Review

Reviewed Work(s): Democracy and Authoritarianism in South Asia: A Comparative and

Historical Perspective by Ayesha Jalal
Review by: CRISPIN BATES
Source: History , July 1996, Vol. 81, No. 263 (July 1996), pp. 406-408
Published by: Wiley

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/24423318

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406 REVIEWS AND SHORT NOTICES

Nehru's determination to avoid commitment of India's military

any power bloc, which made a mockery of British ambition to
inchoate Commonwealth into a durable military force, Britain and its
bereft of empire, seem in the cruel light of hindsight suddenly to h
themselves amateur poker players bluffing on losing cards. Britain c
the strategic ambitions of neither Asian power. Military equipment o
Britain was usually obsolescent, if not unserviceable, available onl
factory amounts, and often delayed by bureaucracy and the shifts of
policy. Both powers would soon look elsewhere.
Dr Wainwright, in what appears to have been an extension of h
thesis, in effect covers the period from the aftermath of the First W
the very eve of the Suez crisis of 1956. He sketches in British effort
by enlightened foresight, to make India self-sufficient in basic milit
facture, in the hope - sustained even after independence - that I
remain a major participant in Britain's schemes of world power
military alliance, and of course, a major market for sophisticat
weaponry. His narrative identifies with apt and amusing quotatio
reviews of Indian military potential and imperial investment, culmin
1938 Chatfield committee, whose recommendations of limited self-su
were so soon to be overwhelmed by events and the Japanese on
south-east Asia. Dr Wainwright appears to believe that the near-suffi
India achieved in resisting the Japanese assault enabled it to steer
arms, and the latent entangling alliances, offered by Britain after in
Dr Singh concentrates on the period from British withdrawal to the
she offers none the less much the better value (neither book is within
student's means). She handles her sources confidently in a cogent
account of Britain's decline includes a study of the Eisenhower
Abilene not apparently used by Dr Wainwright. The latter has not eli
breathlessness of style and lapses of sense which bespeak a thesis
against cruel time-limits. Dr Singh's knowledge of the area and its po
economic evolution is deployed with easy fluency, where her rival oc
flounders. Did 'British leaders' (sic) really believe, as Dr Wainwri
(p. 118), that Travancore would be available as a territorial base fo
imperial defence strategy outside independent India's control? N
given, but a glance at a map might suggest caution. Dr Wainwrig
impression that the ice is thin.
Wilberfoss by York JOHN RIDDY

Democracy and Authoritarianism in South Asia: A Comparative and H

Perspective. By Ayesha Jalal. Cambridge University Press. 1995. xiii 4
£40.00 (hb), £16.95 (pb).
The highly divergent fortunes of the various nations of south Asi
achieving independence from colonial rule has long been a puzzle to h
and political scientists alike. This superb comparative analysis o
Pakistan and Bangladesh attempts to resolve the main elements of th
drum by examining the different outcomes for the three countries, poli
and economically, since 1947. Pakistan, of course, failed to evolve a
democratic constitution in the years immediately following indepe
© The Historical Association 1996

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 AFRICA, ASIA AND AUSTRALIA 407

resulting in the establishment of military rule and ultimately the break-up of the
country and the creation of the separate state of Bangladesh in 1971. This
experience is often contrasted with that of India, which has not only managed
to continue with its parliamentary democracy since 1951, apart from a hiccup
between 1975 and 1977, but has also enjoyed far better internal security and
economic development in the past few decades (excepting the recent troubles in
Punjab and Kashmir). Ayesha Jalal carefully steers her way around the
conventional and overly simplistic explanations for these differences, while at
the same time pointing out how a great deal of the political heritage of India
and Pakistan is shared in common, more indeed than separates them. Thus,
although elected politicians have tended to be in the ascendancy in India, they
have partly secured their position by entering into an alliance with the highly
authoritarian bureaucracy that was one of the main legacies of colonialism. In
Pakistan the civil service was much weaker but the authoritarianism of the
military, which took its place, cannot be always said to have offered to the
ordinary citizen an experience of government that is so very different.
Jalal points out quite how far removed was the centralized state of modern
India from the ideals of Mahatma Gandhi and his followers, and argues
convincingly that the failure of formal democracy in Pakistan cannot be
attributed solely to personal inadequacies or a lack of vision among its leaders.
Pointing to the enormous fiscal and economic disadvantages borne by inde
pendent Pakistan, she questions whether the Indian leadership would have
performed any better at institutionalizing representative democracy than their
supposedly less able counterparts in Pakistan. At the same time she casts doubt
on the democratic credentials of the leaders of the Indian National Congress, an
organization in which, according to Indian traditions, she states, politics was
always highly personalized and prone to corruption. The Indian constitution of
1951, Jalal points out, was an unacceptable patchwork of 'myths and denials'
containing highly undemocratic elements, such as powers of preventive deten
tion for up to three months and sweeping powers given to the president to
suspend elected state governments. Added to this, the 'first past the post'
electoral system, borrowed from Britain, has made it possible for the Congress
party to hold on to power despite often gaining little more than 30 per cent of
the popular vote. In a country of India's size this has meant that large sections
of the Indian public have been for a long time effectively unrepresented, the
flourishing of violent and separatist movements among regional minorities in
recent decades being one of the consequences. The other main consequence has
been the complete failure of, indeed the incredibly low priority given by
government to, education and welfare provision. This conspicuous lack of
attempts to alleviate the condition of the Indian poor, despite the burgeoning
prosperity of many parts of the country, Jalal argues to be one of the most
obvious indications of the undemocratic nature of the Indian parliamentary
system. That this should be so is hardly surprising, as she points out, since
almost two-thirds of the 1950 draft of the constitution reproduced clauses in the
colonial Government of India Act 1935, as well as replicating its overall
structure.

Pakistan experienced rampant corruption and political incoherence afte

1947 on such a scale as almost to invite the military, as the most coheren
institution, to take over the reins of governance. Undoubtedly Pakistan di
© The Historical Association 1996

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408 REVIEWS AND SHORT NOTICES

have a partly 'top-heavy' post-colonial structure, with a militar

disproportionate to the needs and resources of the country.
however, Jalal maintains, does not account for continuing military d
Instead, she argues, drawing upon the insights of her earlier book Th
Martial Rule on Pakistan's political economy of defence, the expl
largely in external factors, in particular the unique position Pa
occupied for the past half-century, with borders proximate to not on
superpowers, the Soviet Union and China, and another with India
superpower. In this vulnerable position the resources of the military
be adequate, and by entering into a strategic alliance with the USA
stage (unlike India, which was able at least to pretend to be 'non
Pakistan effectively stymied the development of democratic po
subordinated it to cold war concerns. In this context, she conclud
coincidence that democratic politics have only begun to function (thr
governments now having held office in succession since the death of
ul Haq) after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The contrasts are thus not as simple, Jalal argues, as we are sometim
believe. As she weaves her analysis around the growth of 'populis
the subcontinent in the 1970s, a period of'running furiously on the s
and of 'mirages in the sand', and the subsequent decade of author
formally democratic rule, she illustrates her arguments not only wit
appropriate examples but with wit and a pithy turn of phrase. In wh
one of the most quotable books on south Asian politics publishe
years, Jalal consistently addresses her subject with originality, an
her conclusions carefully and with well-chosen words. Throughou
she emphasizes that 'the ritual of voting cannot be confused with the
achievement of substantive democracy resting on the social and economic
rights of citizenship', in which respect she clearly shows all of the nations of
south Asia, including India, 'the world's largest democracy' as it is often
described, to have enormous deficits remaining. Above all, the book is to be
commended for the rigour with which it undermines commonplace misconcep
tions of south Asian politics, particularly concerning the recent growth of
communalism and fundamentalism in the subcontinent, which she locates in
the failures of respective governments to reconcile their assertions of monolithic
sovereignty with the expectations, real enough, of equal rights of citizenship: a
product of economic inequalities and strategic pressures, not solely of the
mistaken choices of political idealists. Jalal's prescription for this complaint is
'a decentering of the structural and ideational features of the nation-state', a
task that she admits may be a tall order for 'the hollow carcass' that currently
serves as political discourse in subcontinental south Asia, but one that is surely
preferable to the 'exercise in madness' that 'the guardians of sanity in the
subcontinent have tragically resigned themselves to go on repeating'. Provok
ing discussion as much as it informs the reader, as a succinct and thorough
going introduction to the recent political, economic and social history of south
Asia this book cannot be more highly recommended. Since it has wisely been
published by CUP simultaneously in hardback and paperback editions it is
likely very quickly, and deservedly, to become a standard text in undergraduate
courses.

University of Edinburgh CRISPIN BATES

© The Historical Association 1996

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