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Changing Patterns of Political Leadership in India
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2009
Extract
FOR many centuries the pattern of political leadership in India was two-tiered. At the top was “the Government” — what I will call macropolitical leadership — surrounded with pomp and magnificence and all the trappings of wealth and power. Macropolitical leadership changed hands with some frequency, and in modern times was often foreign, first Mughal and then British. In general the macropolitical leadership impinged little on the lives of the ordinary Indian. It was remote from the village and interfered seldom in village affairs, except to raise revenue and maintain a relative law and order. Village India had its own ancient pattern of leadership — what I will call micropolitical leadership. The village was a highly traditional and rigid social and political unit. The higher castes within the village combined social, economic, political, and ritual pre-eminence, and the lower castes tended to be dependent on them to a greater or lesser degree. The Indian village was a complicated network of precedence and relationship, but political authority was concentrated in the leaders of the dominant castes. These men were concerned with settling disputes between communities in the village, protecting the village and its lands from outsiders, and gaining concessions for the village from the macropolitical leadership.
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- Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1966
References
1 Disputes within a particular caste or community would often be settled by a panchayat or council of the concerned caste or community.
2 Nehru, Jawaharlal, An Autobiography (Bombay, 1962), pp. 65–66Google Scholar.
3 Professor Morris-Jones's, W. H. phrase. See his essay “India's Political Idioms” in Philips, C. H. (ed.), Politics and Society in India (London, 1963)Google Scholar. Also Chapter II of his The Government and Polities of India (London, 1964)Google Scholar.
4 See, for instance, A Study of Panchayats: Programme Evaluation Organization of the Planning Commission, New Delhi.
5 Although there is no “locality rule” in the Indian Constitution, the Representation of the People Act, 1951, Section 5(c) lays down that a candidate for a seat in a state legislature must be a voter within the state. In fact, in the majority of cases a Member of the Legislative Assembly's home is within his constituency.
6 This point is made as regards Bengal in Weiner, Myron, “Changing Patterns of Political Leadership in West Bengal” in Pacific Affairs XXXII (09, 1959)Google Scholar.
7 In Madras Legislative Assembly, out of 206 elected members, 17 are literate, 72 have schooling up to the middle school, 67 have matriculation or its equivalent, and fifty hold one or more degrees. (Madras Government Report on the 1962 General Election.) This means that while the educational standard of MLAs is still well above that of the State, it is lower than in previous Assemblies.
8 See Tinker, Hugh, India and Pakistan — A Political Analysis (New York, 1962), p. 135Google Scholar.
9 A proposal to introduce Hindi as an alternative medium for the examinations in 1965 has not so far been implemented, but the declared policy of the Congress Working Committee is that as soon as possible candidates should be able to write in any of the fourteen “national languages” of the Eighth Schedule to the Constitution, or in English. Such a proposal presents considerable practical difficulties in moderation and so forth. It also threatens a “regionalization” of the Public Services which could have very dangerous consequences.