Resizing and Reshaping the Indian State: the ‘Punjab Problem’ in a Comparative Perspective

Abstract

In the comparative study of state expansion and contraction, the politics of moving borders, and ethno-nationalist movements for self-determination, India arguably occupies a unique position. Established in the carnage of partition it appears to have evolved as a successful liberal democracy in one of the most plural and underdeveloped societies in the world. This success is all the more striking given the complex range of external and internal threats confronted by the new state at independence. In the half century since, the Indian union has emerged as the premier representative of a developing democracy with a population fast approaching one billion. But as the country passes through the fiftieth anniversary of its independence, there is profound pessimism as to whether the current state can survive for the next half century. Gone are the old certainties of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, replaced by what the novelist V.S. Naipaul has called a ‘million mutinies’ with every ‘vote bank’ and disgruntled ethnic group making unmanageable demands on the political system. As the dominance of the Congress has declined, weak and unstable national governments have added to the sense of impending doom, voter disenchantment, and what Kohli has called a growing crisis of ‘governability’² that afflicts nearly all aspects of Indian stateness and its political institutions.