The Role of State Constitutions in Protecting ... - International IDEA

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exact outcome is determined by the dynamics of the interaction between
the rules of the game and the players themselves.
In designing political institutions therefore one must ask the following
question: what are the likely political consequences of the proposed
design? What kind of behavior would it encourages or discourage?
Indian experience of federalism: a success story or
a cautionary tale?
Year 2002 is a particularly inopportune time to foreground the strength of the
Indian system with regards to the minorities. The massacre of nearly 2000
Muslims early this year in the state of Gujarat right under the nose of the state
government (under its benign silence or active connivance, depending on which
version you believe in) has left sensitive Indians rather shamefaced in talking too
loudly about the virtues of Indian democracy. It has served to remind everyone
that the performance of Indian system in political accommodation of social
diversities has left a lot to be desired. But one must not allow the recent
happenings in Gujarat to determine the overall impression of the last fifty years.
The examples from India’s neighbors show that we could have done worse.
No doubt Gujarat is not the only exception in the last fifty years. There are areas
like the state of Jammu and Kashmir and hill states like Nagaland and till recently
Mizoram in the North-East where the principle of democratic governance and the
spirit of tolerance for expressions of diversity were not extended. There were
periods (Mrs. Gandhi's second regime from 1980 to 1984 or the current NDA
government since 1998) which constitute an exception to the general trend. And
there are episodes like the anti-Sikh riots in 1984, the demolition of Babri Masjid
in 1992 and the Gujarat massacre of 2002 that are a blot on the record of Indian
democracy.
On balance, however, the Indian elite have stuck to the “salad bow” rather than
the “melting pot” model of integration of diversities. That is to say, various
communities and aspiring nationalities have not been forced to give up their
identity as a pre-condition of joining the Indian enterprise. They have been
accepted as distinct and different ingredient in the Indian mix of multiculturalism.
And, again on balance, it has worked: legitimate political articulation
of social and regional diversities and the mediation of competing claims through
mechanisms of political accommodation has achieved what consociational
arrangements for power sharing among different social groups do in other
societies. There have been more than one instances of majoritarian excess, but
democratic politics seems to have evolved mechanisms of self-correction in this
respect (the 1997 elections in Punjab and the politics of Uttra Pradesh since 1992
could illustrate that). In retrospect, effective political accommodation of visible
diversities might look like one of the outstanding achievements of Indian
democracy in the last fifty years.
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