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The Pedagogy of Democracy: Coercive Public Protest in India

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

David H. Bayley
David H. Bayley
Affiliation:
University of Denver
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Extract

Throughout the history of Indian politics in the 20th Century runs a curious and disturbing thread. Both before and after the achievement of independence in 1947, large segments of the Indian populace felt that the institutional means of redress for grievances, frustrations and wrongs—actual or fancied—were inadequate. Since the British withdrawal a fuller panoply of democratic procedures for influencing government has been introduced, but a basic suspicion persists that government is still alien and elite—although now the separation is based upon indigenous social division rather than upon foreign conquest and race. The fact is that the gaining of independence has marked very little change in the use of the more direct and agitational modes of public suasion. The Congress Government has been treated to an almost constant tattoo of demands supported by the same techniques popularized during the independence struggle, such as hunger-strikes, black-flag demonstrations, the courting of arrest, impeding of public business, and violent riots.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 56 , Issue 3 , September 1962 , pp. 663 - 672
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1962

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References

1 Coercive fasting is an apparent exception to this, although its intermediate effect, by building suspense, is to focus the attention of an ever-growing audience on the faster and his demands.

2 For the evidence supporting these assertions see my Ph.D. dissertation, “Violent Agitation and the Democratic Process in India,” Princeton University, 1961Google Scholar.

3 Parliamentary Studies, Vol. 3, No. 7 (July, 1959), pp. 1–3, editorialGoogle Scholar.

4 Indian Civil Liberties Bulletin, October, 1959, p. 7Google Scholar.

5 Times of India, July 13, 1955, p. 1Google Scholar.

6 Times of India, May 20, 1958, p. 9Google Scholar.

7 Ibid., September 6, 1958, p. 1.

8 Ibid., July, 1958.

9 Lok Sabha Debates, 28 May 1956.

10 The Communist Party, in India and elsewhere, has used this tactic for years. See Methvin, Eugene H., “Mob Violence and Communist Strategy,” Orbis (Summer, 1961), pp. 166–81Google Scholar.

11 Sinha, K. K., Towards Pluralistic Society (Calcutta: Writers House, 1957), p. 25Google Scholar.

12 Lok Sabha Debates, 28 May 1956, Col. 9822.

13 Hooligans.

14 Lok Sabha Debates, 13 December 1954, col.

15 Law Commission of India, Fourteenth Report (Ministry of Law, Government of India, 1958), ch. 34, para. 36Google Scholar.

16 Mullik, B. N., “Police Ethics,” Indian Police Journal, October, 1960, pp. 1–10Google Scholar.

17 See, for instance, a comment by the Eastern Economist, November 13, 1959, p. 758Google Scholar, about the police force in New Delhi.

18 Report of the Law Commission, Ch. 34, para. 29–31.

19 Lok Sabha Debates, May 30, 1956, col. 10059.

20 Ibid., December 22, 1953, Col. 2840.

21 Times of India, November 23, 1955, p. 5.

22 Ibid., September 3, 1955, p. 5.

23 Statesman, March 7, 1955, editorial, p. 6.

24 Report of the Law Commission, ch. 40, para. 1.

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