept blame for their colonisation. This has relevance in the present situation of growing internal strife because of the use of the divide and rule policy by the present day rulers. But to what end?

The English colonised India to enrich themselves. They undermined the Indian economy so as to capture markets for their industry. Their rule resulted in India’s deindustrialisation and the deterioration in the socio-economic conditions. When they departed, there was wide spread illiteracy, poor health infrastructure, low life expectancy, etc.

Divide and rule was used to thwart Indians from rising against their unjust and pauperising rule. It is the national movement that united large sections of Indians.

Clearly, the lesson was that outside powers take advantage of a divided nation to gain at its expense. Further, the divisions are used to divert people’s attention from the real issues. These lessons from colonisation need to be taken note of by the current rulers.

Divide and rule results in growing instability

Divide and rule in a formally democratic system, results in growing social, political and economic instability. Conflict among the groups grows, making it difficult to arrive at a consensus on national policies. Those in power, corner the gains for their groups. So, capturing power becomes an end in itself and that leads to growing conflict and partisanship.

Since independence, India has followed “trickle down” policies so as to quickly achieve western modernity. This was the ruling elite’s self-serving policy which was accepted by the rest in good faith. But, with little trickle down over time, the people at the margins have lost faith in the developmental policies of the rulers.

Today, every caste and community group wants to capture power to benefit their people. This accentuates the national divide with people voting for their own community leaders while distrusting national leadership. People have lost faith in any long term promises of national development and demand immediate tangible gains.

So, political parties are competing with each other in offering immediate lucrative benefits. As the long-term perspective gets diluted, instabilities get aggravated and problems grow.

This is an ideal situation for vested interests to capture power via financing of political parties and their leaders. Democracy is becoming more and more formalistic with voting not leading to representation of people’s interest. Huge sums of money are used to contest elections and stay in power.

The money spent is largely illegal and provided by businesses and the corrupt who expect a quid pro quo. So, on attaining power, the ruling dispensations serve the interest of those financing them and their politics, no matter what the electoral rhetoric. This is cronyism and it has grown in scale.

The net result is that the economic gains are cornered by the vested interests leaving little for the marginalised – this is a variant of colonisation which Gandhi referred to.

Majoritarianism is an admission of weakness

Currently, divide and rule is being used to promote a divide between the majority and the minorities. Is the goal to energise the former to overcome its inferiority complex and regain its confidence that it lost during colonisation? Will it strengthen the nation in spite of the growing conflict between the communities? Will it raise India’s standing in the world?

Actually, majoritarianism is an admission of weakness which needs an ‘other’ to assert itself and feel superior to gain confidence. Unfortunately, conflict adds to the nation’s problems and weakens it, rather than strengthening it. This is what Gandhi enunciated. Majoritarianism depends on assertion and not reason. It sees any critique as an attack on itself and counter attacks that aggravates the conflict leading to greater instability.

Narrowing of perspective results in policy induced crisis

The impact of rising instabilities and cronyism weakens the investment climate for private investment which is 75% of the total investment. The government has raised capital expenditure substantially hoping that would crowd in private investment. But, that has not transpired and the shortfall in private investment persists with adverse impact on growth and social welfare.

The narrowing of perspective has also led to policy induced crisis due to demonetisation, structurally faulty GST, sudden lockdown and pro big-business policies. These decisions have damaged the unorganised sectors which employ 94% of the workers. The capital intensive organised sector which generates few jobs has grown at the expense of the labour intensive unorganised sector, thereby curtailing employment generation. The result is growing unemployment, persistence of poverty and rising inequality.

To divert attention of the people from this highly iniquitous development strategy, divide and rule is used by accentuating divisive social and political issues. The sub-conscious fears of the public are aroused. This is far easier than filling the societal cracks that would enable harmonious existence.

Adverse impact on knowledge generation

Growing conflict in society results in rising social waste. People get diverted from productive endeavours. This impacts the critical task of generation of socially relevant knowledge – something the institutions of higher learning are to fulfill.

But, they have been also drawn into the arena of conflict which has setback to higher education and research and development. This has weakened technology development which is crucial to face the challenge of globalisation.

India’s dependence is visible in the import of not only strategic defence items but also in trade. India is the largest importer of armament. It depends on Russia for legacy defence equipment and on the western powers for advanced armament it has obtained in the last 20 years. This dependence prevents it from taking an independent line in the evolving geo-political alignments.

In trade, it has a whopping $85 billion deficit with China, an enemy. Many of its factories are dependent for their functioning on Chinese engineers.

The drawing of Indian institutions of higher learning into the arena of conflict and politics has led to the appointment of poor quality ideologically correct faculty. Further, the autonomy of these institutions has been curtailed so as to prevent them from critiquing the ruling party’s ideas and its strategy of divide and rule. Both these impact generation of new knowledge which crucially depends on critiquing existing ideas.

The result is a lowering of standards in Indian institutions of higher learning. The response to this decline has not been to set things right but invite foreign institutions to establish campuses in India. Assuming that they raise the standards of some institutions, they will bring their own context and not generate knowledge relevant to India.

This will also put paid to the present regime’s pet idea of ‘decolonising’ the Indian mind. Further, the foreign institutions will undermine the existing moribund Indian institutions. Finally, the new institutions will also need autonomy to generate new knowledge – something the present ruling establishment is not willing to grant and was trying to circumvent.

Increase in wasteful expenditure

Growing strife in India requires increased expenditures on law and order. At present India already has a much larger police force than the number of personnel during colonial rule. The courts are packed with cases which take years to resolve. Given these difficulties, people often resort to instant justice through illegal means. This undermines faith in justice, leads to corruption and in a vicious cycle, results in rising alienation. The result is a decline in faith in the leadership and that degrades their capacity to implement policies.

Foreign powers take advantage of these weaknesses and foment trouble to weaken the nation. This calls for increased expenditures on law and order machinery and on defence of the country. The rising social waste diverts resources from development and inadequate allocation for education, health, research and development, etc.

Social waste, together with weak policy implementation makes it appear as if the nation’s problems are due to shortage of resources and foreign resources are needed. Prior to 1991, India depended on foreign aid and after that it is seeking capital flows from global markets. In the markets, there is competition for capital, so, concessions have to be offered.

This further reduces resource availability in the country and makes the nation more dependent on capital from big business and MNCs. Countries and markets are governed by the institutions of global governance, such as the World Bank and the IMF. They represent the interests of MNC capital and to further its interest, they impose cross-conditionalities. This amounts to truncation of sovereignty since policies get determined more by foreign interests than the needs of the Indian public.

Gandhi’s idea can be reformulated in the current neo-colonial phase as “foreigners have not captured policy making; we have ceded control to them.” This is a result of our rulers weakening the nation by practicing “divide and rule” through accentuation of the divides.