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Hardial Bains’ The Last Reform: Breaking with the Past
Five years ago, on the of the 50th anniversary of the formal independence of India and Pakistan, Hardial Bains presented a paper titled “The Last Reform: Breaking With the Past” to a conference on the theme Facing the Future organized by the Committee for People’s Empowerment (now known as Lok Raj Sangathan) in Delhi. Tragically, just nine days later, Hardial Bains passed away, leaving the unedited paper in the form of a thesis. A summary of the paper was published in the proceedings of the Facing the Future Conference and the full paper was released on January 26, 2000, the 50th anniversary of the adoption of the Indian Constitution. The text of the paper is available at the AIPSG web site (www.geocities.com/aipsg). Five years later, on the occasion of the 55th anniversary of the formal independence of India, the thesis advanced by Hardial Bains remains fresh and valid. The need for further elaboration of the thesis has become very urgent in view of the current debate on a vision for India to become a developed country by 2020. The discussion on the theme “The Time is for India” that the AIPSG had launched in October 2000 on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of its founding needs to be picked up and taken to its logical conclusion. The main thesis that Hardial Bains advanced in his historic “last” paper is that all institutions- economic, political, juridical- that have come down to the present (in India and other countries of South Asia) fail to serve the needs of the people, and they are in need of complete overhaul. This will be the last reform as such that the people of India must carry out to march into the future. Playing on the title, "The Last Reform", he argues that the reforms India undertook in 1947 when it gained formal independence did not make a complete break with the colonial past and thus was not a reform at all - in fact, it perpetuated all the colonial institutions that had been imposed on India by the British. He contends that those same institutions have by now become anachronistic even in Britain and Europe where they first arose, incapable of meeting the current needs of their peoples and warranting renewal in those countries as well. But India’s renewal cannot be a copy of anyone else’s. It must emerge afresh out of India’s own political, economic, social and historical conditions while remaining faithful to the experiences of all other peoples. Hardial Bains’s analysis, starting with the founding aims of British presence in the subcontinent sets a new standard for political discussion on India. He begins by establishing how the aim adopted in the founding Charter, granted by Elizabeth I in 1600 to the merchants of London who formed the East India Company, was faithfully adhered to for the next three and half centuries as London’s trading interest in India evolved into India becoming the prime colonial possession of the British empire. That aim was simply that any intercourse with India be found beneficial to the British and even though the economic and political system in Britain underwent fundamental change during these centuries, the relationship with India changed apace such that it was “beneficial” to the British at all times. It was the “benefits” to the British that became primary, while the political, economic, judicial and social institutions brought into India were byproducts, accompanied by oppression, subjugation, exploitation and dependency. The British departure from India in 1947 was not a break with that past, but that too was “beneficial” to them at a time when the global tide had turned against colonial rule. That is why the end of colonial rule in 1947 did not translate into what transpired becoming beneficial instead for the people of India. The old aims had not been undone in the reforms of 1947 and a new aim had not been established. Hardial Bains concludes that the people of India need to carry out the last reform and make a complete break with their colonial past. A past that was constructed on the basis of bringing benefit to the British simply cannot be modified into one that brings benefits to the people. The time to deliberate on the thesis is now when a vision for India in year 2020 is being articulated by the Government of India on the backs of the victims of economic liberalization and privatization, communal carnage and war preparations. Transforming India into a developed country in the next two decades is not wishful thinking or a pipe dream but a necessity, and one where the content of development will have to be to uplift the people and make them the masters of their own land. It is futile to think that such development can take place by the Prime Minister’s economic upliftment schemes or a missile based military force and preserving the foundations on which the current economic, political and judicial systems stand. Hardial Bains’ lasting legacy is the
challenge he has thrown to the future generations to carry out the Last
Reform so that the question of “who benefits” is answered in favor of the
people in a new India. Five years after this thesis was advanced, this call
has acquired historic significance. |