When the Colonial Masters left India in the hands of the Congress leaders in 1947, they invariably taught them an invaluable lesson in power and politics: Divide-and-Rule. A mantra that has governed the political landscape of India for years to come with Congress being its top practitioner.
It wasn’t surprising, after all! After all, even the Government of India Act, which was passed by the British Parliament in 1919 actually spoke at length of the communally-divided electorate system prevalent in India, which had been nursed by the British for their own benefit. Then again, why would it, considering how the British in India had spent a lifetime dividing the people of India?!?
But the Indians demanding an independent India were also demanding a “United” India. And it was the role and the responsibility of the new government, that is the Congress, who were left in-charge of the newly-created democracy to see to it that the Indian public finally got what they had always wanted — an united whole.
But the government went a step further than their British counterparts by actually driving a constitutionally-driven wedge amongst the public. In a pluralistic country like India where the people were already divided on the basis of religion, the political party further segregated them into castes and sub-castes. [Note: In fact, even Hinduism was further segregated into Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism with even more classifications amongst them.]
For people who are going to justify that the reservation policy was needed to empower the weakened sections of the society, they need to consider the reservation policy from another angle. Let’s think about it: We live in a country that has more than 3000 castes and 25,000 sub-castes. Now, imagine trying to unify those 25,000 different wholes. It is not easy, is it?!? In fact, it will be even more tough if one government is hell-bent on reminding those 25,000 sections how they are different from one another. What’s worse, the politicians even managed to convince some that they are more different than the others and thus, deserve preferential treatment.
Of course, the political agenda of the politicians has always been crystal-clear. They just want votes! And in a country like India which follows a multi-party system with several political parties vying for a piece of the pie, divisions of the vote-bank is akin to the division of a pie. It just makes perfect logical sense!
This is why with the 2019 General Elections just round the corner, the Congress Party once again decided to play its divisive politics card by pitting one group of Hindus against another, like they did in Karnataka. Although it needs to be mentioned that this move may have backfired for the Congress government in this case, with Lingayats demanding 40 seats in the Karnataka polls.
Of course, what the people and politicians are both forgetting in the process is that when people did finally unite despite the divide-and-rule strategy in place, Britishers too had to depart. Thus, there is a valuable lesson in our history books that teach us then when people unite, change is inevitable!
