Book Review: India: The Most Dangerous Decades, India and the United States
| Author | Jitendra Mohan |
| Published date | 01 June 1962 |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070206201700232 |
| Date | 01 June 1962 |
| Subject Matter | Book Review |
BOOK
REVIEws
189
INDIA:
Tnu
MOST
DANGEROUS
DECADES.
Can
the
Nation
Hold
Together?
By
Selig
S.
Harrison.
1960.
(Princeton:
Princeton
University
Press.
Toronto:
S.
J.
Reginald
Saunders.
x,
350pp.
$7.50.)
INDIA AND
THs
UNITED
STATES.
Edited
with
an
introduction
by
Selig
S.
Harrison.
1961.
(New
York:
Macmillan
Co.
Galt:
Brett-Macmillan
Ltd.
vi,
244pp.
5.95.)
Most
Western
studies
of
contemporary India
are
concerned
to
establish,
and
to
emphasize,
her
as
the
democratic counterpoise
to
Communist
China.
This
often leads
their
authors
into
over-simplifying
facts
and
confusing issues.
The
presence
of a
strong
leadership
which
is
at
the
same
time
responsive to
public opinion,
of
an
opposition
that
is
articulate
if
not
very
effective,
of
liberal institutions
and
virtues
in
general,
are
argued
in
favour
of
India's
being
a
healthy
democracy,
and
thus
a
prototype
of
political
and
economic
development
in
the
under-
privileged
parts
of
the
world.
By
the
same
token
China
is
held
up
as
an
example
of
what
a
"free"
country
should
not
be.
In
both
approaches,
political
forces
are
evaluated
in
a
socio-economic
vacuum.
Allied
with
this
is
an
outlook
which views
democracy as
a
form
of
government
rather
than
as
a form
of
society.
The
supreme
merit
of
Mr.
Harrison's
book
is
its
complete
freedom
from
this
narrow
and superficial
preoccupation
with
political
externals.
The
burden
of
his
weighty
argument
is
that
the
fundamentally
undemo-
cratic
infrastructure
of
her
society
not
merely
comes
in
the
way
of
India's
functioning
as
a
democracy
now,
but
threatens
its
very
survival
in
the
period
following
the
exit
of
the
"tall
leaders"
led
by
Nehru.
In
what
is
a
model
of
painstaking
and
intelligent
scholarship,
the
author,
now
the
managing editor
of
the
New
Republic,
dissects
and
lays
bare
the
social
forces
underlying,
and
undermining, Indian
democracy.
After a hurried
but
competent
survey
of
her
past,
Mr.
Harrison
proceeds
to
analyse
the
strength
and
role
of
the
6lites,
centred
on
language
and
caste,
now
ruling
India.
In
a
detailed
study,
unalarmist
but
perceptive,
of
the
strategy
and
tactics
of
Indian
Communism
that
follows,
he
demonstrates
how even
the
Indian
Communists
are
caught
in
the
trap
of
caste
and
linguistic
obscurantism.
The political
domin-
ance
of
the
Brahmans,
the
economic
dominance
of
the
Marwaris,
and
the
overriding
dominance
of
the
Hindi-speaking
population, keep
frustrating
the
emergence
in
India
of
a
genuine, dynamic,
and
democratically
inclined
nationalism.
Some
kind
of
authoritarianism,
enlightened
enough
also
to
pursue progressive
social
policies,
might
well
be
the
only
insurance
against
her
disintegration
as
a
nation.
In
conclusion, Mr.
Harrison warns
that
the
West
must
reconcile
itself to
a
probable
loss
of
freedom
in
India,
at
least
temporarily,
not
panic
at
the
prospect
or
rush
in
desperation
to
assist
the
"anti-Communist" forces
there,
nor
"condition
friendship
and
assistance
on
the
democratic
commitment
of
a
particular
generation
of
political
leaders"
in
the
country.
This, he
adds,
"in
a
world
alive
with mounting
racial
xeno-
phobia,
is
a most
dangerous
and
short-sighted
gamble."
Perhaps
the
only
fault,
if
such
it
may
be
called,
of
Mr.
Harrison's
book
is
its
excessive
pessimism.
He
is
right
to
insist
that
the
democratic
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