With the coming of Independence, Delhi retained its status as the capital city, and — for all India's federal structure — as the centre of politics, playing a part in most of the major political dramas of the last 50 or so years.
At midnight on 15 August 1947 (Independence Day itself) the new Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru rose in the central chamber of Sansad Bhavan to formally take power of independent India. His stirring speech is one of the most famous made by any Indian politician:"Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom".
Later that day he addressed a huge crowd (estimated at one million people) from the ramparts of the Red Fort, a tradition continued by all prime ministers since, along with the raising of the Indian tricolor on the Lahore Gate.
However, amid the celebrations at the end of British rule, the tragedy of Partition was being played out on the Indo-Pakistan border. This huge exchange of populations — up to 13 million people — was to change the face of Delhi radically. What had been a predominantly Muslim city became the destination of a large number of refugees from the Punjab, many of them Sikhs, fleeing the communal slaughter of up to one million people as they tried to cross from one new country to the other. If there were Punjabi refugees arriving, then Muslim families from Delhi were leaving for Pakistan. While Delhi retains strongholds of Muslim culture, in Old Delhi and around Nizamuddin's tomb, their former wealth and strength is greatly diminished. Delhi's Punjabi population, on the other hand, is both very visible and, on the whole, prosperous. Many of the city's taxi, bus and auto drivers are members of the Punjabi comunity, as are the emerging wealthy middle class businesspeople.
The early years of India's freedom were marked by intense political activity. The most pressing task facing the new rulers was how to bring the princely states, particularly those of Rajasthan, Hyderabad and Kashmir, within the Union. This task was handed over to Nehru's Home Minister, Sardar Vallabhi Patel. His sympathies as a right-wing Hindu — he had infamously called for the sacking of Muslim civil servants and the removal of protection to Muslims during the Partition riots —and his not inconsiderable abilities as a diplomat, endeared him to the feudal Hindu rulers of Rajasthan. By the early 1950s, all the Raj asthani princely states had been abolished. This assimilation was not so easily acheived in the southern state of Hyderabad, ruled by the Muslim Nizam. He was determined either to retain his independence or to join with Pakistan. It was not until 13 September 1948 that riots in the city gave Nehru the excuse to send troops in to take control. Further problems were posed by the ruler of Kashmir. This Muslim majority state was ruled by a Hindu maharaja, who showed a preference for accession to India. This prompted the Pakistani army to invade in October 1948. Immediately, Nehru sent in the Indian army and pushed the Pakistanis back to what is roughly the present line-of-control. India and Pakistan have been to war twice more; in 1965 over Kashmir and 1971 over the newly independent Bangladesh.
The beginning of 1948 had been marked by another shocking event. On 30 January, Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated by a Hindu nationalist in the grounds of the Birla House on what is now Tees January Marg (literally, 30 January Road) in New Delhi. His assassin, Vinayak Nathuram Godse, had been incensed by his tolerance to-wards people of all religions, expecially India's Muslims, throughout the communal riots that had followed Partition. Ghodse's links with the RSS (a Hindu nationalist organisation), who had bitterly opposed Gandhi's insistence that the money owed to Pakistan under the terms of Partition be paid, discredited the Hindu right-wing for many years.
Gandhi's death not only shocked many people, but united the nation in grief. His cremation procession attracted crowds of millions as the flower-covered hearse drove to Raj Ghat on the banks of the Jamuna where there are memorials to Gandhi and all of India's former Prime Ministers.
On Nehru's death in 1964 rule passed, briefly, to Lal Bahadur Shastri, before Nehru's daughter, Indira Gandhi, took the reins of power in 1966. Her rise to the top of the Congress Party had been rapid and she was, initially, highly popular, particularly after the 1971 Bangladesh war. However, by 1974 corruption scandals within Congress and the poor state of the Indian economy had severely reduced her support. The calls for her resignation grew stronger, until on 26 June 1975 she declared a State of Emergency, suspending all elections and civil liberties, and imposing strict censorship.
During the Emergency, she imposed stringent economic measures — which did have the effect of cutting inflation —but she also imprisoned her political opponents and handed over consider-able power to her greatly disliked son, Sanjay. He was responsible for the infamous compulsory sterilization campaign, in which men, officially with more than two children, were picked up from the streets and operated on in mobile clinics. This was disproportionately directed at the poor, especially Muslims, as was his widespread demolition of housing in Old Delhi, which was often acompanied by violence against the inhabitants.
Indira called elections in March 1977 in which she was comprehensively beaten by the coalition Janta Party under Moraji Desai. This government was riven by ideological faultlines and, when elections were held again in January 1980, Indira Gandhi and the Congress Party were returned to power.
However, Indira's jubilation was cut short. Her son Sanjay was killed in a flying accident over Delhi's Safdarjang Aerodrome on 23 June. Though very few tears were shed by those who remembered Sanjay's activities during the Emergency, Indira was distraught. With Sanjay — whom she had been grooming as her successor — gone, she turned her attention to her younger son, Rajiv. He had been happily working as an airline pilot, and had shown no inclination to enter politics. Initially, he resisted the calls for him to stand for parliament, but by June 1981 he had been elected to Sanjay's old seat. By 1984 he found himself leading the country after his mother's death.
There had been calls by militant Sikhs for an independent Punjab, Khalistan, since 1947. By the early 1980s, these had coalesced around a charismatic leader, Sant Jaranil Singh Bhindranwale. He had been used by Indira to split the power of the Sikh party, the Akali Dal, who had opposed Indira throughout the Emergency. When she was re-elected in 1980, it had been assumed that support for the Sant (Sikh religious leader) would decline.
This was a severe miscalculation. Increasing violence against Hindus —and non-Khalistani Sikhs —led to severe communal rioting in early 1982, and in June, Bhindranwale and his supporters occupied the holiest Sikh shrine, the Golden Temple in Amritsar. The situation in the Punjab deteriorated rapidly, and the unrest spread to the large Punjabi population of Delhi. By May 1984, Indira determined to act. She sent in the army, and between 30 May and 6 June around 1,000 of Bhindranwale's supporters and 300 Indian soldiers were killed, and the shrine heavily damaged.
This desecration of their holiest shrine deeply shocked the Sikhs. On the 31 October, Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her two Sikh bodyguards as she was walking in the grounds of her bungalow at 1 Safdarjang Road in Delhi. The brutal anti-Sikh riots that subsequently swept the capital killed over 2,000 people. The Delhi police stood by and watched as the killing continued and the new Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi, ordered in the army. It was later discovered that much of the violence in Delhi had been orchestrated by Congress-led gangs.
Rajiv Gandhi's fate was to be the same as his mother's. In 1991 he was blown up by a Tamil suicide bomber opposed to India's intervention in the civil war in Sri Lanka.
With the death of Rajiv, the rule of the Nehru dynasty appeared to be over. The next Prime Minister was Narasimha Rao, a veteran Congressman from Andhra Pradesh. It was during the period of Rao's rule that the economic liberalisation policies that had been started by Indira and Sanjay really took hold. Rao's government was marked by a series of corruption scandals (he has recently been sentenced to three years in prison on corruption charges) and an already disillusioned Indian public be-gan to look for alternatives to Congress.
The main beneficiary was the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party), a right-wing Hindu nationalist party with links to other Hindu organisations, including the RSS. The BJP had grown out of the Janata Party that had won the 1977 elections. Its next taste of power came in 1989 as part of the minority government of V.P. Singh. This goverment fell when the leader of the BJP, L.K. Advani, embarked on a countrywide yatra (pilgimage) to raise support for the destruction of the Babri Masjid (mosque) hi in Ayodhya, said to have been built on the site of the birthplace of Rama.
Advani was arrested before he could approach the shrine, but in 1992 hundreds of members of militant Hindu organisations descended on Ayodhya and tore down the mosque. This led to some of the worst communal rioting (this time largely targeted at Muslims) the country has known. These shocking scenes dented the electorate's enthusiasm for the BJP, and it was only in Delhi that they held on to power — although Delhi's current Chief Minister, Sheila Dikshit, is from the Congress Party.
However, they soon regained ground, and when a general election was held in May 1996, the BJP emerged as the largest party. They were kept out of government by a coalition of regional parties known as the United Front. The tables were turned at the next election in March 1998 when, under Atal Behari Vajpayee, the BJP again received the most seats and formed its own coalition III government — which included some parties who previously supported the United Front, notably the (Telugu Desam Party) from Andhra Pradesh.
Vajpayee soon courted controversy by conducting nuclear test at Pokhran in the Thar desert, bringing worldwide condemnation, retaliatory tests from Pakistan and sanctions from the United States. There has also been a worrying rise in attacks on minority religious communities, especially Christians. This first BJP-led government was brought down in 1999 when Jayalitha Jayaram — the ex-Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu and another politician sentenced to 3 years in prison for corruption — walked out of the coalition.
The BJP strengthened its position at the 1999 polls and forged a new coalition, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA). Continuing economic liberalisation, they have discarded their support for svadeshi (Indian-made goods), and face escalating unrest in the troubled state of Kashmir.
The recent reappearance of the Nehru dynasty in the form of Sonia Gandhi, Rajiv's widow, as the leader of the Congress Party has attracted some sup-port, and, at present, Congress appear to be the most credible challenger to the BJP.
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