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The development of India's legitimacy

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Political legitimacy

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BJP supporters celebrate in Delhi, one of four states in which the Congress Party suffered heavy losses in a portent of change in 2014's national elections. EPA

Recent state election results in India point to the Congress Party losing power in national elections this year.

The Indian National Congress has led India as the biggest party in a national coalition government since 2004. But in the four most recent state election results, announced last December, Congress was comprehensively defeated in the northern states of Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh.

Recent corruption scandals have seriously harmed the government's reputation. The emergence of a popular new prime ministerial contender in the Bharatiya Janata Party's Narendra Modi also played a role in the state elections.

But the deeper cause of the Congress' setbacks is its failure to produce a new and lasting strategy for building political legitimacy in post-economic reform India. Before the era of economic reform dating back to the 1980s, political legitimacy rested on two ideologies with mass appeal.

Anti-colonial nationalism succeeded until the 1960s in maintaining a consensus on the government's program of autonomous, urban-focused industrialisation. This was initiated under India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. Populism then underpinned the policies of socialist redistribution attempted by his daughter, Indira Gandhi, in the late 1960s and 1970s.

As public sector debt accumulated and growth rates stagnated, India launched a series of economic reforms. The aim was to improve growth rates by strengthening indigenous private business.

This focus on private business, markets and growth intensified in the 1990s. The Indian government gradually opened up the economy while abandoning the legitimising rhetoric of socialism and policies of redistribution.

Yet while the last two decades delivered higher growth rates, levels of inequality also increased. Successive governments struggled to find a new ideology with mass appeal. They failed to build a broad political coalition in support of the economic reform agenda.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) held power at the national level from 1998 to 2004. In this time, the BJP attempted to build mass support for private-business-oriented growth on the back of religious nationalism. The Hindu nationalist movement has sought to marry social conservatism with the economic strategy introduced by the Congress.

In doing so, the BJP has privileged Hindu religion and culture as the basis for nationhood. This has had the effect of excluding and marginalising India's many religious minorities. Rural-urban divides and class and caste cleavages have also been papered over.

The limits of this strategy became evident when the BJP was trounced in national elections in 2004. The defeated government infamously ran a campaign based on the slogan "India shining". Rising malnutrition rates and a spate of farmer suicides clearly indicated otherwise.

The Congress Party's "inclusive growth" strategy was another attempt to legitimise India's post-1990 focus on private indigenous business, markets and growth.

Two major outcomes of this approach have been large-scale social welfare schemes. The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) guarantees a minimum of 100 days of wage employment, mainly on public works, in rural areas. The Food Security Act provides subsidised wheat, rice and grains to about two-thirds of the population.

Though it is too soon to make a judgement on the success or failure of these programs, both have had their critics. The implementation of the NREGA has been uneven across Indian states. The Food Security Act has been criticised for adding to India's growing fiscal deficit and for its reliance on notoriously corrupt delivery systems for the subsidised food.

The inclusive growth strategy has also not tackled the key sources of growing inequality. These include a decline in public investment in agriculture and a lack of job creation in manufacturing. Now the economic climate has darkened and growth rates have begun to falter.

The Congress government has also not met the governance expectations of the growing urban middle classes. What then are the alternatives offered by the Congress's opponents?

EPA/Jaipal Singh

Narendra Modi is the chief minister of Gujarat, one of India's most rapidly industrialising states. Here, the BJP has successfully melded an indigenous private sector-led industrialisation strategy and active state intervention with Hindu nationalist ideology. This has produced high growth rates and electoral majorities despite high levels of inequality.

Modi remains, however, a deeply divisive figure. He is tainted by his alleged role in precipitating violence between Hindus and Muslims in Gujarat.

Furthermore, the strength of the business-state alliance in Gujarat is the result of a unique history of collaboration and weak opposition. A replication of the Modi model at a national level is unlikely to succeed.

The vacuum of political legitimacy helps explain the rise of the Aam Aadmi (common man) Party (AAP). The AAP unexpectedly won 28 out of 70 seats in the Delhi elections.

The new party grew out of a split in the middle-class-driven movement against corruption led by the veteran political activist, Anna Hazare. The movement's brand of populist anti-politics is driven by a deep sense of alienation from the ruling elites. In this, it resembles movements that have emerged in other countries with rising urban middle classes, such as Turkey and Brazil.

In venturing into the political arena, the AAP, which is led by Arvind Kejriwal, a former public servant, has promised to go beyond this populist anti-politics. By emphasising its anti-corruption stance and willingness to run campaigns against entrenched business interests, the new party may challenge the dominance of the business-state alliance in post-reform India. For the time being, however, its lack of a tangible political program means the AAP remains a symptom rather than a solution to the crisis in Indian politics.

All this suggests two things. India may well elect a new national government next year, with the BJP at the helm and new parties in opposition. Despite that, the crisis of legitimacy that has marked the last two decades of Indian politics is likely to continue.

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Crisis of political legitimacy heralds change at the top in India

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Recent state election results in India point to the Congress Party losing power in national elections this year. The Indian National Congress has led India as the biggest party in a national coalition government since 2004. But in the four most recent state election results, announced last December, Congress was comprehensively defeated in the northern states of Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh.

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Top Transnational security threats to India

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Top Transnational security threats to India

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India and China: Conflict and Cooperation

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India and China: Conflict and Cooperation

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David M. Malone & Rohan Mukherjee

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India-China Relations in the Post-Cold War Era 

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India-China Relations in the Post-Cold War Era 

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Surjit Mansingh

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Caste discrimination affects an estimated 260 million people

Caste discrimination affects an estimated 260 million people worldwide, the vast majority living in South Asia. It involves massive violations of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights. Caste systems divide people into unequal and hierarchical social groups. Those at the bottom are considered 'lesser human beings', 'impure' and 'polluting' to other caste groups.

They are known to be 'untouchable' and subjected to so-called 'untouchability practices' in both public and private spheres. 'Untouchables' - known in South Asia as Dalits - are often forcibly assigned the most dirty, menial and hazardous jobs, and many are subjected to forced and bonded labour. Due to exclusion practiced by both state and non-state actors, they have limited access to resources, services and development, keeping most Dalits in severe poverty.

They are often de facto excluded from decision making and meaningful participation in public and civil life. Lack of special legislation banning caste discrimination or lack of implementation of legislation, due to dysfunctional systems of justice and caste-bias, have largely left Dalits without protection. Despite policy development and new legislation in some countries, fundamental challenges still remain in all caste-affected countries.

The progress that has been made is, to a large extent, a consequence of the tireless work of Dalit civil society groups in South Asia. They have also - through IDSN and by other means - managed to place caste discrimination firmly on the international human rights agenda. UN bodies and EU institutions are paying increasing attention to this issue.

The division of a society into castes is a global phenomenon not exclusively practised within any particular religion or belief system. In South Asia, caste discrimination is traditionally rooted in the Hindu caste system, according to which Dalits are considered 'outcasts'. However, caste systems and the ensuing discrimination have spread into Christian, Buddhist, Muslim and Sikh communities. They are also found in Africa, other parts of Asia, the Middle East, the Pacific and in Diaspora communities.

Caste systems are a form of social and economic governance that is based on principles and customary rules:

Caste systems involve the division of people into social groups (castes) where assignments of rights are determined by birth, are fixed and hereditary.

The assignment of basic rights among various castes is unequal and hierarchical, with those at the top enjoying most rights coupled with least duties and those at the bottom performing most duties coupled with no rights.

The system is maintained through the rigid enforcement of social ostracism (a system of social and economic penalties) in case of any deviations.

The doctrine of inequality is at the core of the caste system.

Those who fall outside the caste system are considered "lesser human beings", "impure" and thus "polluting" to other caste groups. They are known to be "untouchable" and subjected to so-called "untouchability practices" in both public and private spheres.

"Untouchables" are often forcibly assigned the most dirty, menial and hazardous jobs, such as cleaning human waste. The work they do adds to the stigmatisation they face from the surrounding society.

The exclusion of 'caste-affected communities' by other groups in society and the inherent structural inequality in these social relationships lead to high levels of poverty among affected population groups and exclusion from, or reduced benefits from development processes, and generally precludes their involvement in decision making and meaningful participation in public and civil life.

The division of a society into castes is a global phenomenon not exclusively practised within any particular religion or belief system.

In South Asia, caste discrimination is traditionally rooted in the Hindu caste system. Supported by philosophical elements, the caste system constructs the moral, social and legal foundations of Hindu society. Dalits are 'outcastes' or people who fall outside the four-fold caste system consisting of the Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vysya and Sudra. Dalits are also referred to as Panchamas or people of the fifth order. However caste systems and the ensuing caste discrimination have spread into Christian, Buddhist, Muslim and Sikh communities.

Caste systems are also found in Africa, other parts of Asia, the Middle East, the Pacific and in Diaspora communities around the world. In Japan association is made with Shinto beliefs concerning purity and impurity, and in marginalized African groups the justification is based on myths.

Caste discrimination affects approximately 260 million people worldwide, the vast majority living in South Asia.

Caste discrimination involves massive violations of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights. It is often outlawed in countries affected by it, but a lack of implementation of legislation and caste-bias within the justice systems largely leave Dalits without protection.

A central feature of caste discrimination is the so-called "untouchability practices". It stems from the notion that different caste groups have varying degrees of purity and pollution, with Dalits and other caste-affected groups being so impure that they can pollute other groups.

Paradoxically, sexual abuse and rape against Dalit women is not considered polluting to men from dominant castes.

If Dalits and other caste-affected groups challenge the untouchability practices, they often face violent sanctions and social boycott. Massive violations of human rights occur in relation to untouchability practices and other forms of caste-based discrimination.

Common untouchability practices:

Segregation in housing, schools and cremation grounds

De facto prohibition of inter-caste marriage

Limitation or prohibition of access to public places such as roads, temples and tea houses

Denial or limitation of access to public services such as water taps, health care and education

Restrictions on occupation; assignment of the most menial, dirty and dangerous jobs as defined by the caste hierarchy

De facto prohibition of access to ownership of land

The effect of untouchability practices and indeed the sexual abuse of "untouchable" women is that Dalits and other "untouchable" groups are kept powerless, separate and unequal.

Find out how these untouchability practices also constitute human rights violations

Database

IDSN has created an extensive database on caste-based discrimination.
Click here for all documents on untouchability
Other resources
Untouchability in Rural India by Shah, Mander, Thorat, Deshpande & Baviskar (2006) Understanding Untouchability - A Comprehensive Study of Practices and Conditions in 1589 Villages by Navsarjan Trust and the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice & Human Rights (2010)
Anthropology of Caste (from the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, 2008)

Vidoes - Untouchability practices
Click here to view IDSNs YouTube channel with a selection of videos dealing with untouchability practices
The hierarchical division of a society placing inherent priviledges and restrictions by birth run contrary to the belief that "all human beings are free and equal in dignity and rights" as stated in Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Caste discrimination involves massive violations of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights. Caste-affected communities are denied a life in dignity and equality.

According to a comprehensive UN study on discrimination based on work and descent, a number of human rights violations occur in relation to caste discrimination:

The right to physical security and life and the right to be free from violence

The right to equal political participation

The right to fair access to justice

The right to own land

The right to equal access to public and social services

The right to freedom of religion

The right to marriage on free will

The right to education

The right to cultural identity

The right to equal opportunity and free choice of employment

The right to equal, just and favorable conditions of work

The right to be free from forced or bonded labour

The right to be free from cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment

The right to health

The right to adequate food, water, sanitation, clothing and housing

Impunity for the perpetrators of crimes against caste-affected groups and non-implementation of legislation permeates the justice and law enforcement systems. Dalit cases are often not reported, investigated or prosecuted properly. Policemen, lawyers and judges often belong to dominant castes and they are unwilling to investigate, prosecute and hear cases of crimes against Dalits. Very few cases of crimes against Dalits lead to conviction.

The United Nations Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination recommends with specific reference to caste-affected communities that all states "take the necessary steps to ensure equal access to the justice system for all members of descent-based communities as well as ensure the prosecution of persons who commit crimes against members of descent-based communities and the provision of adequate compensation for the victims of such crimes."
Learn more about our work on international level to adress the human rights violations that stem from caste discrimination Learn more about how we work with the business sector on corporate social responsibility See the Human Rights Correspondence School lessons on caste discrmination here
Database

IDSN has created an extensive database on caste-based discrimination.
Click here for all documents on business and Human Rights
Several UN bodies have reaffirmed that discrimination based on work and descent - the UN terminology for caste discrimination - is prohibited by international human rights law, and that it is a global human rights phenomenon which should be addressed comprehensively through existing human rights mechanisms.

IDSN considers caste (and related discrimination and exclusion) to be a unique phenomenon - though widely spread in different geographical regions and cultural contexts. Among other unique aspects of caste systems are the association with (traditional) occupation, beliefs concerning purity and pollution, and 'untouchability' practices. Although caste is distinct from the concept of race, both types of discrimination produce comparable forms of political, economic, and social exclusion.

Precisely because of its unique nature - as well as the vast numbers of people affected globally and the severity of associated human rights violations - IDSN believes that caste discrimination warrants separate and distinctive treatment in the UN human rights system.

IDSN considers the argument about whether caste is similar to race to be an unproductive debate on semantics. States have the principal duty to promote, protect and respect the rights of citizens affected by all forms of discrimination, including caste discrimination, in accordance with existing international human rights obligations. States must avoid serious implementation gaps of their obligations in order to adhere to the fundamental principles of equality and non-discrimination, regardless of the grounds on which discrimination is exercised.
Download full version of IDSN position paper on caste, race and descent
Commmittee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination

In 2002, CERD adopted General Recommendation 29 on the term "descent" in article 1(1) of the Convention, which reaffirmed that caste-based discrimination falls within the scope of the Convention and therefore constitutes an effective framework to improve analysis and reporting on governments' performance.
Read about UN treaty body observations on caste discrimination
UN Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism

The UN Special Rapporteur has several times reaffirmed the position of CERD that discrimination on the grounds of caste falls within the scope of existing instruments, in particular the International Convention on the Elimination of Alls Forms of Racial Discrimination.
Read about the UN Special Rapporteur on racism and caste
Durban Declaration and Programme of Action
Read about the Durban Review Conference, DDPA and caste discrimination
More information:
IDSN recommendations to the Human Rights Council UN Principles and Guidelines on the effective eliminate of discrimination based on work and descent What is discrimination based on work and descent?

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Caste discrimination affects an estimated 260 million people worldwide, the vast majority living in South Asia. It involves massive violations of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights. Caste systems divide people into unequal and hierarchical social groups. Those at the bottom are considered 'lesser human beings', 'impure' and 'polluting' to other caste groups.

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History of the British East India Company

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History of the British East India Company

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AHMEDABAD, India - Clashes erupted in parts of western India on Saturday as the police detained the popular leader of a well-to-do caste group that is fighting India's entrenched quota system, after denying him permission to hold a rally.

Supporters of the leader, Hardik Patel, blocked roads and held sit-ins to protest his detention. On Saturday evening, officers used batons and tear gas to disperse a crowd of about 3,000 in the region's largest city, Ahmedabad, in Gujarat State. In retaliation, protesters pelted the police with stones.

There were no reports of casualties. When Mr. Patel was detained after a rally last month, riots in several cities in Gujarat left 10 people dead.

Mr. Patel was detained on Saturday morning in Surat, a diamond cutting and polishing hub in Gujarat, and placed in a police van as thousands of his supporters looked on.

"The Gujarat government wants to silence our voice," Mr. Patel told reporters.

In Gujarat, Mr. Patel, 22, has been organizing other young Patels, who belong to the Patidar caste, to protest the Indian version of affirmative action, which for 65 years has set aside nearly half of government jobs and public college slots for Indians from disadvantaged castes or tribes.

The Patel clan is considered too well off for preferential treatment, and members resent being shut out of jobs and colleges to support a system used by politicians to court lower castes.

Rakesh Asthana, the police commissioner of Surat, told the Press Trust of India news agency that Mr. Patel and a few dozen of his supporters were detained because they did not get government permission to hold a rally. He said the men would be released later Saturday.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A12 of the New York edition with the headline: Leader of Protests Against Caste Quotas in India Is Detained. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

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Leader of Protests Against Caste Quotas in India Is Detained

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AHMEDABAD, India - Clashes erupted in parts of western India on Saturday as the police detained the popular leader of a well-to-do caste group that is fighting India's entrenched quota system, after denying him permission to hold a rally. Supporters of the leader, Hardik Patel, blocked roads and held sit-ins to protest his detention.

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Upper castes want legal breathing space to persecute Dalits

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Upper castes want legal breathing space to persecute Dalits

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He was one of India's tallest leaders: the architect of what is probably the world's longest constitution, a legal scholar, a spiritual leader and, most importantly, the undisputed leader of Dalits, some of the most wretched citizens because of an unforgiving and harsh caste hierarchy that condemns them to the bottom of the heap.

After Mahatma Gandhi - whose birthday falls on Friday - Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar is indubitably India's most revered leader.

All over the country, his statues abound: in towns and cities and villages, road crossings and railway stations, and in parks. The charismatic leader is usually portrayed as a stocky bespectacled man, wearing a western suit and tie, with a pen in his front pocket and holding a book - the constitution of India - under his arm.

This, according to historian Janaki Nair, "symbolises the self-assertion on the part of Dalits". Not surprisingly, in caste-ridden and unequal India, Ambedkar is a lightning rod for Dalits (formerly known as untouchables) and their opponents.

This also possibly explains why authorities are placing in cages the statues of the leader - the "darling of the dispossessed", as historian Ramachandra Guha calls him - in many states.

Dark reality

Tamil Nadu, one of India's most developed states, is one of the worst affected by the scourge of caste. It is India's second largest economy and, according to the World Bank, well on track to meet the major millennium development goals. The state's two main political parties were founded on rationalism. But this masks a dark reality of decades-old and continuing atrocities by the dominant castes against the Dalits, who comprise 19% of the state's population.

Opponents of Dalit assertiveness have, over the years, provoked rioting and violence by desecrating - garlanding them with slippers, cutting off their heads - statues of Ambedkar. Pusillanimous authorities, unable to rein in the dominant castes have responded by placing the leader's statues in cages all over the state.

"This is Tamil Nadu's biggest shame. It shows the complete failure of the state to protect the Dalits. The state is increasingly succumbing to caste barbarity," says political scientist C Lakshmanan.

The opposition is so fierce and brazen that dominant caste groups have joined hands openly to demand softening of laws that aim at curbing atrocities against the Dalits - an example of what Mr Lakshmanan calls "explicit anti-Dalit politics".

In the past, dominant castes have refused to let state-run public transport buses named after Dalit icons to enter their villages, forcing the authorities to remove the name. In many villages, Dalits are still not allowed to use communal wells, enter Hindu temples, and visit barber shops.

More than 70 Dalits - more than in dirt-poor, caste-ridden, violent Bihar state - were killed in Tamil Nadu last year in mob attacks and clashes. There have been more than 15 judicial enquiries into incidents of atrocities against Dalits in the state since 1956, but not a single person has been punished.

"The tension with the dominant castes is increasing by the day. The dominant castes are ranged against the Dalits," says D Ravikumar, former lawmaker and leader of VCK, a strident anti-caste party.

Many in the state call the shameful caging of Ambedkar statues as an example of "caste fascism" in modern-day India. It also proves that the country's caste parties are mostly interested in extracting special privileges and concessions for their communities rather than fighting for justice and rights. So untouchability, in its worst and vilest forms, is alive and well in Tamil Nadu.

In one of his memorable speeches, Ambedkar had wondered how long Indians would continue to deny equality in their social and economic life. "If we continue to deny it for long, we do so only by putting our political democracy in peril."

Then, with what many say was chilling prescience, Ambedkar said that much of the growth of independent India was like "building a castle on a dung heap". He was not entirely off the mark.

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Why are statues of Indian icon Ambedkar being caged?

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He was one of India's tallest leaders: the architect of what is probably the world's longest constitution, a legal scholar, a spiritual leader and, most importantly, the undisputed leader of Dalits, some of the most wretched citizens because of an unforgiving and harsh caste hierarchy that condemns them to the bottom of the heap.

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1916 book by Indian civil serviceman on caste definition and history

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1916 book by Indian civil serviceman on caste definition and history

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see part 1: introductory essay on caste

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The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India, Volume 1 by R. V. Russell

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Free kindle book and epub digitized and proofread by Project Gutenberg.

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Naxalite Maoist Insurgency: a consequence of caste discrimination

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Naxalite Maoist Insurgency: a consequence of caste discrimination

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1931 speech by Winston Churchill on Maintaining British rule in India

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1931 speech by Winston Churchill on Maintaining British rule in India

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March 18, 1931. Albert Hall, London

At this moment of crisis for Baldwin, a by-election was taking place in St. George's, Westminster. At one point Baldwin considered resigning his seat and standing as a candidate, but in the event the pro-Baldwin banner was carried by Duff Cooper against an anti-Baldwin candidate vigorously supported by Beaverbrook and Rothermere. The impact of this meeting at the Albert Hall just outside the constituency was overshadowed by Baldwin's attack the same evening on the "Press Lords," whom he condemned as seeking "power without responsibility the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages". The phrase came from Baldwin's cousin, Rudyard Kipling. It was devastating. Duff Cooper won easily and Baldwin's leadership was preserved.

I think it hard that the burden of holding and organising this immense meeting should be thrown upon the Indian Empire Society. One would have thought that if there was one cause in the world which the Conservative party would have hastened to defend, it would be the cause of the British Empire in India. One would have expected that the whole force of the Conservative party machine would have been employed for months past in building up a robust, educated opinion throughout the country, and in rallying all its strongest forces to guard our vital interests. Unhappily all that influence, and it is an enormous influence, has been cast the other way. The Conservative leaders have decided that we are to work with the Socialists, and that we must make our action conform with theirs. We therefore have against us at the present time the official machinery of all the three great parties in the State. We meet under a ban. Every Member of Parliament or Peer who comes here must face the displeasure of the party Whips. Mr. Baldwin has declared that the three-party collusion must continue. And in support of that decision he has appealed to all those sentiments of personal loyalty and partisan feeling which a leader can command. Is it not wonderful in these circumstances, with all this against us, that a few of us should manage to get together here in this hall to-night? [Editor's Note: An allusion to the great numbers who filled the building.]

Our fight is hard. It will also be long. We must not expect early success. The forces marshalled against us are too strong. But win or lose, we must do our duty. If the British people are to lose their Indian Empire, they shall do so with their eyes open, and not be led blindfold into a trap. Already in our campaign we have had a measure of success. The movement and awakening of opinion in the Conservative party have already caused concern to our leaders. They feel they have to reckon with resolute forces in the party, and far beyond it, who will not be easily quelled. Already they have rejected the plan of sending a three-party delegation out to India for which Lord Irwin pleaded so earnestly. For the moment, therefore, we have a breathing space. The Socialist and subversive enemy have been thrown into disarray by the breakdown of their scheme to entice the Conservatives out to India. They are arranging their forces for a renewed attack. Mr. Gandhi, their supreme hope, is to come to London, as soon as they can persuade him to come, and here in the centre of the Empire he will discuss with British ministers and politicians the best means for breaking it up. But by that time we shall be ready too. We shall not be taken by surprise, as the country was during the Round Table Conference. We are not entirely defenceless or without means of expression.

We have behind us the growing strength of Conservative opinion. We have the prospect at no great distance of a Conservative victory. Nothing will turn us from our path, or discourage us from our efforts; and by the time Mr. Gandhi has arrived here to receive the surrender of our Indian Empire, the Conservative party will not be so ready to have its name taken in vain.

What spectacle could be more sorrowful than that of this powerful country casting away with both hands, and up till now almost by general acquiescence, the great inheritance which centuries have gathered? What spectacle could be more strange, more monstrous in its perversity, than to see the Viceroy and the high officials and agents of the Crown in India labouring with all their influence and authority to unite and weave together into a confederacy all the forces adverse and hostile to our rule in India? One after another our friends and the elements on which we ought to rely in India are chilled, baffled and dismissed, and finally even encouraged to band themselves together with those who wish to drive us out of the country. It is a hideous act of self-mutilation, astounding to every nation in the world. The princes, the Europeans, the Moslems, the Depressed classes, the Anglo-Indians - none of them know what to do nor where to turn in the face of their apparent desertion by Great Britain. Can you wonder that they try in desperation to make what terms are possible with the triumphant Brahmin oligarchy?

I am against this surrender to Gandhi. I am against these conversations and agreements between Lord Irwin and Mr. Gandhi. Gandhi stands for the expulsion of Britain from India. Gandhi stands for the permanent exclusion of British trade from India. Gandhi stands for the substitution of Brahmin domination for British rule in India. You will never be able to come to terms with Gandhi. You have only to read his latest declarations, and compare them with the safeguards for which we are assured the official Conservatives will fight to the end, to see how utterly impossible agreement is. But let me tell you this. If at the sacrifice of every British interest and of all the necessary safeguards and means of preserving peace and progress in India, you come to terms with Gandhi, Gandhi would at that self-same moment cease to count any more in the Indian situation.

Already Nehru, his young rival in the Indian Congress, is preparing to supersede him the moment that he has squeezed his last drop from the British lemon. In running after Gandhi and trying to build on Gandhi, in imagining that Mr. Ramsay MacDonald and Mr. Gandhi and Lord Irwin are going to bestow peace and progress upon India, we should be committing ourselves to a crazy dream, with a terrible awakening.

No! Come back from these perilous paths while time and strength remain. Study the report of your own statutory commission headed by Sir John Simon and signed unanimously by the representatives of all the three parties in the State. Let us take that as our starting-point for any extensions we may make of self-government in India. It is very wrong that the vast majority of Conservative electors throughout the country, and the vast majority of all those who are acquainted with and have practical experience of India, and of that enormous mass of patriotic people not attached to any party, should have these vital questions settled over their heads by an agreement or an understanding between the two front benches in the House of Commons, and have their future settled as if they were a lot of sheep.

We are told that three-party unity must be preserved at all costs. What does that mean? Up to the present it has only meant one thing, namely, that the Conservative party has had to toe the Socialist line, and has been dragged at the Socialist tail. Here are these Socialists, maintained in office only on sufferance or by intrigue, expecting all other parties to serve them, and to dance to their tune. We are here to-night to say 'No, that shall not be.' We have a right to our own convictions; we are entitled to act in accordance with them. We will certainly make our faith apparent by every means in our power, and in every quarter of the land.

I repudiate the calumny which our opponents level at us that we have no policy for India but repression and force. Do not be deceived by these untruths. Do not be disquieted by exaggerations of the difficulty of maintaining order in India which are spread about for interested motives by the Socialist ministers and their allies. In the whole of the disturbances of the last year -.except on the frontier - scarcely a British soldier has been required. Very few people have been killed or severely wounded in the rioting. But how did the most of them get hurt? They got hurt not by the Indian police, but in religious fights between Moslems and Hindus.

The great body of expert opinion which is represented upon the Indian Empire Society will support me when I say that a calm, capable, determined Viceroy properly supported from home could maintain peace and tranquillity in India year after year with a tenth of the repressive measures which Lord Irwin in his misguided benevolence has been compelled to employ.

Neither is it true that we have no constructive policy. We take our stand upon views almost universally accepted until a few months ago. We believe that the next forward step is the development of Indian responsibility in the provincial governments of India. Efforts should be made to make them more truly representative of the real needs of the people. Indians should be given ample opportunities to try their hand at giving capable government in the provinces; and meanwhile the central Imperial executive, which is the sole guarantee of impartiality between races, creeds and classes, should preserve its sovereign power intact, and allow no derogation from its responsibility to Parliament. Is that Diehardism?' That is the message of the Simon report, unanimously signed by the representatives of the three parties. That is the purport of the alternative scheme submitted a few months ago by the Viceroy himself.

After all, it opens immediately an immense and fertile field for Indian self-government. The provinces of India are great states and separate nations comparable in magnitude and in numbers with the leading powers of Europe. The responsible government of territories and populations as large as Germany, France, Poland, Italyor Spain is not a task unworthy of Indian capacity for self-government, so far as it has yet been displayed. It is a task the successful discharge of which would certainly not conflict with the ultimate creation of a federal system. On the contrary it is the indispensable preliminary without which no federation, desirable or undesirable, is possible. Why, the very word 'federal' signifies a foedus or treaty made between hitherto sovereign or autonomous states.

All federations have arisen thus. In the United States of America, in Canada, in Australia, in South Africa, in every case the units have first been created. Why should these unpractised, unproved, unrepresentative, self-chosen groups of Indian politicians disdain the immense possibilities offered within the limits of the Statutory Commission's report, and demand an immediate setting up of a United States of India, with themselves in control, and the British army at their orders? Before a Federal system for India could be set up there must be first the self-governing constituent provinces; and secondly, far greater, more real, more representative contact between the Indian political classes and the vast proletariat they aspire to rule.

Even Europe cannot achieve such a united organisation. But what would be said of a scheme which handed the federal government of the United States of Europe over to political classes proportionately no larger than the inhabitants of Portugal, and no more representative of the needs and passions of a mighty continent than the inhabitants of a single city like Rome? Such are the follies we are forced to expose. We therefore resist upon the highest experience and authority the viewy hysterical megalomania of the Round Table Conference.

Why is it that the principles of Government and lessons of history which we have learnt in our experience with the great self-governing dominions, which we have learnt in Canada, in South Africa and in Ireland, apply only in a limited degree to India? It is because the problem of Indian government is primarily a technical one. In India far more than in any other community in the world moral, political and economic considerations are outweighed by the importance of technical and administrative apparatus. Here you have nearly three hundred and fifty millions of people, lifted to a civilisation and to a level of peace, order, sanitation and progress far above anything they could possibly have achieved themselves or could maintain. This wonderful fact is due to the guidance and authority of a few thousands of British officials responsible to Parliament who have for generations presided over the development of India.

If that authority is injured or destroyed, the whole efficiency of the services, defensive, administrative, medical, hygienic, judicial; railway, irrigation, public works and famine prevention, upon which the Indian masses depend for their culture and progress, will perish with it. India will fall back quite rapidly through the centuries into the barbarism and privations of the Middle Ages. The question at stake is not therefore the gratification of the political aspirations towards self-government of a small number of intellectuals. It is, on the contrary, the practical, technical task of maintaining the peace and life of India by artificial means upon a much higher standard than would otherwise be possible. To let the Indian people fall, as they would, to the level of China, would be a desertion of duty on the part of Great Britain.

But that is not all. To abandon India to the rule of the Brahmins would be an act of cruel and wicked negligence. It would shame for ever those who bore its guilt. These Brahmins who mouth and patter the principles of Western Liberalism, and pose as philosophic and democratic politicians, are the same Brahmins who deny the primary rights of existence to nearly sixty millions of their own fellow countrymen whom they call 'untouchable', and whom they have by thousands of years of oppression actually taught to accept this sad position. They will not eat with these sixty millions, nor drink with them, nor treat them as human beings. They consider themselves contaminated even by their approach. And then in a moment they turn round and begin chopping logic with John Stuart Mill, or pleading the rights of man with Jean Jacques Rousseau.

While any community, social or religious, endorses such practices and asserts itself resolved to keep sixty millions of fellow countrymen perpetually and eternally in a state of sub-human bondage, we cannot recognise their claim to the title-deeds of democracy. Still less can we hand over to their unfettered sway those helpless millions they despise. Side by side with this Brahmin theocracy and the immense Hindu population - angelic and untouchable castes alike - there dwell in India seventy millions of Moslems, a race of far greater physical vigour and fierceness, armed with a religion which lends itself only too readily to war and conquest. While the Hindu elaborates his argument, the Moslem sharpens his sword. Between these two races and creeds, containing as they do so many gifted arid charming beings in all the glory of youth, there is no intermarriage.

The gulf is impassable. If you took the antagonisms of France and Germany, and the antagonisms of Catholics and Protestants, and compounded them and multiplied them ten-fold, you would not equal the division which separates these two races intermingled by scores of millions in the cities and plains of India. But over both of them the impartial rule of Britain has hitherto lifted its appeasing sceptre. Until the Montagu-Chelmsford reforms began to raise the question of local sovereignty and domination, they had got used to dwelling side by side in comparative toleration. But step by step, as it is believed we are going to clear out or be thrust out of India, so this tremendous rivalry and hatred of races springs into life again. It is becoming more acute every day. Were we to wash our hands of all responsibility and divest ourselves of all our powers, as our sentimentalists desire, ferocious civil wars would speedily break out between the Moslems and the Hindus. No one who knows India will dispute this.

But that is not the end. The Brahmins know well that they cannot defend themselves against the Moslems. The Hindus do not possess among their many virtues that of being a fighting race. The whole south of India is peopled with races deserving all earnest solicitude and regard, but incapable of self-defence. It is in the north alone that the fighting races dwell. Bengal, for instance, does not send from her forty-five million inhabitants any soldiers to the native army. The Punjab is a place where fighting races dwell|, on the other hand, and the Pathans, together with the Ghurkas and the Sikhs, who are entirely exceptional sects of Hindus, all dwelling in the north, furnish three-quarters of the entire army in the time of peace, and furnished more than three-quarters of it in time of war. There can be no doubt therefore that the departure of the British from India, which Mr. Gandhi advocates, and which Mr. Nehru demands, would be followed first by a struggle in the North and thereafter by a reconquest of the South by the North, and of the Hindus by the Moslems.

This danger has not escaped the crafty foresight of the Brahmins. It is for that reason that they wish to have the control of a British army, or failing that, a white army of janissaries officered, as Mr. Gandhi has suggested, by Germans or other Europeans. They wish to have an effective foreign army, or foreign-organised army, in order to preserve their dominance over the Moslems and their tyranny over their own untouchables. There, is the open plot of which we are in danger of becoming the dupes, and the luckless millions of Indians the victims.

It is our duty to guard those millions from that fate.

Let me just direct your attention once more upon these untouchables, fifty or sixty millions of them, that is to say more than the whole population of the British Isles; all living their lives in acceptance of the validity of the awful curse pronounced upon them by the Brahmins. A multitude as big as a nation, men, women and children deprived of hope and of the status of humanity. Their plight is worse than that of slaves, because they have been taught to consent not only to a physical but to a psychic servitude and prostration.

I have asked myself whether if Christ came again into this world, it would not be to the untouchables of India that he would first go, to give them the tidings that not only are all men equal in the sight of God, but that for the weak and poor and downtrodden a double blessing is reserved. Certainly the success of Christianity and missionary enterprise has been greater among the untouchables than among any other class of the Indian population. The very act of accepting Christianity by one of these poor creatures involves a spiritual liberation from this obsession of being unclean; and the curse falls from their minds as by a miracle. They stand erect, captains of their fate in the broad sunlight of the world. There are also nearly five million Indian Christians in India, a large proportion of whom can read and write, and some of whom have shown themselves exceptionally gifted. It will be a sorry day when the arm of Britain can no longer offer them the protection of an equal law.

There is a more squalid aspect. Hitherto for generations it has been the British policy that no white official should have any interest or profit other than his salary and pension out of Indian administration. All concession-hunters and European adventurers, company-promoters and profit-seekers have been rigorously barred and banned. But now that there is spread through India the belief that we are a broken, bankrupt, played-out power, and that our rule is going to pass away and be transferred in the name of the majority to the Brahmin sect, all sorts of greedy appetites have been excited, and many itching fingers are stretching and scratching at the vast pillage of a derelict Empire. I read in the Times newspaper, in the Times mind you, only last week of the crowd of rich Bombay merchants and millionaire millowners, millionaires on sweated labour, who surround Mr. Gandhi, the saint, the lawyer, Lord Irwin's dear colleague and companion. What are they doing there, these men, and what is he doing in their houses?

They are making arrangements that the greatest bluff, the greatest humbug and the greatest betrayal shall be followed by the greatest ramp. Nepotism, back-scratching, graft and corruption in every form will be the handmaidens of a Brahmin domination. Far rather would I see every Englishman quit the country, every soldier, every civil servant embark at Bombay, than that we should remain clutching on to the control of foreign relations and begging for trading facilities, while all the time we were the mere cloak of dishonour and oppression.

If you were to put these facts, hard, solid indigestible facts, before Mr. Ramsay MacDonald or Mr. Wedgwood Benn, or Sir Herbert Samuel, they would probably reply by pointing to the follies of Lord North in the American revolution, to the achievements of Lord Durham in Canada, or to what has happened in South Africa or in Ireland. All the Socialists and some of the Liberals, together with, I am sorry to say, the official Conservatives, have got these arguments on the tip of their tongue. They represent all of us and the millions who think with us, and the instructed Anglo-Indian administrators on whose advice we rely, as being mere dullards and reactionaries who have never been able to move with the age, or understand modern ideas. We are a sort of inferior race mentally deficient, composed principally of colonels and other undesirables who have fought for Britain. They are the sole possessors and monopolists of the spirit and of the message of our generation. But we do not depend on colonels - though why Conservatives should sneer at an honoured rank in the British army I cannot tell - we depend on facts. We depend on the private soldiers of the British democracy. We place our trust in the loyal heart of Britain. Our faith is founded upon the rock of the wage-earning population of this island which has never yet been appealed to, by duty and chivalry, in vain.

These great issues which arise from time to time in our history are never decided by the party caucuses. They are decided by the conscience and the spirit of the mass of the British people. It is upon the simple faith and profound unerring instinct of the British people, never yet found wanting in a crisis, that we must put our trust. We are deliberately trying to tell our story to the British masses, to the plain and simple folk to whom the fame of the British Empire is ever dear. In assailing the moral duty of Great Britain in India, the Socialist Government and all who aid and abet Mr. Ramsay Macdonald and his Socialist Government, or make their path smooth, will find they have stumbled upon a sleeping giant who, when he arises, will tread with dauntless steps the path of justice and of honour.

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Our Duty in India - The International Churchill Society

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March 18, 1931. Albert Hall, London At this moment of crisis for Baldwin, a by-election was taking place in St. George's, Westminster. At one point Baldwin considered resigning his seat and standing as a candidate, but in the event the pro-Baldwin banner was carried by Duff Cooper against an anti-Baldwin candidate vigorously supported by Beaverbrook ...

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see pp 29-64 for caste-related insurgency and radical politics

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see pp 29-64 for caste-related insurgency and radical politics

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Drug trafficking through the 'Golden Crescent'

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Drug trafficking through the 'Golden Crescent'

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Kashmiri resistance forces: independence from both India and Pakistan!

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Kashmiri resistance forces: independence from both India and Pakistan!

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A new generation of resistance has chosen stones instead of Kalashnikovs as its weapon of choice [GALLO/GETTY]

Twenty years ago, in the summer of 1991, the Kashmir Valley was in the grip of full-fledged insurrection.

Hordes of young, Kalashnikov-wielding men roamed the streets and neighbourhoods of Srinagar, the capital, and the valley's other towns like Baramulla, Anantnag and Sopore. The sound of gunfire and explosions mingled with chants of " azaadi" ["freedom"] emanating from demonstrations large and small. People from all strata of society took part in protests against Indian rule.

The organisation leading this movement was the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), which believes in a sovereign Kashmir, independent from both India and Pakistan, and whose tricolour flag bears a significant resemblance to the Palestinian national colours.

Indian security forces, led by federal paramilitary police units flown in by the central government in New Delhi, fought a desperate battle to stem the tidal wave of insurgency and popular uprising sweeping the valley.

Fifteen years ago, in the summer of 1996, the situation on the ground was very different from what it had been just a few years previously. The insurrection had lost strength and momentum. The Indian security forces had regained control over Srinagar and other major towns. The JKLF, exhausted and broken as an organisation, had ceased to be active in the armed struggle.

Its position as the dominant group in the insurgency had been taken by the Hizb-ul Mujahideen (HM), an organisation with a pro-Pakistan ideology. The insurgency was in disarray - hundreds of young men active as insurgents during the first half of the 1990s were switching sides and joining with Indian security forces as valued auxiliaries in combating a significantly weaker insurgent campaign dominated by HM.

What happened to produce such a sea-change between 1991 and 1996?

The tenacity and ruthlessness of the Indian counter-insurgency campaign had taken a heavy toll on the insurgents' morale and capacities. Between 1990 and 1994, the peak years of the armed struggle, 5,119 were killed and thousands more captured.

The Kashmiri writer Agha Shahid Ali captured the essence of this period: "Srinagar hunches like a wild cat; lonely sentries, wretched in bunkers on the city's bridges, far from their homes in the plains, licenced to kill ... while the Jhelum [river] flows under them, sometimes with a dismembered body. On Zero Bridge the jeeps rush by ... guns shoot stars into the night, the storm ... rages on ... night after night ... son after son taken away, never to return from the night of torture."

The toll taken by the Indian counter-offensive was gravely exacerbated by disunity and infighting in the insurgent ranks. The two largest insurgent groups, JKLF and HM, subscribed to different and conflicting visions of Kashmiri "self-determination".
Kashmir: Independent or Pakistani?
The JKLF's slogan, Kashmir banega khudmukhtar ['Kashmir will be sovereign'] stood in contradiction to the HM's - Kashmir banega Pakistan ["Kashmir will be part of Pakistan"]. The latent fissure in the azaadi movement steadily deepened and turned toxic.

Starting from 1991, the Pakistani military's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) - which had been providing lethal weapons and training to the Kashmir insurgency since the its nascent phase in the late 1980s - cut off aid to the JKLF and engineered splits and defections in the pro-independence camp while building up the HM with a programme of all-out support.

"Srinagar hunches like a wild car; lonely sentries, wretched in bunkers on the city's bridges, far from their homes in the plains, licesnsed to kill...while the Jhelum [river] flows under them, sometimes with a dismembered body."

Agha Shahid Ali, Kashmiri writer

The HM then embarked on a campaign of killing pro-independence fighters and assassinating prominent pro-independence political and religious figures.

This strategy of bringing the Kashmir insurrection under Pakistani control boomeranged in India's favour. From the 1940s until today, pro-independence sentiments have been dominant among the Kashmir Valley's people, and the pro-Pakistan view has been the preserve of a small, though dedicated, minority.

In the mid-1990s a severe backlash developed in the valley against the HM and its Pakistani sponsors. By 1996, public disillusionment with the prospects of the uprising and the "gun culture" it had spawned was becoming widespread, and numerous erstwhile insurgents belonging to JKLF and other groups were either downing arms or seeking protection from and vengeance against HM, through active collaboration with the Indian counter-insurgency apparatus.

A lethal combination of Indian repression and Pakistani manipulation thus brought a close to the most spontaneous and popularly backed phase of the azaadi movement. But that did not signal an end to the cycle of strife and violence.

Ten years ago, in the summer of 2001, an atmosphere of acute tension and fear prevailed in the Kashmir Valley. That year marked the high point of a concerted campaign of " fidayeen" attacks, targeting a variety of Indian official installations in the valley - mostly army and paramilitary camps and police headquarters - that began in 1999 and occurred frequently until 2003, and sporadically thereafter.

These were typically suicide raids carried out by two-man teams who would force their way into the premises concerned while firing assault rifles and lobbing grenades, and who would then engage in protracted stand-offs with the security forces until eliminated. In a few instances the attackers used cars packed with explosive, but usually they came on foot.
The fidayeen phase
Between mid-1999 and the end of 2002, at least 55 such attacks took place and 161 military, paramilitary and police personnel died, as did 90 perpetrators. The relatively small number of fatalities does not capture the psychological impact at the time of the fidayeen campaign, both on the Indian security establishment and the population at large. The single largest number of attacks - 29 - took place in 2001.

The fidayeen phase of the Kashmir insurgency was not the brainchild of Kashmiris. The large majority of fidayeen assaults were carried out by the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), an organisation of religious radicals founded and headquartered in Pakistan and led by Pakistanis. Almost all of the remainder were the work of the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), a similar - albeit much smaller - Pakistani group.

The LeT entered the Kashmir war in the mid-1990s as part of an ISI strategy of having cadres of trusted Pakistani radical groups infiltrate the Kashmir theatre of operations. In the early through mid-1990s, the Kashmiri insurgent ranks consisted almost entirely of locals.

In 1991, for example, of the 844 insurgents killed, all but one were natives of Indian-administered Kashmir. By the late 1990s, the insurgency, active by that time mainly in rural areas with mountainous terrain or forest cover, consisted of a mix of locals and Pakistani religious radicals.

The fidayeen offensive commenced just after a limited military conflict in the summer of 1999 between India and Pakistan on a remote sector of the 742-kilometre Line of Control (LoC) dividing Jammu and Kashmir between the two countries, after Pakistani military units crossed the Indian side of the LoC near the town of Kargil in the high Himalayas - and were eventually forced to withdraw after fierce fighting and an international diplomatic crisis.

The Lashkar-e-Taiba did, over time, recruit a handful of local Kashmiris as a fidayeen cadre. But the large majority of those who executed these attacks were Pakistanis - most from Pakistan's Punjab province - who had crossed the de facto border between Pakistani-administered and Indian-administered Kashmir.
Violence spills into India
In December 2001, as fidayeen attacks peaked in Kashmir, five heavily armed gunmen attempted a similar assault on India's national parliament in New Delhi. They were only just prevented by vigilant security staff from entering the parliament building, where hundreds of parliamentarians and ministers were present, and were killed in the portico of the building after a 45-minute gunfight.

Had they succeeded in entering the building, carnage and crisis of unprecedented proportions would have resulted. The Indian government alleged that these five men were Pakistani extremists, and war clouds engulfed the subcontinent for most of 2002.

In November 2008, the LeT carried out the infamous attack on Mumbai, killing 166 people, using - in a more indiscriminate variant - the technique honed in Kashmir from 1999 onwards.

Five years ago, in the summer of 2006, the Kashmir Valley was calmer than it had been at any time during the previous fifteen years. During and after the India-Pakistan crisis of 2002, General Pervez Musharraf - chief architect of the 1999 Kargil conflict - came under pressure from the United States to curb the Pakistani military's support for Pakistani radical groups active in Kashmir, especially the LeT.

The Pakistani military's relationship with their country's radical Islamist spectrum also soured progressively after September 11, 2001, due to the renewed nexus between the military hierarchy and the United States.

The effect in Kashmir was significant.

Fidayeen attacks fell off steeply after 2003, and the influx of insurgents from the Pakistani side of the LoC also declined sharply. The LeT and smaller groups of "jihadi" persuasion retained a presence in Kashmir - as they still do - but the offensive posture of 1999-2003 yielded to a low profile.

The Hizb-ul Mujahideen, a group much more indigenous to Kashmir than the LeT, has been steadily weakened since the mid-1990s by a long war of attrition with the Indian security forces as well as by internal divisions. Its capabilities drastically curtailed, the HM too adopted a low profile.

By 2006, the insurgency in Kashmir declined to a trickle of incidents, limited to the rare car bomb and an occasional ambush, and the somewhat more frequent raids by Indian security forces on hideouts. Violence has fallen to even more negligible levels since then.

This is a far cry from two decades or even a decade ago - in 2000, for example, 1,612 insurgents were killed in fighting with the security forces. The Indian security forces remain ubiquitous - paramilitary and police personnel patrol the streets of urban centres and hold bunkers in sensitive locations, while army camps dot the countryside, and military convoys are a frequent sight on the valley's roads.

But compared to the siege-like conditions of 1990-1995, or even the years of fidayeen warfare from 1999 to 2003, life in Srinagar is "normal" compared to twenty, fifteen or even ten years ago. But unrest simmers just under the surface.
A new generation of resistance
The summer of 2008 saw the valley's largest demonstrations since 1994 against Indian authority, as hundreds of thousands joined rallies and marches.

Last summer, normal life in the valley ground to a halt from June through September, as tens of thousands of young stone-pelters confronted the security forces. More than one hundred were shot to death in the confrontations, and several thousand were injured.

The stone-pelters, some of whom used internet-based social media to organise, are predominantly teenage boys and young men in their twenties. In other words, they were either children or not yet born when Kashmir turned into a brutal warzone two decades ago, and have grown up in the environment described above.

Unlike their previous generation, who picked up the AK-47, this generation's weapon of choice is the stone, but the sense of grievance is equally intense. Anger towards Indian authority is deeply rooted in the Kashmir valley, but the credibility of Pakistan is at an all-time low among the population, fuelled as much by the experience of the malign Pakistani role in Kashmir - over more than two decades - as by Pakistan's precarious situation as a state.

Agha Shahid Ali expressed a hope for genuine peace in Kashmir: "We shall meet again, in Srinagar, by the gates of the villa of peace, our hands blossoming into fists, till the soldiers return the keys and disappear."

That remains a forlorn hope.

The people of the Kashmir Valley know that their fate is not in their hands; it is in the hands of those who wield power in New Delhi, and in Rawalpindi. And Jammu and Kashmir consists of much more than the valley - Indian-administered Kashmir also contains the regions of Jammu and Ladakh, where the majority of people identify with India, while Pakistani-administered Kashmir's population is vertically split between those who identify with Pakistan and those who aspire to independence.

Yet the sense of powerless born of this realisation is suffused with an enduring streak of defiance - a defiance fed by decades of suffering, trauma and tragedy.
Sumantra Bose is Professor of International and Comparative Politics at the London School of Economics. His books include Contested Lands: Israel-Palestine, Kashmir, Bosnia, Cyprus, Sri Lanka, and Kashmir: Roots of Conflict, Paths to Peace. The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily represent Al Jazeera's editorial policy.

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A new generation of resistance has chosen stones instead of Kalashnikovs as its weapon of choice [GALLO/GETTY] Twenty years ago, in the summer of 1991, the Kashmir Valley was in the grip of full-fledged insurrection. Hordes of young, Kalashnikov-wielding men roamed the streets and neighbourhoods of Srinagar, the capital, and the valley's other towns like Baramulla, Anantnag and Sopore.

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Overview of the Jammu and Kashmir conflict

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Overview of the Jammu and Kashmir conflict

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Born from the partition of India in 1947, the conflict in Kashmir continues today, involving three nuclear powers - China, India and Pakistan - who are in dispute over the territory. The conflict is set against the backdrop of the Himalayan mountains and valleys and involves a patchwork of languages, religions and ethnicities: notably Kasmiris, Dards, Ladakhis, Dogras, Hanjis, Gujjars and Bakarwals.

The dispute over the region has continued for more than six decades, at huge cost. Since the 1989 insurgency - 42 years after the partition - there are estimated to be at least 70,000 dead and 8,000 missing by local human rights group CCS. Today Kashmiris face life alongside a huge military presence and ongoing militia operations. Although a ceasefire agreement was made between India and Pakistan in 2003, and the 2000s saw internal violence largely give way to non-violent protest, the calm is often punctuated by military and insurgent operations from both sides.

Since the 2008 Mumbai attacks by Pakistani militants, there have been numerous violent incidents between India and Pakistan along the border, leading to a statement by the Indian defence minister A.K. Anthony that there has been an 80% increase in ceasefire violations compared to the same period last year by Pakistan, pushing the likelihood of successful peace talks even further away.

As of 2013, India administers 43 per cent of the region - including most of Jammu, the Kashmir Valley, Ladakh and the Siachen Glacier. Pakistan controls 37 per cent of Kashmir, namely Azad Kashmir and the northern areas of Gilgit and Baltistan. In addition, China occupies 20 per cent of Kashmir following the Sino-Indian War of 1962. The Shaksam Valley, which China claims, is part of Tibet.

Indo-Pakistani War of 1947

Amidst the tumult of independence the Hindu ruler Maharaja Hari Singh of Kashmir signed the Standstill Agreement with Pakistan. The Maharaja delayed his decision to accede to either India or Pakistan in an effort to remain independent, but was forced to choose when internal revolt in the Poonch region turned into an organised rebellion of the majority Muslim population. Mass killings of Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims throughout the year led to hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing their homes where they were in the religious minority, and culminated in Pathan tribesmen and the Poonch rebels invading Kashmir, killing large numbers in Baramula.

Even though Kashmir had a large Muslim majority, the Maharaja eventually signed the Instrument of Accession putting Jammu and Kashmir under Indian control, allowing India to send in forces to repel the Pakistani presence and kick-start the war. This move was, as suggested and accepted by India, supposed to be temporary until a plebiscite could be conducted which would enable the Kashmiri people to choose who would rule them, though this has never materialised.

The war continued until 1948 when India requested the involvement of the UN Security Council. The Council passed a resolution that imposed an immediate ceasefire and called on Pakistan to withdraw all military presence. In addition, it stated that India could retain a minimum military presence, while Pakistan would have no say in administration and "the final disposition of the State of Jammu and Kashmir will be made in accordance with the will of the people expressed through the democratic method of a free and impartial plebiscite conducted under the auspices of the United Nations." The ceasefire was enacted on 31 December 1948, however Pakistan did not withdraw its troops from the region and a plebiscite was not conducted, leading to the beginning of increasing unrest in the region.

Sino-Indian War of 1962

The increasing unrest and escalating violence culminated in 1962 when military from China and India clashed in territorial disputes. China quickly overpowered the Indian military and occupied the area, claiming the area under administration and naming the region Aksai Chin. The border dispute between this area and other smaller areas is known as the Line of Actual Control.

1965 and 1971 wars

In 1965 and 1971, heavy fighting broke out again between India and Pakistan. The Indo-Pakistani War of 1971 resulted in the defeat of Pakistan and the surrender of the Pakistani military in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), which led to the signing of The Simla Agreement between India and Pakistan. By this treaty, both countries agreed to settle all issues by peaceful means and mutual discussions within the framework of the UN Charter. However, this form of track-two diplomacy was merely a 'paper peace' and did not reflect the situation in Kashmir that had left a bitter legacy of a deadly 20-year war.

The Simla agreement defined the Line of Control (not to be confused with the Line of Actual Control between India and China) separating Indian- and Pakistani-administered Kashmir. Current construction of a 'fence' around the Line of Control has been disputed by both China and Pakistan. India claims that the 'fence' reduces insurgent attacks. Until the ceasefire in 2003 the Line of Control was one of the most violence-prone de facto borders in the world and saw daily shelling, mortar fire, and machine gun exchanges between Indian and Pakistani troops and other militant groups.

Militancy

The Simla Agreement had little bearing to events on the ground and there were increasingly organised uprisings. Opposition to the Indian administration, disputed state elections and military occupation led to some of the state's legislative assemblies forming militant wings, which further created the catalyst for the Mujahideen insurgency, which continues to this day.

The three main militant groups in Kashmir are Hizbul Mujahideen; Lashkar-e-Toyeba; and Harkat-ul-Mujahideen. All have to some degree fractured into different, sometimes opposing factions, many of which have different objectives, views on how to resolve the conflict, and opinions on the use of violence. In recent years their membership and influence has diminished. A fourth militant group, the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, a secular and nationalist group, has sought full independence for Kashmir from both India and Pakistan, and increasingly found its support reduced over the past few decades.

The Kargil War of 1999

In mid-1999 insurgents and Pakistani soldiers from Pakistani Kashmir infiltrated Jammu and Kashmir. The insurgents took advantage of the severe winter conditions and occupied vacant mountain peaks of the Kargil range. By blocking the highway, they wanted to cut off the only link between the Kashmir Valley and Ladakh. This resulted in a high-scale conflict between the Indian Army and the Pakistan Army. International fears that the conflict could turn nuclear led to the involvement of the United States pressurising Pakistan to retreat.

Opposing Views

The main opinions of India, Pakistan, and Kashmiris can be summarised as follows:

Indian view

India claims that as the Maharaja Hari Singh signed the Instrument of Accession in October 1947, handing control of the Kingdom of Jammu and Kashmir over to India, the region is theirs, having been validated by the Indian Independence Act and the departing British Empire.

India claims that the UN Resolution 1172 in 1948 accepted India's stand regarding all outstanding issues between India and Pakistan.

India claims that Pakistan has not removed its military forces, which India views as one of the first steps in implementing a resolution.

India accused Pakistan of funding military groups in the region to create instability, and accuses Pakistan of waging a proxy war.

India accuses Pakistan of spreading anti-India sentiment among the people of Kashmir, through the media, to alter Kashmiri opinion.

According to India, most regions of Pakistani Kashmir, especially northern areas, continue to suffer from lack of political recognition, economic development and basic fundamental rights.

Pakistani view

Pakistan claims that according to the two-nation theory Kashmir should have been with Pakistan, because it has a Muslim majority.

Pakistan argues that India has shown disregard to the resolutions of the UN Security Council, and the United Nations Commission in India and Pakistan, by failing to hold a plebiscite.

Pakistan rejects Indian claims to Kashmir, centring around the Instrument of Accession. Pakistan insists that the Maharaja did not have the support of most Kashmiris. Pakistan also claims that the Maharaja handed over control of Jammu and Kashmir under duress, thus invalidating the legitimacy of the claims.

Pakistan claims that India violated the Standstill Agreement and that Indian troops were already in Kashmir before the Instrument of Accession was signed.

Pakistan claims that between 1990-1999 the Indian Armed Forces, its paramilitary groups, and counter-insurgent militias have been responsible for the deaths of 4,501 Kashmiri civilians. Also from 1990 to 1999, there are records of 4,242 women between the ages of 7-70 that have been raped. Similar allegations were also made by some human rights organisations.

Pakistan claims that the Kashmiri uprising demonstrates that the people of Kashmir no longer wish to remain part of India. Pakistan suggests that this means that either Kashmir wants to be with Pakistan or independent.

Kashmiri view

It is difficult to assess Kashmiri public opinion, and the region contains supporters of various different solutions to the conflict. Alongside those who align more closely to either the Pakistani or Indian government views, there are also those who favour independence for Kashmir. According to one survey of Kashmiri public opinion:

43% of the total adult population want complete independence for Kashmir.

1% of Azad Kashmir (in Pakistan-administered Kashmir) want to join India compared to 28% in Jammu and Kashmir (in Indian-administered Kashmir).

50% of Azad Kashmir want to join Pakistan compared to 2% in Jammu and Kashmir.

14% of the total population want to make the Line of Control a permanent border.

The All Parties Hurriyat Conference represent the main separatist movement in Kashmir. However, it has multiple branches, each holding differing views on how Kashmir should proceed independently, which is indicative of the vast array of opinions that exist across the territory.

Whether it be due to religion or region, Kashmir is not a unified voice on the matter of its future. Apart from the unending call for democracy and human rights standards, Kashmiris differ in their opinions all over the territory, and this must be taken into account when discussing solutions.

The Peace Process

One of the first peace initiatives, in July 2000, laid a tentative framework for reconciliation. The largest militia group, the Hizb'ul-Mujahideen, declared a unilateral ceasefire against the Indian forces after covert negotiations between the different stakeholders. However the demands from the militia group, which included India declaring Kashmir a disputed territory and that tripartite negotiation should begin immediately, were not met and the ceasefire collapsed. In 2003 another ceasefire was declared along the Line of Control which resulted in five-stage talks between the Indian and Pakistani governments, commencing in 2004. Some progress was made, leading to increased trade and movement between the borders. However, the talks once again took a back seat after the 2008 Mumbai attacks, which Pakistan admitted were launched and partly planned from Pakistan. This led to an upsurge in violence. Positive steps towards peace were taken in April 2012 when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President Asif Ali Zardari held the first high-level talks in seven years.

Although this appeared promising for the future of Kashmir, in 2013 the secret hanging by India of the last surviving member of the militant squad responsible for the Mumbai attacks, and the extremely controversial hanging of the Kashmiri, Muhammed Afzal Guru, convicted by India of an attack on its parliament in 2001, led to widespread protest and a violent crackdown by the Kashmiri government. Even though the newly elected Pakistani Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif, has promised a new era in Pak-Indo relations, India has refused on the grounds that Pakistani militants are still violating the ceasefire on the ground.

Last updated: December 2010

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Born from the partition of India in 1947, the conflict in Kashmir continues today, involving three nuclear powers - China, India and Pakistan - who are in dispute over the territory. The conflict is set against the backdrop of the Himalayan mountains and valleys and involves a patchwork of languages, religions and ethnicities: notably Kasmiris, Dards, Ladakhis, Dogras, Hanjis, Gujjars and Bakarwals.

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Extract from a colonial source reporting on discontent among the tribes of North-West India in 1895

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Extract from a colonial source reporting on discontent among the tribes of North-West India in 1895

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british empire; empire; india; north west frontier; fanshawe; punjab; afghanistan

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The National Archives | Education | British Empire | Living in the British Empire | India | Source 8

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British rule of India; North West Frontier; this case study considers the nature of British rule in India and uses documents from the National Archives

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Edmund Burke 1783 speech on India in the House of Commons

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Edmund Burke 1783 speech on India in the House of Commons

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Assessment of the 1857 Sepoy revolt by Charles C. H.

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Assessment of the 1857 Sepoy revolt by Charles C. H.

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For the first time in the history of the English dominion in India, its power has been shaken from within its own possessions, and by its own subjects. Whatever attacks have been made upon it heretofore have been from without, and its career of conquest has been the result to which they have led. But now no external enemy threatens it, and the English in India have found themselves suddenly and unexpectedly engaged in a hand-to-hand struggle with a portion of their subjects, not so much for dominion as for life. There had been signs and warnings, indeed, of the coming storm; but the feeling of security in possession and the confidence of moral strength were so strong, that the signs had been neglected and the warnings disregarded.

No one in our time has played the part of Cassandra with more foresight and vehemence than the late Sir Charles Napier. He saw the quarter in which the storm was gathering, and he affirmed that it was at hand. In 1850, after a short period of service as commander-in-chief of the forces in India, he resigned his place, owing to a difference between himself and the government, and immediately afterwards prepared a memoir in justification of his course, accompanied with remarks upon the general administration of affairs in that country. It was written with all his accustomed clearness of mind, vigor of expression, and intensity of personal feeling, - but it was not published until after his death, which took place in 1853, when it appeared under the editorship of his brother, Lieutenant-General Sir W. F. P. Napier, with the title of "Defects, Civil and Military, of the Indian Government." Its interest is greatly enhanced when read by the light of recent events. It is in great part occupied with a narrative of the exhibition of a mutinous spirit which appeared in 1849 in some thirty Sepoy battalions, in regard to a reduction of their pay, and of the means taken to check and subdue it. On the third page is a sentence which read now is of terrible import: "Mutiny with [among?] the Sepoys is the most formidable danger menacing our Indian empire." And a few pages farther on occurs the following striking passage: "The ablest and most experienced civil and military servants of the East India Company consider mutiny as one of the greatest, if not the greatest danger threatening India, - a danger also that may come unexpectedly, and, if the first symptoms be not carefully treated, with a power to shake Leadenhall."

The anticipated mutiny has now come, its first symptoms were treated with utter want of judgment, and its power is shaking the whole fabric of the English rule in India.

One day toward the end of January last, a workman employed in the magazine at Barrackpore, an important station about seventeen miles from Calcutta, stopped to ask a Sepoy for some water from his drinking-vessel. Being refused, because he was of low caste, and his touch would defile the vessel, he said, with a sneer, "What caste are you of, who bite pig's grease and cow's fat on your cartridges?" Practice with the new Enfield rifle had just been introduced, and the cartridges were greased for use in order not to foul the gun. The rumor spread among the Sepoys that there was a trick played upon them, - that this was but a device to pollute them and destroy their caste, and the first step toward a general and forcible conversion of the soldiers to Christianity. The groundlessness of the idea upon which this alarm was founded afforded no hindrance to its ready reception, nor was the absurdity of the design attributed to the ruling powers apparent to the obscured and timid intellect of the Sepoys. The consequences of loss of caste are so feared, - and are in reality of so trying a nature, - that upon this point the sensitiveness of the Sepoy is always extreme, and his suspicions are easily aroused. Their superstitious and religious customs "interfere in many strange ways with their military duties." "The brave men of the 35th Native Infantry," says Sir Charles Napier, "lost caste because they did their duty at Jelalabad; that is, they fought like soldiers, and ate what could be had to sustain their strength for battle." But they are under a double rule, of religious and of military discipline, - and if the two come into conflict, the latter is likely to give way.

The discontent at Barrackpore soon manifested itself in ways not to be mistaken. There were incendiary fires within the lines. It was discovered that messengers had been sent to regiments at other stations, with incitements to insubordination. The officer in command at Barrackpore, General Hearsay, addressed the troops on parade, explained to them that the cartridges were not prepared with the obnoxious materials supposed, and set forth the groundlessness of their suspicions. The address was well received at first, but had no permanent effect. The ill-feeling spread to other troops and other stations. The government seems to have taken no measure of precaution in view of the impending trouble, and contented itself with despatching telegraphic messages to the more distant stations, where the new rifle practice was being introduced, ordering that the native troops were "to have no practice ammunition served out to them, but only to watch the firing of of the Europeans." On the 26th of February, the 19th regiment, then stationed at Berhampore, refused to receive the cartridges that were served out, and were prevented from open violence only by the presence of a superior English force. After great delay, it was determined that this regiment should be disbanded. The authorities were not even yet alarmed; they were uneasy, but even their uneasiness does not seem to have been shared by the majority of the English residents in India. It was not until the 3d of April that the sentence passed upon the 19th regiment was executed. The affair was dallied with, and inefficiency and dilatoriness prevailed everywhere.

"It was on the 10th of the present month [May] that the outburst of the mutinous spirit took place in our own neighborhood, - at Meerut. The immediate cause was the punishment of eighty-five troopers of the 3d Light Cavalry, who had refused to use the obnoxious cartridges, and had been sentenced by a native court-martial to ten years' imprisonment. On Saturday, the 9th, the men were put in irons, in presence of their comrades, and marched off to jail. On Sunday, the 10th, just at the time of evening service, the mutiny broke out. Three regiments left their lines, fell upon every European, man, woman, or child, they met or could find, murdered them all, burnt half the houses in the station, and, after working such a night of mischief and horror as devils might have delighted in, marched off to Delhi en masse, where three other regiments ripe for mutiny were stationed. On the junction of the two brigades, the horrors of Meerut were repeated in the imperial city, and every European who could be found was massacred with revolting barbarity. In fact, the spirit was that of a servile war. Annihilation of the ruling race was felt to be the only chance of safety or impunity; so no one of the ruling race was spared. Many, however, effected their escape, and, after all sorts of perils and sufferings, succeeded in reaching military stations containing European troops.

* * *

"From the crisis of the mutiny our local anxieties have lessened. The country round is in utter confusion. Bands of robbers are murdering and plundering defenceless people. Civil government has practically ceased from the land. The most loathsome irresolution and incapacity have been exhibited in some of the highest quarters. A full month will elapse before the mutineers are checked by any organized resistance. A force is, or is supposed to be, marching on Delhi; but the outbreak occurred on the 10th of May, and this day is the first of June and Delhi has seen no British colors and heard no British guns as yet.

The course of English life in those stations where the worst cruelties and the bitterest sufferings have been inflicted on the unhappy Europeans has been for a long time so peaceful and undisturbed, it has gone on for the most part in such pleasant and easy quiet and with such absolute security, that the agony of sudden alarm and unwarned violence has added its bitterness to the overwhelming horror. It is not as in border settlements, where the inhabitants choose their lot knowing that they are exposed to the incursions of savage enemies, - but it is as if on a night in one of the most peaceful of long-settled towns, troops of men, with a sort of civilization that renders their attack worse than that of savages, should be let loose to work their worst will of lust and cruelty. The details are too recent, too horrible, and as yet too broken and irregular, to be recounted here.

Although, at the first sally of the mutineers from Delhi against the force that had at length arrived, a considerable advantage was gained by the Europeans, this advantage was followed up by no decisive blow. The number of troops was too small to attempt an assault against an army of thirty thousand men, each man of whom was a trained soldier. The English force was unprovided with any sufficient siege battery. It could do little more than encamp, throw up intrenchments for its own defence, and wait for attacks to be made upon it, - attacks which it usually repulsed with great loss to the attackers. The month of June is the hottest month of the year at Delhi; the average height of the thermometer being 92 degrees. There, in such weather, the force must sit still, watch the pouring in of reinforcements and supplies to the city which it was too small to invest, and hear from day to day fresh tidings of disaster and revolt on every hand, - tidings of evil which there could scarcely be any hope of checking, until this central point of the mutiny had fallen before the British arms. A position more dispiriting can scarcely be imagined; and to all these causes for despondency were added the incompetency and fatuity of the Indian government, and the procrastination of the home government in the forwarding of the necessary reinforcements.

Delhi has been often besieged, but seldom has a siege been laid to it that at first sight would have appeared more desperate than this. The city is strong in its artificial defences, and Nature lends her force to the native troops within the walls. If they could hold out through the summer, September was likely to be as great a general for them as the famous two upon whom the Czar relied in the Crimea. A wall of gray stone, strengthened by the modern science of English engineers, and nearly seven miles in circumference, surrounds the city upon three sides, while the fourth is defended by a wide offset of the Jumna, and by a portion of the high, embattled, red stone wall of the palace, which almost equals the city wall in strength, and is itself more than a mile in length. Few cities in the East present a more striking aspect from without. Over the battlements of the walls rise the slender minarets and shining domes of the mosques, the pavilions and the towers of the gates, the balustraded roofs of the higher and finer houses, the light foliage of acacias, and the dark crests of tall date-palms. It is a new city, only two hundred and twenty-six years old. Shah Jehan, its founder, was fond of splendor in building, was lavish of expense, and was eager to make his city imperial in appearance as in name. The great mosque that he built here is the noblest and most beautiful in all India. His palace might be set in comparison with that of Aladdin; it was the fulfilment of an Oriental voluptuary's dream. All that Eastern taste could devise of beauty, that Eastern lavishness could fancy of adornment, or voluptuousness demand of luxury, was brought together and displayed here. But its day of splendor was not long; and now, instead of furnishing a home to a court, which, if wicked, was at least magnificent, it is the abode of demoralized pensioners, who, having lost the reality, retain the pride and the vices of power. For years it has been utterly given over to dirt and to decay. Its beautiful halls and chambers, rich with marbles and mosaics, its "Pearl" musjid, its delicious gardens, its shady summer-houses, its fountains, and all its walks and pleasure-grounds are neglected, abused, and occupied by the filthy retainers of an effete court.

* * *

"As to the empire, it will be all the stronger after this storm. It is not five or six thousand mutinous mercenaries, or ten times the number, that will change the destiny of England in India. Though we small fragments of the great machine may fall at our posts, there is that vitality in the English people that will bound stronger against misfortunes and build up the damaged fabric anew."

So far the letter from which we have quoted. - It was not until the 8th of June that an English force appeared before the walls of Delhi. For four weeks the mutineers had been left in undisturbed possession of the city, a possession which was of incalculable advantage to them by adding to their moral strength the prestige of a name which has always been associated with the sceptre of Indian empire. The masters of Delhi are the masters not only of a city, but of a deeply rooted tradition of supremacy. The delay had told. Almost every day in the latter half of May was marked by a new mutiny in different military stations, widely separated from each other, throughout the North-Western Provinces an Bengal. The tidings of the possession of Delhi by the mutineers stimulated the daring madness of regiments that had been touched by disaffection. Some mutinied from mere panic, some from bitterness of hate. Some fled away quietly with their arms, to join the force that had now swelled to an army in the city of the Great Moghul; some repeated the atrocities of Meerut, and set up a separate standard of revolt, to which all the disaffected and all the worst characters of the district flocked, to gratify their lust for revenge of real or fancied wrongs, or their baser passions for plunder and unmeaning cruelty. The malignity of a subtle, acute, semi-civilized race, unrestrained by law or by moral feeling, broke out in its most frightful forms. Cowardice possessed of strength never wreaked more horrible sufferings upon its victims, and the bloody and barbarous annals of Indian history show no more bloody and barbarous page.

But meanwhile the disaffection was spreading. The order for confining the use of the new cartridges to the Europeans seems to have been looked upon by the native regiments as a confirmation of their suspicions with regard to them. The more daring and evil-disposed of the soldiers stimulated the alarm, and roused the prejudices of their more timid and unreasoning companions. No general plan of revolt seems to have been formed, but the materials of discontent were gradually being concentrated; the inflammable spirits of the Sepoys were ready to burst into a blaze. Strong and judicious measures, promptly put into action, might even now have allayed the excitement and dissipated the danger. But the imbecile commander-in-chief was enjoying himself and shirking care in the mountains; and Lord Canning and his advisers at Calcutta seem to have preferred to allow the troops to take the initiative in their own way. Generally throughout Northern India the common routine of affairs went on at the different stations, and the ill-feeling and insubordination among the Sepoys scarcely disturbed the established quiet and monotony of Anglo-Indian life. But the storm was rising, - and the following extracts from a letter, hitherto unpublished, written on the 30th of May, by an officer of great distinction, and now in high command before Delhi, will show the manner of its breaking.

"A fortnight ago no community in the world could have been living in greater security of life and property than ours. Clouds there were that indicated to thoughtful minds a coming storm, and in the most dangerous quarter; but the actual outbreak was a matter of an hour, and has fallen on us like a judgment from Heaven, - sudden, irresistible as yet, terrible in its effects, and still spreading from place to place. I dare say you may have observed among the Indian news of late months, that here and there throughout the country mutinies of native regiments had been taking place. They had, however, been isolated cases, and the government thought it did enough to check the spirit of disaffection by disbanding the corps involved. The failure of the remedy was, however, complete, and, instead of having to deal now with mutinies of separate regiments, we stand face to face with a general mutiny of the Sepoy army of Bengal. To those who have thought most deeply of the perils of the English empire in India this has always seemed the monster one. It was thought to have been guarded against by the strong ties of mercenary interest that bound the army to the state, and there was, probably, but one class of feelings that would have been strong enough to have broken these ties, - those, namely, of religious sympathy or prejudice. The overt ground of the general mutiny was offence to caste feelings, given by the introduction into the army of certain cartridges said to have been prepared with hog's lard and cow's fat. The men must bite off the ends of these cartridges; so the Mahometans are defiled by the unclean animal, and the Hindoos by the contact of the dead cow. Of course the cartridges are not prepared as stated, and they form the mere handle for designing men to work with. They are, I believe, equally innocent of lard and fat; but that a general dread of being Christianized has by some means or other been created is without doubt, though there is still much that is mysterious in the process by which it has been instilled into the Sepoy mind, and I question if the government itself has any accurate information on the subject.

The city stands partly on the sandy border of the river, partly on a low range of rocks. With its suburbs it may contain about one hundred and sixty thousand inhabitants, a little more than half of whom are Hindoos, and the remainder nominally Mahometans, in creed. Around the wall stretches a wide, barren, irregular plain, covered, mile after mile, with the ruins of earlier Delhis, and the tombs of the great or the rich men of the Mahometan dynasty. There is no other such monumental plain as this in the world. It is as full of traditions and historic memories as of ruins; and in this respect, as in many others, Delhi bears a striking resemblance to Rome, - for the Roman Campagna is the only field which in its crowd of memories may be compared with it, and the imperial city of India holds in the Mahometan mind much the same place that Rome occupies in that of the Christian.

Before these pages are printed it is not unlikely that the news of the fall of Delhi will have reached us. The troops of the besiegers amounted in the middle of August to about five thousand five hundred men. Other troops near them, and reinforcements on the way, may by the end of the month have increased their force to ten thousand. At the last accounts a siege train was expected to arrive on the 3d of September, and an assault might be made very shortly afterwards. But September is an unhealthy month, and there may be delays. Delhi door ust, - "Delhi is far off," - a favorite Indian proverb. But the chances are in favor of its being now in British hands.

With its fall the war will be virtually ended, - for the reconquest of the disturbed territories will be a matter of little difficulty, when undertaken with the aid of the twenty thousand English troops who will arrive in India before the end of the year.

The settlement of the country, after these long disturbances, cannot be expected to take place at once; civil government has been too much interrupted to resume immediately its ordinary operation. But as this great revolt has had in very small degree the character of a popular rising, and as the vast mass of natives are in general not discontented with the English rule, order will be reestablished with comparative rapidity, and the course of life will before many months resume much of its accustomed aspect.

The struggle of the trained and ambitious classes against the English power will but have served to confirm it. The revolt overcome, the last great danger menacing English security in India will have disappeared. England will have learnt much from the trials she has had to pass through, and that essential changes will take place within a few years in the constitution of the Indian government there can be no doubt. But it is to be remembered that for the past thirty years, English rule in lndia has been, with all its defects, an enlightened and beneficient rule. The crimes with which it has been charged, the crimes of which it has been guilty, are small in amount, compared with the good it has effected. Moreover, they are not the result of inherent vices in the system of government, so much as of the character of exceptional individuals employed to carry out that system, and of the native character itself. - But on these points we do not propose now to enter.

If the close of this revolt be not stained with retaliating cruelties, if English soldiers remember mercy, then the whole history of this time will be a proud addition to the annals of England. For though it will display the incompetency and the folly of her governments, it will show how these were remedied by the energy and spirit of individuals; it will tell of the daring and gallantry of her men, of their patient endurance, of their undaunted courage, - and it will tell, too, with a voice full of tears, of the sorrows, and of the brave and tender hearts, and of the unshaken religious faith supporting them to the end, of the women who died in the hands of their enemies. The names of Havelock and Lawrence will be reckoned in the list of England's worthies, and the story of the garrison of Cawnpore will be treasured up forever among England's saddest and most touching memories.

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For the first time in the history of the English dominion in India, its power has been shaken from within its own possessions, and by its own subjects. Whatever attacks have been made upon it heretofore have been from without, and its career of conquest has been the result to which they have led.

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A strategic perspective of India by Charles C. H.

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A strategic perspective of India by Charles C. H.

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The year 1757 was one of the gloomiest ever known to England. At home, the government was in a state of utter confusion, though the country was at war with France, and France was in alliance with Austria; these two nations having departed from their policy of two centuries and a half, in order that they might crush Frederic of Prussia, England's ally. Frederic was defeated at Kolin, by the Austrians, on the 18th of June, and a Russian army was in possession of East Prussia. A German army in British pay, and commanded by the "Butcher" hero of Culloden, was beaten in July, and capitulated in September. In America, the pusillanimity of the English commanders led to terrible disasters, among which the loss of Fort William Henry, and the massacre of its garrison, were conspicuous events. In India, the English were engaged in doubtful contest with the viceroy of Bengal, who was supported by the French. Even the navy of England appeared at that time to have lost its sense of superiority; for not only had Admiral Byng just been shot for not behaving with proper spirit, but a combined expedition against the coast of France ended in signal failure, and Admiral Holburne declined to attack a French fleet of Louisburg. No wonder that the British people readily believed an author who then published a work to establish the agreeable proposition, "that they were a race of cowards and scoundrels; that nothing could save them; that they were on the point of being enslaved by their enemies, and that they richly deserved their fate." Such a succession of disasters might well discourage a people, some of whom could recollect the long list of victories which commenced with Blenheim and closed with Malplaquet, and by which the arrogance of the Grand Monarque had been punished.

Yet it is from this very year of misfortune that the power of modern England must take its date. "Adversity," said El Hakim to the Knight of the Leopard, "is like the period of the former and of the latter rain, - cold, comfortless, unfriendly to man and to animal; yet from that season have their birth the flower and the fruit, the date, the rose, and the pomegranate." In the summer of 1757 was formed that ministry which succeeded in carrying England's power and glory to heights which they did not reach even under the Protectorship of Cromwell or the rule of Godolphin. Then were commenced those measures which ended in the expulsion of the French from North America, and gave to England a territory here which may perpetuate her institutions for ages after they shall have ceased to be known in the mother-land. Then was America conquered in Germany, and not only was Frederic so assisted as to be able to contend successfully against the three great houses of Bourbon, Habsburg, and Romanoff, and a horde of lesser dynasties, but British armies, at Minden and Creveldt, renewed on the fields of the continent recollections of the island skill and the island courage. Then was a new spirit breathed into the British marine, by which it has ever since been animated, and which has seldom stopped to count odds. Then began that dashing course of enterprise which gave almost everything to England that was assailable, from Goree to Cuba, and from Cuba to the Philippines. Then was laid the foundation of that Oriental dominion of England which has been the object of so much wonder, and of not a little envy; for on the 23rd of June, 1757, was fought the battle of Plassey, the first of those many Indian victories that illustrate the names of Clive, Coote, Wellesley, Gough, Napier, and numerous other heroes. It seems odd, that the interest in Indian affairs should have been suddenly and strangely revived in the hundredth year after the victory that laid Bengal at the feet of an English adventurer. Had the insurgent Sepoys delayed action but a few weeks, they might have inaugurated their movement on the very centennial anniversary of the birth of British India.

There is nothing like the rule of the English in India to be found in history. It has been compared to the dominion which Rome held over so large a portion of the world; but the comparison has not the merit of aptness. The population of the Roman Empire, in the age of the Antonines, has been estimated at 120,000,000, including that of Italy. The population of India is not less than 150,000,000, without counting any portion of the conquering race. Rome was favorably situated for the maintenance of her supremacy, as she had been for the work of conquest. Her dominion lay around the Mediterranean, which Italy pierced, looking to the East and the West, and forming, as it were, a great place of arms, whence to subdue or to overawe the nations. Cicero called the Hellenic states and colonies a fringe on the skirts of Barbarism, and the description applies also to the Roman dominion; for though Gaul and Spain were conquered from sea to sea, and the legions were encamped on the Euphrates, and the valley of the Nile was as submissive to the Caesars as it had been to the Lagidae, yet the Mediterranean was the basis of Roman power, and a short journey in almost any direction from it would have taken the traveller completely from under the protection of the eagles. Not so is it with British India. From no European country is India so remote as from England. The two regions are separated by the ocean, by seas, by deserts, and by some of the most powerful nations. Their sole means of union are found in the leading cause of their separation. England owes her Indian empire to her empire of the sea. India will be hers just so long, and no longer, as she shall be able to maintain her naval supremacy. Those who predict her downfall in the East, either as a consequence of the natives throwing of her rule, or through a Russian invasion, forget that she entered India from the sea, and that until she shall have been subdued on that element it would be idle to think of dispossessing her of her Oriental supremacy. Were the long cherished dream of Russia to be realized, - a dream that is said to have troubled the sleep of Peter, and which certainly haunted the mind of Catharine, - and Russian proconsuls ruling on the Ganges, India could no more be to Russia what she has been to England, than the Crimea, had he kept it, could have been to Louis Napoleon what it is to the Czar. The condition of Indian dominion is ocean dominion.

In one respect the Indian empire of England resembles the Roman empire. The latter comprised many and widely different countries and races, and so is it with the former. We are so accustomed to speak of India as if it constituted one country, and were inhabited by homogeneous people, that it is difficult to understand that not even in Europe are nations to be found more unlike to one another than in British India. In Hindostan and the Deccan there are ten different civilized nations, resembling each other no more than Danes resemble Italians, or Spaniards Poles. They differ in moral, physical, and intellectual conditions, - in modes of thought and in modes of life. This is one of the chief causes of England's supremacy, just as similar state of things not only promoted the conquests of Rome, but facilitated her rule after they had been made. The Emperors ruled over Syrians, Greeks, Egyptians, and other Eastern peoples, with ease, because they had little in common, and could not combine against their conquerors. They did the same in the West, because the inhabitants of that quarter, if left to themselves, would have passed their time in endless quarrels. The old world abounded in great cities, all of which owned the supremacy of Rome, from Gades to Thapsacus; and in modern India the most venerable places are compelled to bow before the upstart Calcutta.

The peculiar condition of India a hundred years since enabled the English to lay the foundations of their power in that country so broadly and so deep that nothing short of a moral convulsion can uproot them, though the edifice erected upon them may be rudely shaken by internal revolts, or by the consequences of external wars. Fifty years sooner or forty years later, the English could have made no impression on India as conquerors. Seventy years before the conquest of Bengal the English traders had been plundered by a viceroy who anticipated the tyranny of Surajah Doulah. They determined not to submit to such exactions. They resolved upon war. But the great Aurungzebe was then on the throne of Delhi; and though the Moghul empire had declined somewhat from the standard set up by Akbar and maintained by Shah Jehan, the fighting merchants were soon taught that they were but as children in the hands of its chief. They were driven out of Bengal, and Aurungzebe thought of expelling them from his whole empire. The punishment of death was visited upon some of the East India Company's officers and servants by the Moghul. This severe lesson made a deep impression on the English. They resumed their humble position as traders on sufferance. They never thought of conquest again. It was not until every man who had been concerned in that business had long been in his grave, that the English dared so much as to think of making another war. Though the Moghuls rapidly became powerless after the death of Aurungzebe, the blows struck by anticipation in their behalf protected them for forty years against the ambition of the intrusive Occidentals, and even for some time after Nadir Shah's Persian invasion had demonstrated that their dynasty was as weak as that of Lodi had been found when Baber came into the land. Whether the English have been right or wrong in making themselves masters of India, it is certain that they were forced upon the work against their own wishes and inclinations, and in self-defence. The very expedition which Clive made use of to effect the subjugation of Bengal had been undertaken on defensive grounds; and so fearful was even that great man of the consequences of a union of the forces of the Moghul with those at the command of the French in the East, that he was at first desirous of making peace with Surajah Doulah himself. When the arrival of reinforcements had induced him to take a bolder course, and the destruction of that fierce viceroy had been resolved upon, it was not until after much doubt and hesitation, and against his original judgment, that that course of action was entered upon which ended in the victory of Plassey. He knew the risk that was run in fighting a pitched battle against force nearly twenty times larger than his own; and had the viceroy been either a respectable ruler or a good soldier, the English, humanly speaking, must have then failed as signally as their predecessors of 1687; but as he was as destitute of humanity as of courage and skill, and could neither animate his followers by affection nor command them by force of character, he was utterly routed. Not six hundred men fell in the battle of Plassey, on both sides, and most of these were on the side of the vanquished. Seldom has it happened that so mighty a change has been effected with so little slaughter. One is reminded of the battles fought by the few Romans under Lucullus against the entire array of the Armenian monarchy.

Had circumstances not led to the display of British power at the time when great prizes were sure to follow even from minor exertions, England never could have become mistress of India. Had the English remained traders forty years longer, or even for half that time, perhaps, they would have encountered very different foes from those which they overthrew so easily when forced to fight for property and life. India was breaking up in 1757, and the process of reformation as about to begin. Had not the English been brought into the vast arena, either a number of powerful monarchies would have been formed, or the whole country would have passed under some new dynasty, which would have revived the power of the state with that rapidity which is so often exhibited in the East, when new and able men assume the reins of government. Hyder Ali might have made himself the master of all India, had it been his lot to contend only with native rulers and native races. Had this been the course of events, and had circumstances brought him into collision with the East India Company when he had made himself the Moghul's successor, can it be believed that he would have experienced any more difficulty in dealing with them than was found by Aurungzebe? We know that the English found in Hyder a very able foe, with but limited means at his disposal, and when they were masters of half the country, and had been almost uniformly victorious. Can it be supposed that they could have effected anything against all India, ruled by so consummate a statesman as Hyder Ali? There seems to have been something providential in the events that caused them to pass from traders to conquerors, at the only time when such a transition could be made either with safety or success. That their career of conquest has been occasionally marked by injustice and crime proves nothing against the position that they may have been appointed by a higher Power to work out a revolution in the East. "The dark mystery of the moral world," in this as in a thousand other instances, remains impenetrable. Heaven selects its own agents, and all that it becomes us to say concerning such relations is, that they do not appear in all cases to be made from among men specially entitled to the honors of canonization.

The English have frequently been denounced, not only for their errors in governing India, but for their conquest of that country. The French have been especially fervent in these denunciations. It is a fact, however, that the French saw nothing wrong in subduing India until all their own plans to that end had utterly failed. The device originated with them, but the English applied it. Dupleix planned for France what Clive executed for England. The French adhered to their plans for years, and it was not until a very recent period that the last remnants of their influence disappeared from India. They saw not the evil involved in the overthrowing of virtuous nabobs and venerable viceroys, until time and a whole train of events had proved that England alone was competent to the full performance of the work. The English in India have not, on all occasions, been saints; but we are unable to see what moral right the French have to reproach them with the enumeration of their errors. In the East, France was "overcrowded" by England; and that is the sole and the very simple cause of the vast amount of "sympathy" which the French have bestowed upon suffering Indian princes, whose condition in no sense would have been improved, had fortune favored the Gallic race, instead of the Saxon, in their struggle for supremacy in Hindostan.

The prejudice that exists in many minds against England, concerning her Indian empire, is in no small degree owing to something of which she is justly proud; to the talent that characterized the prosecution-his friends called it the persecution-of Warren Hastings. No man, not even Strafford, when borne down by the whole weight of the country party in the first session of the Long Parliament, ever encountered so able a host as that which set itself to erect the ruin of the great British proconsul. He was acquitted by his judges, but he stands blackened forever on the most magnificent pages of his country's eloquence. Burke's speeches are yet read everywhere; and to Burke, Hastings was the principle of Evil incarnate. The two great divisions of civilized mankind hold Burke in lasting remembrance, - the liberals for his labors in the early part of his life, and the conservatives for his writings against the French Revolution; and it is impossible to admire him without condemning Hastings. It is equally impossible to condemn Hastings without condemning the nation for which he performed deeds so vicious and cruel, and which formally acquitted him of each and every charge preferred by Burke and his immortal associates, in the name of the Commons of England. Even those charges were the result, not of conscientious conviction on the part of the Commons, but of Mr. Pitt's determination to crush one who promised to become formidable political rival. The arguments and eloquence of such men as Burke, Fox, Sheridan, and Grey, constitute a splendid armory, from which the enemies of England can forever draw admirable weapons with which to assail her Indian policy; and they have not been backward in making use of this mighty advantage. No one, who has ever sought to defend England's course in the East, but has had experience of the difficulties which those great men have placed in the way of a successful vindication of their country's cause. Either they were honest, or they were not. If honest, what shall be said of the nation which would not listen to them? If dishonest, what are we to think of men, the first statesmen of their age, who, for mere party ends, had persecuted to his ruin one who was in no respect their inferior, and who had saved India for England? Our own opinion is that Burke and his associates were honest, and that the only dishonest men in the prosecuting party were William Pitt and Henry Dundas, the first being chief minister, and the other second only to the premier himself in the government. Pitt talked much of his conscience, after having absolved Hastings on the very worst of the charges that had been preferred against him, and then condemned him on lighter charges. When Roger Wildrake heard the landlord at Windsor talk much of his conscience, he was led to observe that his measures were less and his charges larger than they had been in those earlier times when sin was allowed to take its natural course. It was so with Pitt, who was guilty of gross injustice, according to his own arguments, and then threw his conscience into the scale against the accused party, when he saw that that party's acquittal would probably lead to his being converted into a successful political rival. Hastings deserved severe censure, and no light punishment, for some of his deeds; but not even Burke would have condemned him to the slow torture to which he was sentenced by one who believed him to be innocent, and the object of party persecution. But the nice distinctions which Englishmen and Americans can make in the cause and course of this famous state trial, because they live in the very atmosphere of party politics, are utterly unknown to the men of continental Europe; and until the end of time, England will be condemned out of the mouths of her most brilliant sons, whenever her foes-and she is too great not to have many and bitter foes-shall discuss the history of her Indian empire.

Every nation condemns conquest, and every nation with power to enter upon a career of conquest rushes eagerly upon it. The harshest condemnation that has visited England because of her Indian successes has proceeded from nations who have never been backward in seizing the lands of other nations. She has been stigmatized as a usurper, and as having destroyed the independence of Indian states. The facts do not warrant these charges. She has rarely had a contest with any power which was not as much an intruder in India as herself. The Moghul dynasty was as foreign to India as the East India Company, or the house of Hanover; and the viceroys sent to rule over its vast and populous provinces had the same bases of power as were possessed by Clive, and Hastings, and Wellesley, and Bentinck, and Ellenborough, and Dalhousie. The Moghuls obtained Indian dominion by conquests that were rendered easy by Indian troubles; and this is precisely the history of England's Oriental dominion. What difference there is, is favorable to England. The Moghuls were deliberate invaders of India; the founder of that dynasty being an adventurer who sought an empire sword in hand, and won it by violence which no man had provoked. Baber was to India what the Norman William was to England. He long contemplated the conquest of the country, showing a wolf-like perseverance in hunting down his prey. For two-and-twenty years he had his object in view, and invaded India five times before he obtained the throne of Delhi. The English were forced to assume the part of conquerors, and would gladly have remained traders. They did not commence their military career until the Moghul had become a mere shadow, and when that potentate was altogether unable to protect them against the tyrannical practices of his lieutenants. They had to choose between war and extermination, and they belonged to a race which never hesitates when forced to make such a choice. Their wars were waged with the Moghul's viceroys, who were aiming at the foundation of dynastic rule, each in his own government, or with other princes, who were equally usurpers with those viceroys, the Mahratta chiefs, for example, and Hyder Ali. One war led to another, in all of which the English were victorious, until their power extended itself over all India. In one hundred and six years - dating from the capture of Madras by the French in 1746, which event must be taken as the commencement of their military career in India, and closing with the annexation of Pegu, December 28, 1852, - they had completed their work. That, in the course of operations so mightily, and relating to the condition of so many millions of people, they were sometimes guilty of acts of singular injustice, is true, and might be inferred, if there were no facts upon which to base the charge. It is impossible that it should have been otherwise, considering the nature of man, and the character of many of the instruments by which great enterprises are accomplished. But we think it may safely be said, that never was there a career of conquest of such extent accompanied with so little of wrong and suffering to the body of the people. As against the wrong that was perpetrated, and the suffering that was inseparable from wars so numerous and long-continued, are to be set the reign of order and law, under which the mass of the inhabitants have been able to cultivate their fields in quiet, and with the assurance that they should reap where they had sowed, undisturbed by the incursions of robber-bands. The cessation of the Mahratta invasions alone is an ample compensation for whatever of evil may have marked the course of British conquest. The stop that has been put to the cruelties of the native rulers ought not to be forgotten in estimating the amount of evil and of good which that conquest has brought upon India. The world has been shocked by the cruelties of which the rebellious Sepoys have been guilty; but they can astonish no one who is familiar with the history of the races to which these mutineers belong. An indifference to life, and a love of cruelty for cruelty's sake, are common characteristics of most of the Orientals, and are chiefly conspicuous in the ruling classes. The reader of Indian history sickens over details compared with which all that is told of the horrors of the Black Hole of Calcutta is tame and common-place. The English have prevented repetitions of those outrages on humanity, wherever it has been in their power to coerce the princes. They have pared the claws and drawn the teeth of these human tigers. They have acted humanely; yet it may be doubted if they would not have consulted their own immediate interests more closely, if they had acted the part of tyrants rather than of protectors. By ruling through the princes, and allowing them to act as "middle-men," they would have been less troubled with mutinies, and could have amassed greater sums of money. It is to their credit that they have pursued the nobler course; nor ought they to repent of it even in the midst of disasters brought upon them, we are firmly convinced, as much by the mildness of their rule as by any other cause that can be mentioned.

It is yet too early to attempt to account for the rebellion of the Bengal army. That rebellion took the world by surprise, and nowhere more so, it would seem, than in England. A remarkable proof of this is to be found in the tone and language of the debate that took place in the British House of Commons on the 27th of July, in which Mr. Disraeli, Lord Palmerston, Lord John Russell, Mr. Whiteside, Mr. T. Baring, Sir T. E. Perry, Mr. Mangles, Mr. Vernon Smith, and others, participated. That debate was most lively and interesting; and the reading of the ample report in the "Times" revives the recollection of the great field-days of the English senate. Mr. Disraeli's speech is a masterpiece, and would have done honor to times when eloquence was far more common than it is now. Yet the conclusion to which the careful reader of the report must come is, that neither Mr. Disraeli, nor the Premier, nor the President of the Board of Control, nor the Chairman of the Directors of the East India Company, nor any other of the speakers, had a definite idea of the cause of the sudden mutiny of the Sepoys. It is impossible not to admire Mr. Disraeli's talents, as displayed in this speech; and equally impossible is it to find in that speech anything, that an intelligent observer of Indian affairs can regard as settling the question, Why did the Sepoys of the Bengal army mutiny in 1857? Everything that he brought forward as a cause of the mutiny was distinctly proved not to be worthy of the name of a cause. Yet the men who could show that he had failed to clear up the mystery could themselves throw no light upon it. The government was especially ignorant of all that it should have known; and there is something almost ludicrous in the tone of the speech made by the President of the Board of Control.

It is not for us to speak authoritatively as to the cause of the Sepoy mutiny, but we venture to express our concurrence with those who have regarded it as, in considerable measure, of Mahometan origin. The Mahometan rule was displaced by the British rule. The Mahometans were for centuries the aristocracy of India, standing to the genuine Indians in pretty much the same relation that the Normans held to the Saxons in England; only it is but justice to them to say, that they rarely bore themselves so offensively towards the Indians as the Normans were accustomed to bear themselves towards the English. They have never lost the recollection of their former statue, or ceased to sigh for its restoration. Nor is the time so very remote when they were yet great in the land. Old men among them can recollect when Tippoo Saib was treated as an equal by the English, and have not forgotten how powerful was his father, Hyder. Some few aged Mussulmans there may be yet living who heard from their sires or grandsires, who saw it with their mortal eyes, of the glories of the magnificent Aurungzebe, ere the Persian, or the Affghan, or the Mahratta had carried fire and sword into Shahjehanabad. Two not over-long lives would measure the whole interval of time between the punishment of the English by Aurungzebe and the mutiny at Meerut. Time enough has not yet elapsed to cause the Mahometans to forget what they have been, or to cease to hope that they may yet surpass their fathers. They are not actuated by anything of a sentimental character, but desire to win back, and to enjoy at the expense of the Indian races, the solid advantages of which they have been deprived through the ascendancy of a Christian people in the East. "Mahometans in India sigh for the restoration of the old Mahometan régime," says Colonel Sleeman, "not from any particular attachment to the descendants of Tymour, but with precisely the same feelings that Whigs and Tories sigh for the return to power of their respective parties in England; it would give them all the offices in a country where office is everything. Among them, as among ourselves, every man is disposed to rate his own abilities higher, and to have a good deal of confidence in his own good luck; and all think, that if the field were once opened to them by such change, they should very soon be able to find good positions for themselves and their children in it. Perhaps there are few communities in the world, among whom education is more generally diffused than among the Mahometans in India. He who holds an office worth twenty rupees a month commonly gives his sons an education equal to that of a prime-minister." [Note: Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Officer, Vol. II. pp. 282, 283. Colonel Sleeman's work is one of the best ever published on India, - learned, liberal, and philosophical. It has been highly praised by so competent a judge as Mr.. Grote.] This very capability for rule must render them not only all the more desirous of obtaining it, but exceedingly dangerous as seekers after it. They are not an ignorant rabble, but men who have an intelligent idea of what they want, and rational modes of effecting its realization. Colonel Sleeman adds, "It is not only the desire for office that makes the educated Mahometans cherish the recollection of the old régime in Hindostan; they say, 'We pray every night for the Emperor and his family, because our forefathers ate of the salt of his forefathers,' - that is, our ancestors were in the service of his ancestors, and consequently were of the aristocracy of the country. Whether they really were so matters not; they persuade themselves or their children that they were." In this way the idea of superiority has been kept up among the Mahometans of India; and they have continued to hope for the restoration of their old political supremacy, as pious Jews dream of the rebuilding of Zion. That they were at the bottom of the Meerut mutiny may be taken for granted. That they took for their leader the heir of the Moghul shows the Mahometan nature of the outbreak. At the same time, we believe that if it had not been for the imbecility of Hewitt, who commanded at Meerut, the mutiny never would have occurred, or the mutineers would have been promptly put down. Even after they had escaped from Meerut, Delhi never could have fallen into their hands, if that city-so important, morally and geographically, as well as in a military point of view-had not been without a garrison. That a station of such consequence, stored so abundantly with all the munitions of war, should have been left in an utterly defenceless condition, is a fact that creates inexpressible astonishment, notwithstanding all that happened during the Russian war. Mr. Whiteside, in the debate of the 27th of July, stated that the late General Sir C. J. Napier "said of Delhi, that to guard against surprise, considering its position, its treasures, and its magazines, it should always be defended by twelve thousand picked men." From all that appears, there were not twelve hundred men, or anything like that number, of any kind, in Delhi, last May, to protect either the inhabitants or the stores there deposited. Such another instance of neglect it would be impossible to find in history, after due warning given. Long ago, Albany Fonblanque said, "The sign of the fool with his finger in his mouth, and the sentiment, 'Who'd have thought it?' is the precise emblem of English jurisprudence." The same sign would seem to be applicable to some other branches of the English public service, as well as to that of the law. Perhaps it was because of the warning that nothing was done, - that being the usual course with governments; while it was thought a duty to treat with sort of spiteful neglect every warning that came from Sir C. J. Napier, because he had a rough, fiery way of expressing his opinion of the folly of those who are perpetually giving occasion for warnings which they never heed, - as if in all ages roughness and fire had not been especial characteristics of the prophetic office.

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The year 1757 was one of the gloomiest ever known to England. At home, the government was in a state of utter confusion, though the country was at war with France, and France was in alliance with Austria; these two nations having departed from their policy of two centuries and a half, in order that they might crush Frederic of Prussia, England's ally.

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EVERY so often a country comes along whose economic transformation has a vast impact on the world's climate system. For the past generation that country has been China. Next it will be India.

Given India's size and population (1.3 billion), its emissions of carbon dioxide are in relative terms still tiny. At 1.6 tonnes of carbon per person each year, they are roughly the same as China's per-head emissions in 1980, when that country dived into economic reforms. Now India's prime minister, Narendra Modi, wants to emulate China's sizzling growth. He has set India a target of expanding GDP by 8% a year. If it comes close to meeting that target, emissions will soar, just as China's have done. Today, Chinese emissions per head are four times those in India.
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Government planners think that, with economic growth of 8-9%, India's total emissions of carbon dioxide would more than triple by 2030, from 1.7 billion tonnes in 2010 to 5.3 billion tonnes. Per-head emissions would increase to 3.6 tonnes. And that assumes a fair amount of energy savings. If India were to use the same amount of energy per unit of GDP in 2030 as it does now, then emissions would top 6 billion tonnes by 2030. India is on the way to becoming the biggest contributor to increases in greenhouse gases within 15 years-a powerful reason for caring about its progress on environmental matters.

On October 1st Mr Modi's government filed its emissions plans in advance of a UN climate conference to take place in Paris in November. Unlike most other big countries, India refused to set a date at which the absolute amount of carbon it pumps out would peak and start to fall. Instead it promised that its carbon intensity-that is, carbon emissions per unit of GDP-would fall by a third before 2030.

By setting a relative rather than an absolute target, India has come in for criticism. That is unfair, for to cap emissions would be to deny many Indians the chance to better their hard lives. The country has more poor people than anywhere else in the world: 230m living on $1.90 a day or less-the World Bank's definition of extreme poverty. Almost half of rural households, or 250m-300m people, have no electricity. For the poor, growth is essential-and carbon comes with it.

Yet to accept that is not to give up on curbing emissions. India has huge potential to change its trajectory. To put this in context, consider that plans announced by Barack Obama's administration would cut American emissions by 26-28% by 2025, or just under 2 billion tonnes of carbon a year. By contrast, the difference between a good and a bad outcome in India over the same period, depending on whether good policies are adopted or not, would amount to almost 3 billion tonnes. In other words, India could do more good for the climate, as well as more harm, than most.

If there is reason to be optimistic, it is that the environment matters to Indians themselves. Thirteen of the world's 20 most-polluted cities are in the subcontinent. Smoke from cooking with wood or dung in Indian homes may be responsible for 500,000 early deaths a year, mostly of women and children. Climate change could do grave harm to India. Some two-thirds of its agriculture depends on the monsoon, which may become less reliable as a result of global warming. Some Himalayan glaciers are retreating, sending less water to rivers that feed hundreds of millions of people downstream. A quarter of Indians live near coasts that are vulnerable to sea-level rises. Many countries suffer one or more of these problems. Few have all of them. So while Indians need growth, they cannot ignore the consequences of it.

Given the environmental pressures, gloom is not hard to find. Jairam Ramesh, environment minister in the previous Congress-led government, shakes his head as he reflects on the near-total local opposition to a plan to protect the Western Ghats, a mountain range that is one of the world's most biologically diverse regions. "We are losing the battle of ideas," he says. Although tree plantations are growing in India, old-growth forests are still shrinking. Pressure to cut down more trees will increase because most of India's untapped coal reserves are underneath its forests. Coal accounts for more than half of India's power generation-and India plans to double coal output by 2020.

As for water, another crucial environmental resource, for the moment India is one of the lucky large developing countries with adequate supplies. But according to a study in 2013 by two UN agencies, it will go from having 1,800 cubic metres of water per person per year in 2001 to only 1,340 cubic metres in 2025-and little more than 1,000 cubic metres per head by 2050, which is the international definition of water scarcity.

As if all that were not enough, Mr Modi came to power in 2014 vowing to sweep aside regulatory obstacles to growth (including, by implication, environmental regulations). He vowed to expand a manufacturing sector which, at 17% of GDP, is half the relative size of China's. Factories pollute more than services do.

If India faces a trade-off between growth and greenery, then the only likely outcome is that growth wins. Yet it is not a simple swap. Rather, the government has multiple objectives, and this multiplicity makes pro-environment policies more likely to stick.

To see how, look at energy. The government has four main goals beyond increasing power to cities and industry. First, it wants to bring electricity to those without it. Total electricity production has risen sharply in recent years, but the number of people without power has fallen only slowly. Something needs to change.

Next, India wants to improve its energy security by buying less from abroad. At the moment, the country spends about half its foreign-exchange earnings on fuel imports, an unusually high share. Though the world's third-largest coal producer, India imports a fifth of its coal because domestic mines cannot keep pace. And it imports four-fifths of its oil. That leaves the country vulnerable to oil shocks, even if right now it is a beneficiary of cheaper supplies.

Third, with 10m-12m young Indians entering the labour market each year, the country needs jobs, and factories without power are no way to create them. And lastly India needs to reform the inefficient electricity-distribution system. Blackouts and brownouts are rife, and almost all the state utilities are bankrupt.

India needs to do all these things regardless of environmental considerations. But research by the Centre for the Study of Science, Technology and Policy (C-STEP), a think-tank in Bangalore, suggests that the energy mix you get if you try to improve access, security and so on is similar to what you get if you just concentrate on cutting carbon and preventing deforestation. In other words, the trade-off between doing the right thing for the economy and the right thing for the environment is not as stark as it looks.

Again, the energy sector shows why. Given the atrocious quality of the electricity grid, the quickest way to improve energy access is to supply power away from the grid through "distributed energy"-things like solar panels on houses or a micro-grid for a particular village linked, say, to a wind turbine. Distributed energy can use various sources of power, but renewable energy is particularly suited to it. Providing villages with reliable energy would allow families to switch from burning wood and dung to electric stoves, saving many of the lives now cut short by filthy air.

Solar and wind power are domestic energy supplies, so they help conserve foreign exchange. Import substitution is usually a bad idea, because it keeps prices high and makes producers lazy. But in many parts of the country solar and wind are competitive on price. Electricity from power stations that run on imported coal costs about 6 rupees (9 cents) per kilowatt-hour. In Karnataka state, in the south, new providers of solar power are selling it for 5.5 rupees per kilowatt-hour, while wind costs about 6 rupees per kilowatt-hour. The solar business also provides jobs, typically more than from generating power through burning fossil fuels. Arunabha Ghosh of the Council on Energy, Environment and Water, a think-tank in Delhi, the capital, reckons that building 100 gigawatts of solar capacity would produce 1m jobs, albeit most of them short-term.

Lastly, alternative forms of energy might even help solve those problems of the grid which have their roots in India's unwise decision to supply farmers with free electricity to pump water for irrigation. A huge lobby for subsidised power exists as a consequence, along with neglect of the electricity infrastructure, the beggaring of utility companies, which lost a staggering $300 billion in 2012, and a catastrophic overuse of water for farming. Because pumping water is in effect free, farmers are using groundwater faster than it can be replenished. In north-west India states are withdrawing up to nearly three times more water from aquifers than is being recharged by rains. The perversities of the power sector damage many parts of economy. So expanding solar and wind power could help with a range of things that have little to do with the environment but are essential for other reasons. That is the main justification for thinking greenery can take off even in a country that is trying to grow as fast as it can.

But the big questions are whether India's environmental policies are the right ones and whether they will be overwhelmed by the demands of growth. The government's signature policies are a huge expansion in solar and wind power, a sketchy "100 smart cities" plan to improve urban design and infrastructure, and a "clean-up India" campaign which includes everything from better waste management to building over 100m lavatories (about half of Indians defecate in the open-an environmental crisis in its own right, since it causes a panoply of diseases).

Soon after coming to office, Mr Modi promised to increase renewable energy more than fivefold by 2022. This would require doubling solar capacity every 18 months for the next seven years and cost about $100 billion. At a big conference on renewable energy earlier this year, investors said they would be happy to build all that and more, but they made financial commitments to less than a third of their proposals. Mr Modi's plan would save perhaps 170m tonnes of carbon a year compared with adding the same amount of power using the current energy mix. At about 3% of emissions forecast for 2030, that is something, but not a huge amount.

More important are a number of actions that usually get short shrift when talking about climate policies. A study by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory at the University of California calculates that if India switched to using the most efficient air conditioners, with the least-polluting refrigerants, it would save over 300m tonnes of carbon a year compared with expanding sales of current air conditioners-twice as much as the savings from solar power. India's programme to subsidise the replacement of 400m cheap incandescent light bulbs with dearer LED ones would save 6,000 megawatts of installed capacity-equivalent to the entire electricity-generating capacity of Nigeria.

And now they can do their homework, too

As for urbanisation, India has a "last mover" advantage. Perhaps seven-tenths of the urban infrastructure that it will need in 2030-such as roads, buildings and sewers-has yet to be built. In the meantime, India can learn from the lessons of others as they grow. Building compact cities with efficient transport systems and non-wasteful buildings would go a long way to slowing the rise of emissions.

Greenish India

So how much would all that achieve? Using varying assumptions about future policies and actions, five Indian forecasting groups predicted that emissions in 2030 could be between 3 billion tonnes and 5 billion tonnes a year, compared with a range of 4 billion tonnes to 5.5 billion tonnes on current trends. It is a significant difference, but not a huge one. According to C-STEP, the think-tank in Bangalore, it would be possible to cut emissions by a further 20-30% through more drastic actions, such as having four-fifths of lighting from LED bulbs by 2030 and sending half of all freight by rail instead of road rather than 39%, as is planned. That really might help India avoid the pattern of "grow first, clean up later".

India has shown that it can enact reforms that have a big environmental impact. In the past two years, for example, it has removed a subsidy on diesel consumption (which subsidised carbon), and replaced subsidised liquefied natural gas with a cash payment for the poor, encouraging people to use gas less wastefully.

India's emissions are still too modest for it to rival China anytime soon. Modest, too, are its manufacturing sector and middle class, both big polluters. As always, India will go its own sweet way. But it could do more to make that way greener.

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EVERY so often a country comes along whose economic transformation has a vast impact on the world's climate system. For the past generation that country has been China. Next it will be India. Given India's size and population (1.3 billion), its emissions of carbon dioxide are in relative terms still tiny.

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FEW subjects can matter more in the long term than how India and China, with nearly 40% of the world's population between them, manage to get along. In the years before they fought a short border war, in 1962, relations had been rosy. Many in China, for example, were deeply impressed by the peaceful and successful campaign led by Mohandas Gandhi to persuade the British to quit India. A few elderly people in China yet talk of their admiration for Rabindranath Tagore, the Bengali writer who won the Nobel prize for literature in 1913. And though Nehru, India's first prime minister, was resented as arrogant and patronising by some Chinese leaders, the early post-war years saw friendship persist and some popular respect for him too. In China, for example, books on India were then easily available-unlike today.

The past half-century has produced mostly squabbles, resentment and periodic antagonism. India felt humiliated by its utter defeat at the hands of Mao's army in the 1962 war. China's long-running close ties to Pakistan look designed to antagonise India. In return India is developing ever warmer relations with the likes of Vietnam and Japan. An unsettled border in the Himalayas, periodic incursions by soldiers into territory claimed by the other side and China's claim-for example-that India's Arunachal Pradesh is really a part of Tibet, all suggest that happier relations will be slow in coming. Even a booming bilateral trade relationship is as much a bone of contention as a source of friendlier ties, given India's annoyance at a yawning deficit.
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One glimmer of hope, in theory, is that ordinary people of the two countries might start to understand each other better as levels of education, wealth and interest in the outside world all grow. As tourists, students and business types visit each other's countries, perhaps they will find that they have more in common than they believed. In fact, judging by a sharp and well-crafted memoir by an Indian journalist who was posted in Beijing for four years, ignorance and bafflement are likelier to persist.

Reshma Patil was sent by the Hindustan Times, a large Indian newspaper, to Beijing in 2008, one of only four Indian print journalists in the country (by contrast Chinese media groups had 16 correspondents in India). Her account of time there, "Strangers across the border; Indian encounters in boomtown China", is revealing for its detail and anecdote, but also for its broadly damning conclusion about the state of ties between the countries: "extreme ignorance and nationalism illustrate their mutual relations", she says.

Most entertaining, from an Indian point of view at least, are her accounts of Chinese ignorance about India. She visits a centre in Beijing devoted to learning cricket in case it ever becomes an Olympic sport (it is called shenshi yundong, or "the noble game"), whose players have never heard of Indian stars, or of the cricket world cup, and who appear to prefer playing ping pong. During numerous forays to universities she finds students learning foreign languages who routinely dismiss India as dirty, poor and irrelevant. A wide misapprehension, she says, is a belief that India is Buddhist. Officials and journalists tell her that India suffers from an "inferiority complex", that it is so backward ("naked...children piss on the streets") that there can be "nothing to learn" from the country. She suggests that one Indian drink, the mango lassi, has become popular in China, but otherwise the Chinese she meets mostly have little interest in Indian products or culture. Indian traders are famously stingy. Its brands, such as those of big outsourcing firms, are poorly understood or assumed to be of low quality. Persistent racism towards dark-skinned Indians is broken in only one case, by the head of a Chinese modelling agency who says he is fond of Indians who can pull off a "Western look".

India meanwhile makes pitifully little effort to correct Chinese misunderstandings. As well as few journalists, India had only 15 diplomats based in Beijing during Ms Patil's time, most of them inactive. Only two had any economic expertise, and most only started learning Mandarin after their arrival in the country. A big Indian business lobby group had a single representative based in Shanghai. She estimates that only a few hundred Indian businesses, in any case, are active in China (with even fewer Chinese ones in India), and few of the Indian ventures are led by Mandarin-speakers or local hires. As an example of ignorance, she mentions a Chinese business reporter who has never heard of Infosys, a $33 billion Indian IT firm. India's low profile in China, she argues, "prolongs the shelf-life of anti-India propaganda". For if most Chinese are merely ignorant, many are troublingly nationalistic where their neighbour is concerned.Ms Patil dismisses annual exchanges of a few hundred students each as a hopeless affair. Sometimes India ships a low-cost dance troupe to China. Most such exchanges of students, journalists and others end up in mutual frustration; a failure to communicate; and terrible hunger among vegetarian Indians horrified by Chinese cuisine.

A few attractive exceptions are cited. When Ms Patil meets the dissident artist, Ai Weiwei (shortly before he was spirited away to house arrest), he lauds the freedom of speech that exists in India and says he hopes India will grow strong and prosperous. He also points out that Chinese security agents like to mention the chaos ( luan) of India as an example of why democracy is not worth attempting. Some Chinese businessmen, as well as reporters, who return from trips to India praise the openness and free speech there, or point to the "inner peace" and happiness that they discern among even poor Indians. Others mention the relative openness of Indian courts, the mass anti-corruption protests that would be impossible in China, and the fact that poor rural migrants are allowed to use hospitals in the cities, unlike those in China. She finds some traders, too, who realise that India is a big potential consumer market: factories, for example in Quanzhou, churn out millions of Ganesha statues-the eyes and trunk are difficult to get right, says a producer-and other Hindu figurines for sale in India; exports of trinkets and gifts for sale at Diwali in India are beginning to rival exports of similar plastic tat for Christmas in the West, she suggests.

China is still experimenting with its use of soft power. In one striking detail Ms Patil relates a visit to China Radio International's Hindi service (the equivalent, roughly, of the BBC's Hindi service), where she is told that the station is popular in rural India and receives over 100,000 letters from enthusiastic listeners a year, some of whom receive radios in return. She also finds ten universities in China that teach Hindi (though few students eager to learn it). India, by contrast, fails to broadcast much worth listening to beyond All India Radio's Chinese- and Tibetan-language services. Very few Indian students are learning Mandarin.

More obvious are old-fashioned hard-power relations. Analysts frequently point to the military imbalance between the countries: China's armed forces have a budget three times larger than India's and enjoy far superior infrastructure near the mutual border. Nationalist Chinese bloggers mock Indian aspirations to military strength as all talk and little action-"loud thunder, tiny rain". The launch, in 2013, of India's first home-built aircraft carrier drew some attention in China, but officials point out that China's navy, with 150 ships, is already three times the size of India's. Naval clashes seem a more likely risk even than those on the border: she quotes a report from India's defence ministry suggesting that in 2012 there were 22 "contacts" with suspected Chinese attack submarines outside of Chinese waters. A new bilateral maritime dialogue, launched in 2012, deals only with low-level matters.

A mutual perception of being threatened by the other country is growing. One poll in 2013 found that 83% of Indians see China as a security threat. Large numbers of Chinese similarly think nuclear-armed India is hostile, even if it is not taken as an immediate threat. When Chinese soldiers cross the disputed border into India-a report on August 19th suggested a fresh incursion in Ladakh-reporters in Beijing are promptly instructed by officials not to mention it. Ms Patil says she grew used to calls and visits by police and security men, often instructing her not to mention sensitive matters such as border stand-offs. A fellow Indian journalist who dared to ask a Chinese politician at a press conference why official maps, digital maps on iPhones and other devices show Indian territory as part of China was told furiously to "shut up".

Official Chinese hostility towards Indian journalists is well-documented. A constant gripe from China's government is that India's politicians fail to keep their media in line (in fact Indian politicians, the army and other parts of government routinely leak news to them, partly to put pressure on China). Yet freedom of the press and communication is one obvious area in which India has a great advantage over its big rival. Ms Patil reckons India has over 85,000 newspapers (it is not clear if that includes digital outlets) to just 2,000 in China. As micro-bloggers and users of social media get a louder voice in China officials there have to devise ever more elaborate means of restricting unwelcome messages; by contrast institutions in India, as in the West, are far more confident about allowing more transparency.

Where is the relationship headed? Ms Patil does not make explicit predictions, though she does suggest India could do much more to present itself in China, sending better-trained diplomats and better-prepared businessmen. She sees enormous potential benefits if, for example, suitably trained Indian graduates and cleverly devised Indian software could somehow be made to work with Chinese infrastructure and hardware. The growth of China, its huge cities and big economy has to be an opportunity for India, she suggests. In turn, the Chinese population-at an average age of 35 years old, compared to India's 26-will grow old far sooner than India's, which suggests a demographic advantage to India. Sheer numbers also suggest advantage tipping towards India: by 2028, says the UN, India's population will outstrip China's. By then, will the two countries have managed to move on from being strangers to something more like friends? Ms Patil hopes so, cautiously, but the evidence in her book suggests it will be a slow and difficult process.

(Picture credit: HarperCollins India)

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FEW subjects can matter more in the long term than how India and China, with nearly 40% of the world's population between them, manage to get along. In the years before they fought a short border war, in 1962, relations had been rosy.

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Corruption in India: A Cause of Instability & Inequalities

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Corruption in India has a terrible impact on the economy and causes huge social instability & riots. It exacerbates poverty, discrimination and inflation

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From corruption to social movements

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Introduction

With a booming economy throughout the 2000s, India was touted as one of the most promising major emerging markets. But that breakneck growth sputtered to a decade low in 2012, with many observers pointing to the corrosive effect of endemic corruption-including a spate of scandals under former prime minister Manmohan Singh-as a culprit. Perhaps more than India's weak currency and rising inflation, the graft problem has undermined institutions and thwarted efforts to reduce poverty and catalyze sustainable growth in the world's largest democracy. Public revelations of corruption, including major scandals in the telecommunications and coal industry, have galvanized a rising middle class with increased demands for better governance. The tide has spurred new political movements, and forced the government to address transparency and marshal reforms.

The Roots of Corruption

Corruption in India can be traced back to the country's colonial past, analysts say. The British Raj period, beginning in 1858, excluded Indian citizens from political participation by dividing the country into districts with provincial governments controlled by a commissioner. The 1923 Official Secrets Act made it an offense for officials to reveal state information to citizens, ostensibly to protect military and government intelligence.

After India gained independence in 1947, the new regime implemented heavy economic regulations intended to develop domestic markets; the 1951 Industries Act, for instance, required all new industrial operations to obtain a license from the central government. The policy limited foreign investment and stifled competition, and bribery became part and parcel of doing business. The period up to 1991 was dubbed the "License Raj" as a result of the government's excessive oversight of the economy. The poor often suffered most from the widespread corruption, which diverted large amounts of public revenue intended for public works, aid, and social welfare programs.

"Historically, the roots of India's corruption came from the proliferation of licenses," says former CFR Senior Fellow for International Economics Jagdish Bhagwati. "The idea was to ensure economical use of resources, so you would not waste foreign exchanges. To this day, this is what Indians have been very aware of: that the institution of licenses and permits was responsible for creating corruption on a massive scale."

The first major law to combat government malfeasance was the Prevention of Corruption Act (PCA) of 1947, enacted to prevent officials from cashing in on postwar reconstruction funding. Parliament also established the Anticorruption Bureau in 1961 to investigate violations of the PCA, which has since been amended twice (most recently in 1988). The latest revision was a direct response to the late-1980s Bofors scandal, in which then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi and other politicians were accused of receiving large kickbacks in a weapons bid from Swedish arms company Bofors. Many observers considered the scandal to be a main reason the Gandhi-led Congress Party was voted out of power in 1989.

Under the PCA, bribery is punishable by a fine and up to five years imprisonment. But many analysts believe India's sprawling bureaucracy and weak institutions-the police and judiciary were ranked as the second and third most corrupt institutions in India, respectively, after political parties-have thwarted convictions, and arguably increased incentives for bribery. In recent years, graft pervaded society from small-scale "harassment bribes" (payments for essential social services) to scandals on a national level. At least 42 percent of young Indians have paid a bribe, according to a 2012 Hindustan survey.

"There's been corruption in India for thousands of years-it's endemic-but what you see is the kind of corruption changing," says Milan Vaishnav, a South Asia associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "In the past two decades, there's been a shift toward grand corruption: the recent scandals are just qualitatively and quantitatively bigger than anything we've seen. And a big reason for that is India's rapid growth. Growth has expanded the possibilities for rent-seeking."

A 2011 report from KPMG stated that 68 percent [PDF] of India's total illicit capital loss happened after the country's economic liberalization in 1991, indicating that the reform and rise of India's economy has contributed to the transfer of "black money" abroad.

A Spiraling Problem

In 2013, India ranked ninety-fourth out of 176 countries in Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index, alongside Mongolia and Colombia and below neighbors like China and Sri Lanka. The country has steadily slipped since ranking seventy-second of 179 in 2007, when the report debuted. Several recent high-profile scandals have underscored the extent of the problem. In 2010, allegations emerged surrounding the gross misallocation of funds at the Commonwealth Games, which cost almost eighteen times its budget estimate. Reports surfaced of shoddy infrastructure and financial irregularities regarding contracts, and the scandal led to the resignation of two senior Congress Party members and other government officials. The Central Vigilance Commission cited the total misappropriation of funds to be around $1.8 billion.

There's been corruption in India for thousands of years, but what you see is the kind of corruption changing.

Milan Vaishnav,

Soon after, controversy mired the government again when an auditor's report uncovered a massive telecom scam estimated to have cost the government some $39 billion, making it one of the largest cases of state corruption in Indian history. Telecom minister Andimuthu Raja, accused of orchestrating the sale of licenses below market value, resigned in 2010. (He was arrested in 2011, and was out on bail as of late 2013.) During the affair, outraged opposition parties shut down parliament for three weeks and prompted massive protests in Delhi.

Public anger escalated when the 2012 " Coalgate" scandal, in which an estimated $34 billion was lost, implicated the prime minister himself. The breadth of corruption has even touched the U.S. government, as cables released in 2011 by Wikileaks revealed that a Congress Party aide allegedly showed a U.S. diplomat chests of cash intended as a bribe to secure Parliament's endorsement of a controversial 2008 U.S.-India nuclear deal.

The Fallout From Corruption

Public outrage peaked by the spring of 2011. A social activist named Anna Hazare emerged as a prominent organizer of the anticorruption movement, vowing a "fast unto death" unless the government established a new anticorruption agency (Lokpal) to review complaints at the highest level. Thousands of citizens took to his cause, and the United Progressive Alliance (UPA)-led government announced in August that it would form a committee to draft the law. After stalling for months in Parliament, India's lower house finally passed the bill in mid-December 2013 with both Congress and BJP's support, ending Hazare's nine-day hunger strike in a rare show of unity.

Mounting graft has stirred not only domestic worries, but has also tarnished the country's image among international investors. Since 1947, India has lost hundreds of billions of dollars in illegal capital flows (tax evasion, corruption, bribery, kickbacks, etc.), and was ranked 134th of 189 countries in the World Bank's 2014 Doing Business Report. At Davos in 2013, NGOs warned that the hefty investment needed for India's infrastructure development could breed more corruption.

Some experts note that while there isn't necessarily a direct correlation between corruption levels and India's economic health, the nature of the graft has been corrosive to its growth. "The way corruption has been practiced in India has been particularly harmful," says Bhagwati, who contrasts India's rent-creating corruption, which carves out monopolies for cronies, with China's profit-sharing system, which takes an interest in growth. "In the end, the corruption in India is of a form that undermines growth in our institutions. It's a very expensive way to be corrupt."

Campaigning for Reform

As India's economy slowed, successive revelations of graft exacerbated public outrage at the inability of the former Congress-led government to mitigate corruption. In turn, the country saw an uptick of anticorruption rhetoric ahead of state elections in November and December 2013. The Aam Aadmi Party, led by activist Arvin Kejriwal, emerged as a new political party that got its start on an anticorruption platform, while the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) also emphasized good governance. Meanwhile, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, who leads one of India's poorest states, Bihar, also won accolades for his success in emphasizing good governance.

"What is new and politically relevant has been, in response to citizen outrage, the rise of parties explicitly focusing on governance," says CFR's Alyssa Ayres. "And most importantly, the transformation of campaigning from a mode that focused on a language of empowerment with an appeal to caste, to one focusing on good governance and delivering services to citizens."

The BJP championed the clean track record of its leader Narendra Modi, whose reform efforts as chief minister of Gujarat, made his home state a key driver of national economic growth, and who went on to win the 2014 national election. Yet corruption remains rife in India's political landscape. In 2012, criminal cases were pending against 31 percent of members of parliament and the legislative assembly. Campaign spending limits are low, driving expenditure underground and fostering reliance on "black money." Many experts also point to Indian voters' complex relationship with corruption; research from a wide range of states finds that political candidates often promote their criminality as an indication of their ability to defend the interests of their communities.

Prospects for Progress

India's government has made a few attempts at the federal level to combat corruption. The 2005 Right to Information Act allows citizens to request access to any public record and, if approved, receive it within thirty days. The law, which can penalize noncompliance and requires authorities to digitize records, has been hailed as a pivotal achievement in the fight against corruption. The government is also considering moves to strengthen the national antigraft law, potentially introducing changes that would punish corporate failure to prevent bribery.

What is new and politically relevant has been the rise of parties explicitly focusing on governance.

Alyssa Ayres,

An increasingly activist judiciary has also taken a stronger stance against corruption; in early 2011, the Supreme Court asked all trial courts in the country to fast-track corruption cases. The next year, it limited the amount of time the government had to decide whether or not to prosecute a public official for corruption. And in July 2013, the top court ruled that it was illegal for politicians convicted of crimes to continue holding office, although, in a highly controversial move, Singh's cabinet withdrew the decree in October. Modi announced in an August 2014 speech that his government will initiate tough initiatives to battle corruption, likening the problem to a "disease."

Technology has also helped. Some states like Gujarat have implemented online systems for state contract bids, allowing for greater transparency. Others have also put land records and death certificates online, while websites like IPaidaBribe.com expose graft associated with common public services. The government is also devising an electronic ID system, which would allow poor citizens to avoid intermediaries and receive aid directly through a bank account.

But technology can only do so much, says Jennifer Bussell, assistant professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley. Bussell notes that technology's most important contribution has been granting citizens greater access to information. "Some combination of administrative reforms and local-level technology initiatives to help bring corruption to light-in addition to efforts by organizations like the Comptroller and Auditor General, which is exposing corruption at the highest levels of government-would help. You need all of these things."

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With a booming economy throughout the 2000s, India was touted as one of the most promising major emerging markets. But that breakneck growth sputtered to a decade low in 2012, with many observers pointing to the corrosive effect of endemic corruption-including a spate of scandals under former prime minister Manmohan Singh-as a culprit.

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"A Bad Boom"

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IN THE early hours of February 20th 2010 Uday Vir Singh, an Indian forestry officer, bluffed his way past a private militia guarding a dusty port called Belekeri. For months suspicious-looking convoys of trucks had been thundering across India to the port's quays on the country's west coast, just south of the Goan beach where the super-spy mayhem which opened "The Bourne Supremacy" was filmed.

Mr Singh is no more a Jason Bourne than the next entomologist-he has a doctorate on metamorphosis in insects-and the infiltration he mounted with a few colleagues led to no gunplay. But it did uncover a massive scam, with hundreds of officials and politicians in the state of Karnataka in the pockets of an illegal mining mafia that, over five years, had made profits of $2 billion or more shipping illegal iron ore to China.
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Such scandals have rocked Asia's third-largest economy in the past decade. A lot of transactions that put public resources into private hands-allocations of radio spectrum, for example, and of credit from state banks-have come under suspicion. Of the ten biggest family firms by sales, seven have faced controversies. The brash new tycoons who came of age during the boom years of 2003-10 are under a cloud, too. Before he became boss of the central bank last year, Raghuram Rajan worried publicly that India could start looking like an oligarchy along the lines seen in Russia: "too many people have got too rich based on their proximity to the government."

In a recent poll 96% of Indians said corruption was holding their country back, and 92% thought it has got worse in the past five years. One senior figure in the ruling Congress party worries about the feeling that "the law for the common people doesn't apply to the political princelings and industrialists."

In December voters in Delhi's state elections supported the anti-graft Aam Aadmi Party strongly enough for it to get into power. Its leader, Arvind Kejriwal, held his new job only briefly before resigning to fight the national election taking place in April and May. Narendra Modi, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate for prime minister who is currently ahead in the polls, says he will purge India. That said, critics note that his personal rapport with tycoons, credited for some of the industrial success of his home state of Gujarat, may not make him the most thoroughgoing of purgatives. For his part, the outgoing prime minister, Manmohan Singh, claims history will absolve his administration of its reputation for graft. The leader of the Congress campaign, Rahul Gandhi, a scion of India's most famous political dynasty, says he is a reformer, though it is hard not to see his family's secretive habits as part of the problem.

India needs its private sector to build roads, factories and cities. But the relationship between companies and the state is broken. Corruption produces bad decisions; concern over corruption produces indecision. Graft does not function, as some claim that it does elsewhere, as an unseemly but expedient market solution to inert bureaucracy, greasing the seized-up wheels of industry. It has put grit in those wheels. Loans to industries with graft problems have infected the largely state-run banking system; at least a tenth of its loans are sour. Inept cronies have messed up vital road and power projects. Mines and other assets lie idle as courts dither over how crooked their owners are.

Private paralysis

Faced with this mess, private firms have cut investments; a fall in investment from 17% of GDP in 2007 to 11% in 2011 is one reason why GDP growth has slumped to 5%, the lowest level for a decade. And ineffective efforts to deal with corruption seem only to have made things worse. India's cranky legal system, its overlapping investigative agencies and its raucous media have meant that responses to the problem may have done as much to paralyse business in general as to punish wrongdoers. Few senior people go to jail; but officials fear being accused of malfeasance, so many think the safest course of action is to make no decisions at all.

To rumble the iron-ore scam Mr Singh, the forestry officer, first went undercover in a town called Bellary, the hub of illegal iron-ore mining in the state of Karnataka. The task fell to him because many mines come under the remit of the forestry agency, and work on a previous pink-granite scandal had earned him a reputation in the area. A day's drive north of the gleaming technology campuses of Bangalore, Bellary felt like the wild west. The Reddy family, which had close connections to the state's BJP-led government, appeared to rule the roost. A businessman who visited a Reddy associate recalls being escorted by men with automatic weapons to a mansion with a Bell helicopter and a collection of 13 cars. "They were like Indian warlords," he says.

Each day up to 2,000 trucks took the ore to the port at Belekeri in convoys as much as 25km (16 miles) long. Accounts and bank details found on computers taken into custody at Belekeri created a trail to 70 families who had bribed officials and politicians effectively enough to cause an "administrative collapse". Karnataka's anti-corruption body prepared a 25,000-page report. The affair is now in the hands of the police and the courts.

Rumours and rupees

Iron ore is a smallish part of the picture, but how small is hard to say; quantifying graft in India is a frustrating affair, and distracting conspiracy theories and innuendo abound. Bankers in Mumbai claim that the rupee, one of the world's most actively traded currencies, is manipulated by politicians for personal gain. The business interests of the present cabinet-if you believe the rumours-include a real-estate empire in Singapore and an insider-trading ring run by a minister's son.

To try to get to grips with the problem The Economist has interviewed politicians, industrialists, bureaucrats, financiers and investigators. Their views, provided on a basis of anonymity, point to a well-established system of graft, partly linked to political funding. Few people think that anyone important will go to jail, but despite this some reckon that the next decade will be less corrupt than the last one.

Petty corruption includes slipping banknotes to the police and to officials to get paperwork done. According to Transparency International, an organisation that tracks corruption, 54% of Indians say they paid a bribe in the last year, compared with 44% in Nigeria and 36% in Indonesia. Jobs with opportunities for extortion are sought after and a slice of the profits funnelled up the ranks.

Firms offer "speed money" to avoid red tape. "Everybody pays," admits an executive at a firm known for its good governance. A billionaire says, "it is hard for any business to be fully compliant...When you are dealing with the tax people or the environmental people the consequences for the business become very severe-they can hold money in escrow or imprison you." But it is the boom in large-scale rent-seeking-the use of wealth to distort the allocation of resources from which more wealth could be produced-that has opened up a new era of corruption.

In the old days graft was almost quaint. Before the liberalisation that began in 1991 firms faced the "licence-permit Raj", a regime of rules and quotas that was more easily navigated with the help of carefully deployed smallish bribes. Occasionally there were big scandals. In the 1980s allegations that a $50m kickback had been paid on an Indian arms deal by the Swedish firm Bofors engulfed the government of Rajiv Gandhi.

But India's entry into the global economy created unprecedented opportunities for dishonesty. Property became a multi-billion-dollar business governed by officials paid a pittance. The value of mining licences soared along with commodity prices. Privatisations and public-private partnerships became common, and prone to manipulation. At the same time the elite cadre of the civil service, the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), has decayed. A top officer puts the clean and motivated proportion of its 5,000 members at just 10%-and adds that at the other end of the spectrum 15% are "scum".

The Economist has looked at three ways of quantifying the profits from rent-seeking. The first is to tally the money made from scams, based on estimates from officials and investigators. (Our calculation uses realised profits, or the present value of anticipated profits. We use the low end of some official estimates.) The second approach, which is applied more widely in our new index of cronyism (see article), measures the relative performance of billionaires in industries, such as mining and property, that are prone to rent-seeking relative to those in other lines of business (see chart 1). A final method tracks the relative performance of an index of politically linked listed firms constructed by Saurabh Mukherjea of Ambit Capital, a broker (see chart 2). An average of the approaches suggests the gains from rent-seeking over the past decade peaked at about $80 billion. That is equivalent to 7% of the stockmarket's value today. It is worth noting, though, that the share of GDP for the rent-seeking billionaires and the premium on politically connected firms are no longer what they were in the boom years.

Not all of the gains were achieved through corruption. But if one were to assume politicians and officials got an average cut of 5-15%-a rate consistent with the trail investigators have found in the iron-ore and telecoms scams, then total bribes paid would amount to $4 billion-12 billion.

Many bribes, like much else in India, can be paid for in cash, which can be deposited at banks using "Benami", or nominee, accounts, or accounts in servants' names. Gold is another possibility; there is a lot of it about, with India's bullion imports since 2002 worth 14% of current GDP. Property deals are also used to launder cash-even legitimate deals often have a cash component.

Funnelling funds

On big deals the obliging politicians and officials may get a stake in the business. India's audit agency believes land deals near Delhi Airport involved firms that were fronts for politicians. By using layers of legal shells politicians can be made beneficiaries without being easily traced. Taking the trail offshore can add still more concealment.

In an office in Delhi an anti-corruption tsar is looking at a piece of paper. On it is the name of a fixer in Singapore who is active in the Indian city of Hyderabad and who funnels illicit funds offshore. The official says there are about 25-50 such individuals, known as "settlers", serving India, mainly from Singapore, Dubai and London. The scale of activity is "immense". By cross-checking India's trade statistics with those of its trading partners, Global Financial Integrity, a research organisation, estimates that gross illicit outflows from India have averaged $52 billion a year since 2007.

One way of transferring bribes offshore is "mis-invoicing". For example, a firm in India controlled by a politician will buy diamonds or software from a party abroad at inflated prices before importing them. The excess profit booked by that second party, also controlled by the politician, is pocketed outside India-tax-free and with little risk of investigation if it is a shell company domiciled in a free-trade zone such as Dubai. Mr Singh found widespread mis-invoicing in the iron-ore scam.

How much Indian money is stashed abroad? India's tax authorities have a database of offshore-account holders given to them by the German government, but appear to be under political pressure not to release it. "They're sitting on it," says the anti-graft tsar in Delhi.

The ex-manager of a unit serving Indians at a large Swiss bank says the firm had $10 billion of assets from resident Indians and a market share of 10-20%. The Russian and Far East desks were much busier. (This fits with the finding that Indians buy just 3% of "prime" London property, a popular investment with plutocrats.) The banker adds that India's big political clans may have been dealt with by a separate wing of the bank. Adding in an estimate for them, he calculates that the offshore assets of Indian residents held in all global banks as between $100 billion and $150 billion.

How does that fit with estimates of illicit wealth overseas? The anti-corruption boss says his agency has identified assets of $2.3 billion, mainly held through trails of offshore shell companies and accounts in tax havens, and that his understaffed agency tracks about 5-10% of such activity-suggesting a total pot of $23 billion-45 billion.

Bringing it all back home

Some of this comes back to India through mis-invoicing. But wealth is also "round tripped" back under the guise of foreign investment. An insight into round-tripping, in this case of legitimate funds, came in a 2012 British legal case involving UBS in London. Its bankers ran a scheme in which $250m of offshore funds belonging to Reliance ADAG, an Indian firm, were invested in one of its subsidiaries in India via a vehicle in Mauritius. The London tribunal judged that this broke Indian rules. (In a 2012 statement Reliance said that no action had been brought against it in London and that the matter had been dealt with and closed by Indian regulators.) Lawyers for a banker involved argued the practice was "widespread". India's regulators say they have since cracked down.

When the bribes come home they undoubtedly enrich some Indian politicians. A 2008 telecoms scandal saw a minister allocating spectrum on iffy grounds. The government turned a blind eye. "We knew some of the decisions taken by him were blatantly illegal...[and] done to raise large amounts of money," says another minister of that time who was close to the prime minister. The more pernicious danger is that the political system as a whole depends on the bribes. For one thing they seem to provide a significant source of election funds; for another the big parties increasingly need to court small parties in order to rule, and allowing them to get rich when in power seems to be one of the ways that this is done (it was a factor in the telecoms case).

To hold a rally at which Sonia Gandhi, the head of Congress, appears costs up to $330,000. The buses, hats and sound-system all have to be paid for. To run a credible campaign in a seat in a parliamentary election costs between $300,000 and $3m per candidate, depending on the importance of the seat and the competition. Armies of volunteers have to be paid, and booze and SIM cards given out.

Add in state and local elections and the total cost of politics in India between 2010 and 2015 for all parties will be $5 billion, calculates the top Congress politician, which would work out as a substantial fraction of the estimated bribe pool. Strict campaign-finance rules mean most of this has to be raised illegally.

A third of campaign funds are raised centrally by parties and the rest locally. Parties have arms-length treasurers who act as their bankers. Those handling bribes take a cut for themselves.

Illegal party funding is at the heart of corruption. But politicians are in denial, says the Congress bigwig. "Nobody wants to admit that they have taken money. It is a completely hypocritical system." New laws, for example a Lokpal Act passed in December to create a new anti-graft agency, just add to the huge weight of legislation dating back to the 1980s that is cynically passed and not enforced.

There is certainly a lack of will to enforce rules. A second anti-graft boss cheerfully admits that prosecutions take at least a decade; in the past three years only 25 top civil servants have been investigated and none has lost his job. Regulators say that if they act against the interests of industrialists they can get an earful from politicians.

But there is a more optimistic view. When it comes to low-level graft, reformers hope that technology can eliminate the middlemen who seek to benefit. Putting train reservations online has removed a lot of opportunities for bribery. Then there are chunks of the economy that are already pretty free of graft, such as consumer goods and the technology business; in the past few years it is largely in those sectors, more than in the rent-seeking ones, that billionaires have made hay.

Some institutions are clean, too. They include the central bank and the Supreme Court, which on March 10th introduced rules to speed up trials of politicians. The banking system, despite its bad debts, has not been captured by tycoons as were those in South-East Asia and Russia in the 1990s. In February a chunk of radio spectrum was auctioned off smoothly, a process that makes impropriety harder.

And the messy response to a decade of graft, though inefficient, has started to change financial incentives. Sporadic court actions-mining suspended in some areas, some spectrum allocations being cancelled-have made rent-seeking less profitable, and foreign investors have begun to shun such sectors. Ambit's index of politically linked firms, which did well in the late 2000s, has underperformed badly since. India has only a middling rank on our cronyism index.

Perhaps market forces and a backlash from voters will turn the tide. But even if they don't, citizens like Mr Singh, the insect-expert turned mafia-buster, will fight on. He doesn't carry a phone lest it betrays his location; he has a bodyguard, and police guard his home. But in an office decorated with posters of plants the ferocity he brought to his fight can still boil over. The iron-ore scam made him feel "so angry that I told myself either you do something or you die," he says. "What will I be doing in three years' time? I am going to pursue this. I am going to bring it to a logical end."

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IN THE early hours of February 20th 2010 Uday Vir Singh, an Indian forestry officer, bluffed his way past a private militia guarding a dusty port called Belekeri. For months suspicious-looking convoys of trucks had been thundering across India to the port's quays on the country's west coast, just south of the Goan beach where the super-spy mayhem which opened "The Bourne Supremacy" was filmed.

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Times Now Editor Arnab Goswami mind blowing speech on Corruption in India

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