INDIA BRIEFING.

A Transformative Fifty Years. Edited by Marshall Bouton and Phillip Oldenburg. Armonk (New York): M. E. Sharpe. 1999. xi, 324 pp. US $69.95, cloth, ISBN 0-7656-0388-1; US $29.95, paper ISBN 0-7656-03390-X.

Occasional surveys often become wearying accounts of what happened in the reviewed period. A lot of trees get examined but we rarely see the shape of the wood. This volume is not like that. The editors have done a commendable job of parcelling out duties and encouraging their contributors to be both up-to-date with research and diligent in trying to identify larger patterns in recent events. The editors have also taken on a grander brief: to present a retrospect of the past fifty years.

I especially liked the essays of Vinay Lal on "History and Politics," Yogendra Yadav on "Politics" and D. L. Sheth on "Society." Lal leads an efficient tour of history writing in India since the 19th century before settling to his theme -- the history wars of the post-independence period, especially of the 1990s. He introduces the contestants -- "secular" historians and their "Hindu-chauvinist" adversaries -- and describes two of the battlegrounds: i) the debate over whether the ancient Aryans came from outside India and whether they ate beef and ii) the significance of Muslim mosques standing on foundations that may once have been Hindu temples. These struggles may sound esoteric. In fact, of course, they brim with consequences today. Some of the "collateral damage" in 1992 was the mob destruction of the Babari Masjid -- "the disputed structure," as one party calls it--and six ensuing weeks of rioting. These history wars will become even more relevant to India's future, as the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the dominant force in India's coalition government, inserts its followers into cultural institutions and its curriculum into education systems.

Yadav's essay on "Politics" similarly provides an effective survey before settling into an analysis of Indian politics in the 1990s. He suggests three periods in post-1947 politics. The first period embraces the Nehru years, from 1947 to the mid-1960s, when an elite-dominated Congress Party operated with few real challenges. In the second period, from the general elections in 1967 to about 1980, the Congress shook, shuddered and fragmented as social groups new to institutional politics discovered the benefits of participation. Yadav interprets these populist political parties and rustic politicians as examples of a democratic system opening up to the reality of its citizenry (p. 16). He sees the third period, dating from the early 1980s, as having three characteristics. First, the so-called "other backward castes" (OBCs) -- Hindu castes of middle to lower status, not including "untouchables" and comprising roughly fifty percent of India's population - increasingly demanded recognition and advantage. Second, upper-caste Hindus in the BJP attempted to build an "all-Hindus-together" political alliance by directing resentment against Muslim monuments, allegedly built on Hindu shrines. Third, from 1991, India began the formal abandonment of "socialism" and the halting move towards untrammelled capitalism.

Yadav points out that, in the 1990s, voter participation has increased among the poorest and lowest status of India's people so that they now vote in higher proportions than the better-off. He sees this as a "participatory upsurge associated with the journey of the idea of democracy" (p. 25). The political system, he suggests, is perceived as a mechanism by which the poor have a chance, however remote, to improve their condition. An estimated three million Indians hold elected office at any one time, and this means well over ten million people have contested elections in the past ten years (p. 31). Whether the Indian state can produce prosperity sufficient to meet the expectations of politicized poor people is the question Yadav leaves us with. His own answer is soberly optimistic.

D. L. Sheth on "Society" can be read as an extension of Yadav's "Politics." A little laboriously at first, Sheth sets out to illustrate how "caste" as a social institution has provided the ingredients for political organization. He points out that, today, "castes survive as microcommunities based on kinship sentiments," but "they no longer relate to each other as units of a ritual hierarchy" (p. 106). He argues that, as politicians sought ways to win votes, it was necessary for "caste," which provided people with a sense of identity, to have "interests" fused to it. Thus constellations of "castes" with similar interests found names, e.g., "other backward castes," and set out demands, e.g., reservation of jobs in government service. As members of middle and lower castes prospered, they sought to be recognized as part of an expanding Indian middle class. The fierce contests over the "reservation" of jobs for Other Backward Castes is, in Sheth's view, an example of lower status groups seeking recognition of middle-class status - a government job.

I found the other three essays in the volume - on economy, culture and foreign policy -- less stimulating. They travel old ground a little laboriously. The 54-page chronology of events during 1995-97 is a handy reference, if one can remember it is there, but I found the four pages of suggestions for further reading skimpy and idiosyncratic. More editorial effort there and less on the chronology would have enhanced the value of the book.

Overall, however, this volume succeeds in combining narrative and information with intelligent interpretation. Readers thus get an effective vehicle by which to come abreast of India in the 1990s.