Unrest in India

In response to “Subcontinent Ultranationalists May Rule,” Commentary, Jan. 11:

James Chad may very well be true in his prognostication that the Bharatiya Janata Party may form the government after the next elections in 1996. However, Chad ignores various other political factors.

First, the Hindu fundamentalism, or fanaticism, is merely one of the forces, perhaps the largest one politically, rocking the constitutional stability in India. Militancy in Kashmir and terrorism in Punjab are also due to the politics of religion. There are some of us who feel that the territory of India as we know it today may not be the same by the turn of the century if the separationists win in these states.

Further, Kashmir and Punjab are not the only troubled zones. Assam in the northeast is still a flash point of ethnic politics between the “native” Assamese and the “alien” Bengalis. The tribal population in the Bihar/West Bengal borders are demanding a territory to reflect their identity.

Should any of these religious or ethnic fundamentalists score major victories, the long dormant linguistic differences will surely crop up once more. The Tamils, who are weary of imposition of Hindi as the national language, could feel encouraged to once again raise the issue of autonomy, which they did quite violently in 1965.

The point is that the politics of BJP is happening in the middle of various ethnic, religious and linguistic differences. To extrapolate the success of the BJP into 1996 is therefore a very difficult task. However, given all these variables, I would agree with Chad that the loosening of these knots will have major repercussions on the whole of South Asia.

A final note: Foreigners, and many Indians too, always tend to underestimate the stability of India’s political system. When Indira Gandhi was assassinated, the foreign media immediately started discussing the possibilities of the military taking over in a swift move. But that danger to democracy never arose. Similarly, the system could overcome all these problems and move to another equilibrium. Hence, we may be underestimating, yet again, the strength of a secular democracy in India.

K. SRIRAM

Los Angeles