ABSTRACT
After more than fifty years of self-rule, the old certitudes of Indian politics have crumbled. It is now recognized that democracy in India was not a bequest from the British; rather it was established after a profound historical rupture. Sunil Khilnani, writing in The Idea of India, claims that Indians were able to imagine new possibilities of being a nation because there were insufficient resources in their own past to construct their future (1997: 17–30). While the nationalist leadership established independent India on the basis of colonial institutions, the socialist leanings of the first Prime Minister of independent India, Jawaharlal Nehru, critically influenced the country’s economic and political directions during and after the Cold War. The ‘Bandung Regimes’ such as India under Nehru (1947–64), Egypt under Nasser (1954–70), Indonesia under Sukarno (1945/49–1965), and Ghana under Nkrumah (1957–66) attempted to direct national development in their countries between the capitalism of the First World and the communism of the Soviet Bloc. Nehru’s tenure in office is crucial because, during this time, the state stabilized and became a developmental agency, which aspired to penetrate all areas of the society’s life, and showed that it could be subject to democratic procedures (Khilnani 1997: 17–30).
