A Just Federation of Equal Parts

by Partha Chatterjee

[An excerpt from For a Just Republic: The People of India and the State (Permanent Black and Ashoka University: 2025)]

When the Indian republic was founded, its various parts were not equal. The provinces were in a different category from the former princely states, while the hill districts of Assam had little or no connection with the national political formation. Some of these inequalities were addressed by asymmetrical arrangements within the federation. As we have explained, pure symmetry in a structure composed of unequal parts only exacerbates those inequalities. Asymmetry is a way of restoring a measure of equality. While asymmetrical federalism did go some distance towards establishing a degree of equality within the structure of the nation-state, it could not affect the relative locations of the different parts of the people-nation. That was addressed in course of the linguistic reorganisation of states which established a greater correspondence between the state structure and the form of the people-nation. Even though the integration of the princely states was carried out through agreements with their rulers and not with the explicit consent of the people, this lacuna was corrected to some extent by the installation of popularly elected ministries. But Jammu & Kashmir and the north-eastern hill states fell outside that zone of popular endorsement. For decades, they had puppet regimes thrust on them by the Centre which ruled those frontier regions in accordance with the dictates of security. As a result, the anomalies of cultural boundaries were left unattended in the north-eastern hills, just as Jammu & Kashmir was caught in the trap of its religious demography without ever being able to assert its distinct cultural identity. Those two regions remain starkly unequal parts of the Indian Union.

Massive inequalities also exist within and between genders, castes and classes in the people-nation. My principal suggestion here is for a change of scale to focus our attention on the regional and local caste-class formations and their gender component. These, I have pointed out, vary considerably. Efforts to redress these unequal relations have often chosen the path of deploying the legal and administrative power of the central organs of the state to prohibit retrograde practices and punish those guilty of perpetuating them. But experience accumulated over several decades shows that the results have been limited. More fundamental and lasting changes can only come from persistent movements to reform those culturally entrenched beliefs and practices which sustain gender, caste, and class inequities in regional and local social formations. For this, I have argued, it is necessary to shift the scale of social movements to the region. In a sense, this is contrary to the strategy Ambedkar adopted for most of his life, until his decision to ask Dalits to renounce the Hindu religion and convert to Buddhism. A change of focus from law to social reform and from campaigns conducted in English in the all-India media to the regional languages is likely to mobilise the educated stratum of the lower-middle class to take the lead in these new social movements. They will not, we have mentioned, yield quick results. New impediments may be encountered. But the change of strategy will, I believe, generate new energies and open many new tactical opportunities for advancing the struggle for greater gender, caste, and class equality. The lazy assumption carried over from the last century that rational and progressive values are held only within the upper crust of the educated middle class needs to be jettisoned.

The framework of liberal government so meticulously constructed by our constitution makers has been circumscribed and constrained over the years by a political process in which the governmental activities of the state have become the field for seeking popular consent. We have seen that two strategies—those of political society and populism—have emerged in recent years. It is arguable that except for extremely small and marginal groups such as the inhabitants of the North Sentinel Island in the Andamans, the entire population of the country is in some way or other included today within the web of governmentality. This explains why, despite all of the criticisms of the venality and violence of politicians, the electoral participation of poorer sections of the people remains persistently high. Even the people of Jammu & Kashmir and the north-eastern hill states, when given a meaningful chance to express their will in an election, have voted enthusiastically. The electoral system, operating within the strategic field of political society and populism, thus plays a crucial role in generating consent for the ruling classes.

The ruling-class coalition itself has changed significantly since the inauguration of the Constitution. It consists at present of a class of corporate capitalists which, in collaboration with the upper middle class, exercises hegemony over urban civil society but must assert its dominance over the rest of society by influencing the policies of the state, especially at the Centre. The result has been, at least since 2014, an accommodation of the interests of corporate capital with the politics of Hindutva. But this arrangement has been challenged, sporadically at first but now with greater assertiveness since the 2024 general elections, by opposition forces located in the states. However, the uneven spatial distribution of capital, with a region of high growth alongside regions of natural-resource extraction and labour supply, appears to have become a more enduring feature of the Indian economy. These inequalities — in the growing divide between big and small capital as well as the regional unevenness — have had negative consequences for welfare outcomes such as the livelihood, education, and health of the population. The answer, I have suggested, is the social mobilisation of middle and small enterprises in the regions. Tamil Nadu is an example, but no example can be taken to be a model since historical conditions in one region can never be replicated in another. This is where the leadership of a regional middle class becomes crucial in creating a social movement that promotes productive enterprise, provides institutional support for mass education and technical training, and fosters cultural dignity for small businesses. Each region will have to find its own path. What is needed is a critical intervention at the level of the regions to change the course of the passive revolution of capital in India.

On the political plane, I have highlighted coalition politics as the normal condition of government at the Centre. This truth is vociferously contested by corporate capital and the all-India media, which continue to express their preference for a government by a single party with a clear majority in Parliament. That, they insist, is the only condition which can ensure smooth implementation of policies to expedite economic growth. Coalitions with regional parties invariably mean messy compromises, a plethora of populist schemes, and the postponement of economic reforms. If we remember the course of the passive revolution of capital we have described, the presence of regional political parties in the Central government today certainly means a few additional constraints on the political influence of big capital. Regional parties are necessarily more responsive to pressures from medium and small businesses and the rural population. That is by no means unwelcome from the point of view of greater equality of opportunity. Besides, the evidence of coalition governments at the Centre from 1990 to 2014 shows that large corporate capital was hardly unsuccessful in furthering its interests during that period. The objection to coalition governments is, therefore, something of a red herring that diverts attention from a larger truth.

That larger truth is this. The only claimant today to the position of a dominant single party at the Centre is the BJP. That claim has been dented somewhat by the 2024 election results. But, needless to say, efforts to re-establish that dominance will not cease. Any attempt by Hindu nationalists to build a socially durable majority of the Hindutva forces in Parliament necessarily implies a permanent dominance of the Hindi-speaking region as well as further intensification of official efforts to mandate the use of the Hindi language. This, as we have pointed out, will provoke resistance from the non-Hindi regions. The fragile consensus on the cultural foundations of the federal republic will once again come under stress. Attempts to impose a single-party dominant system for the whole country will inevitably tend towards authoritarian solutions that will, in the end, endanger the stability of the republic. As I have argued repeatedly, a coalitional form of government must be accepted as the normative model for a stable political system in India. The political leadership which drafted the Constitution was itself a coalition. We might also remember Ambedkar’s plea in March 1947 for a ministry at the Centre that would compulsorily include representatives of minority parties. That is a truth that must be acknowledged today.

For a Just Republic: The People of India and the State (Permanent Black and Ashoka University: 2025)

The acceptance of coalitional politics at the Centre as normal will mean greater accommodation with the federal character of the political process. Thus, political parties will have to come to terms with the fact that different states have developed their own distinctive party systems. As a result, parties may come into alliance at the Centre but fight against one another in the states, just as alliances between parties could vary from state to state. This must also be accepted as normal. Electoral campaigns must be tailored accordingly and the electorate allowed to adjust to the variable pattern of choices in parliamentary and state elections. It would be a sign of the normality of coalitional politics.

The strategies of political society and populism, while generating consent for the ruling order among the broader masses of people, have, we have noticed, shrunk the ability of the upper-middle class to influence electoral politics. More alarmingly, a range of public institutions from the bureaucracy, the police, the public education system, and the public health system have been corrupted by the infiltration of political lobbies. The quality of services is believed to have been so compromised that the upper-middle class largely stays away from these institutions. However, they are still major employers of the educated middle class which, while being complicit in the creeping, politicisation of public institutions, feels frustrated by its inability to do anything about it. This explains why civil society in India, often fights to keep its movements against corruption and injustice free from party politics. But the results do not show any lasting effects. Indeed, one of the most intense and sustained such movements ended up giving birth to a new political party—the AAP in Delhi—which again, in only a few years, became indistinguishable from any other party wielding the instruments of political society and populism.

The alternative is for civil society to recognise its zone of influence and, instead of attempting to rally on the streets to put pressure on elected governments, insist on the right of public institutions to govern themselves. In principle, that is how public universities and public hospitals, for instance, are formally constituted. A movement in civil society, led by eminent professionals who have served with distinction in public institutions, to rid universities, hospitals, and similar bodies of unwholesome political interference could make a real difference. It would not be easy, since political interests have made deep inroads into what should properly belong to the domain of civil society. It could also provoke the charge of trying to cling on to entrenched privileges and denying entry to others. But fighting on its own turf will give civil society far greater moral legitimacy than trying to mimic the methods of political agitators.

Finally, since I began by showing how the makers of the Constitution chose to settle for a shallow version of the nation's history in order to avoid irreconcilable differences over its cultural identity, I must reiterate that a more equal and meaningful federal process is crucial for both the stability of the nation-state and the continued vitality of the people-nation. The insistence on a civilisational history of India stretching back several thousand years by votaries of unity-in-diversity as well as Hindu nationalism has only perpetuated a normative view of the nation that privileges the North Indian upper-caste male and reduces political choice to one between soft and hard Hindutva. A more just federation of equal parts will shift the deep memories of cultural solidarity and conflict to where they properly belong — the caste-class formations built around India’s linguistic regions.  Each region could claim sovereignty over its own historical memory while agreeing to come together in a political union in which each part is recognised as having equal worth. That is the promise of the just republic.

Excerpted with permission from Partha Chatterjee, and Permanent Black and Ashoka University