Institutional Decay and the Traditionalization of Politics: The Uttar Pradesh Congress Party

Author(s): Brewer S. Stone

Source: Asian Survey, Vol. 28, No. 10 (Oct., 1988), pp. 1018-1030
Published by: University of California Press
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INSTITUTIONAL
DECAYAND THE
TRADITIONALIZATION
OF POLITICS
The Uttar Pradesh CongressParty

Brewer S. Stone

The announcement on July 16, 1982, that Sripati

Misra would become the new chief minister of Uttar Pradesh,' replacing
Vishwanath Pratap Singh, was made in New Delhi. Misra had been the
speaker of the U.P. Assembly, but was not a man with any significant
following of his own in the state. The news magazine India Today ob-
served that the selection of Misra was "in keeping with Mrs. Gandhi's
practice of choosing as Chief Minister a 'nobody' who will not be able to
challenge her in any way."2 The choice of Misra, as opposed to another
pliable politician, was made by the national government in New Delhi pri-
marily on caste calculations. Singh, the past chief minister, was a Thakur,
and he had experienced difficulty controlling a bureaucracy dominated by
Brahmins. In addition, he was estranged from fellow Thakur and leader of
the 110-strong Thakur lobby in the U.P. Legislative Assembly, Bir Baha-
dur Singh. This was shown by V. P. Singh's failure to gain the permission
of the Congress(I) Party's High Command in New Delhi to drop Bir Ba-
hadur from his cabinet. The selection of members of Sripati Misra's cabi-
net was made almost entirely by top Congress High Command figures,
Rajiv Gandhi and Arun Nehru. Nehru spent two days in Lucknow, the
state capital, interviewing cabinet aspirants. An official in the U.P. Con-
gress (I) Committee stated that "Misra was given a list of MLAs [members
of the Legislative Assembly] to be made ministers. He only forwardedit to

Brewer S. Stone is a graduate student in Government at Harvard

University. He wishes to thank James Manor and Frederick Holborn for advice on
preparation of this article.
( 1988 by The Regents of the University of California
1. Uttar Pradesh is India's most populous state, with roughly 120 million inhabitants. It
stretches from the Himalayas in the north to encompass much of the northwest and central
Gangetic plain, abutting Nepal to the north and New Delhi to the west.
2. "Advantage Brahmin," India Today, August 15, 1982, p. 31.

1018

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 BREWER S. STONE 1019

the [U.P.] governor after putting his signature on it."3 Out of a cabinet of
26 individuals, Misra succeeded in winning the center's approval for only
one of his own nominees.
The process by which Chief Minister Misra and his cabinet were se-
lected demonstrates the extent to which the central government commonly
intervenes in major political choices in Uttar Pradesh in the 1980s. The
appointment of V. P. Singh in 1981 and the later appointments of N. D.
Tiwari (August 1984), Bir Bahadur Singh (September 1985), and Tiwari
again (June 1988) were handled in a similar fashion. In the past, and espe-
cially before the first split in the Congress Party in 1969, the center's inter-
ventions in U.P. politics had been less frequent and less decisive. It should
be pointed out, however, that interventions from the center have occurred
primarily on such issues as the appointment of new ministers, which di-
rectly affect the national government's own political fortunes. Further, be-
cause of the proximity of U.P. to New Delhi and its importance in national
politics-every sixth legislator in the lower house of the national Parlia-
ment is elected from U.P.-central management of state politics tends to
be more common there than in most other states in the Union.
This pattern of High Command intervention has had a profound impact
on the stakes of factional politics within the U.P. Congress(I). Most im-
portantly, because chief ministers are now chosen by the center based pri-
marily on its own calculations, state factional politics is no longer the
decisive factor in determining state leadership. In the 1950s and 1960s,
when U.P. politics was dominated by two generations of powerful faction
leaders, the state leadership was determined primarily by the outcome of
factional competition at the state level, with the center intervening on oc-
casion to cement the outcome of the factional battles. In stark contrast,
during the 1980s the central government has only been marginally influ-
enced by political competitions in U.P. in determining its selection of chief
minister.
Increased intervention has transformed the organizational logic and
purpose of U.P. Congress(I) factions. In earlier years factions attempted
to be inclusive of the diverse caste and religious groups represented in U.P.
in order that they could compete effectively for the leadership of the state.
More recently they have tended to be formed almost exclusively to repre-

3. India Today, August 15, 1982, p. 31.

4. This observation was central to two landmark studies of factional politics in U.P. com-
pleted in the 1960s: Paul Brass, Factional Politics in an Indian State: The Congress Party in
Uttar Pradesh (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965), and B. D. Graham, "The
Succession of Factional Systems in the Uttar Pradesh Congress Party, 1937-66," in Marc J.
Swartz, ed., Local Level Politics (Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company, 1968), pp. 323-60.

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 1020 ASIAN SURVEY, VOL. XXVIII, NO. 10, OCTOBER 1988

sent caste and religious groups, acting as lobbies for group interests. In the
1982-87 period, the major subgroups within the U.P. Congress(I) were the
Brahmin, Thakur, and Muslim lobbies, and the Harijans (ex-Untouch-
ables). My choice of the term "lobby" reflects common usage in the In-
dian press, and is more accurate to describe the present condition than the
term "faction,"5 as these groups were organized primarily to get more
from the government for themselves and their caste or religious group.
The Brahmin lobby has for many years had as its leader the now aged
Kamalpati Tripathi, a longtime veteran of Congress(I) factional battles.
However, from 1982-87 Tripathi was in New Delhi as the Congress(I)
working president, so his role in the state had already been partly trans-
ferred to his son, Lokpati Tripathi. L. Tripathi was a perennial cabinet
minister during that period, holding the Health portfolio in the successive
ministries. The Thakur lobby has been led by the recently replaced chief
minister, Bir Bahadur Singh. This group acts in state politics as a bloc of
more than 100 MLAs, all of whom are Thakurs and want to serve Thakur
interests at the state and local level. Through early 1987 Bir Bahadur re-
mained the top leader of this group despite his disagreements, clearly evi-
dent in 1982, with V. P. Singh who has led a competing Thakur faction.
Since his resignation from a top cabinet position in Rajiv Gandhi's na-
tional government in 1987, however, V. P. Singh has emerged as the leader
of the opposition at the national level. Subsequently, a number of impor-
tant figures in Bir Bahadur Singh's state cabinet, including several promi-
nent Thakurs, resigned to join V. P. Singh's national efforts,6 but the
defections in this case were not caused by efforts to win state leadership.
The defectors believe that V. P. Singh is headed for the national prime
ministership, and they seek entitlement to positions in that government.
The Muslim lobby has not been able to gain the U.P. chief ministership
in recent years, although in 1982 one of the top figures in that group, Mrs.
Mohsina Kidwai, was made president of the rather powerless state Con-
gress Committee. Overall, the dominant figure in the Muslim lobby in
recent years has been Ammar Rizvi, a Congress(I) stalwart and consist-

5. The definition of "faction" has been a constant source of controversy in political science
literature. Some have attempted to apply a strict definition of the concept with only limited
applicability to real behavior but great theoretical leverage, while others have used much
looser or case-specific definitions with limited theoretical power. For a useful discussion of
the difficulties involved in defining factions, see David Hardiman, "The Indian Faction: A
Political Theory Examined," in Ranjit Guha, ed., Subaltern Studies, vol. 1 (New Delhi: Ox-
ford University Press, 1982), pp. 201-31.
6. See "Shock and Resignation," India Today, September 15, 1987, p. 74. V. P. Singh's
national position was further bolstered by his much publicized election to the lower house of
the national Parliament from the U.P. distritt of Allahabad in June 1988.

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 BREWERS. STONE 1021

ently a senior member of the state cabinet. In February 1984, when the
size of the cabinet ballooned from 25 to 44, the Muslims were given only
one additional ministry, a slight that elicited a strong response from the
Muslim lobby. The state Harijan lobby has been led by Dharam Vir, who
was a Union minister of state during much of the period under review and
had been president of the U.P. Congress Committee. The primary objec-
tive of this group has been to ensure that the law reserving certain percent-
ages of jobs for Harijans (it also applies to scheduled, backward, and in
some states middle castes) is implemented. Most of the middle caste
groups in U.P. have sided with the opposition Lok Dal party. As a news-
paper columnist observed in 1984:
Until the 1971 general elections, the Congress had a viable, if not unbeatable,
alliance system in Uttar Pradesh that included Brahmins, Kayasthas, scheduled
castes, and Muslims. [More recently, the U.P.] Congress has become increas-
ingly, though not exclusively, identified with the Brahmins, Thakurs, and
Harijans while the Muslims are divided. Of the 57 district Congress committees
in the state no fewer than 29 are headed by Brahmins and eight by Thakurs, for
instance. The middle castes-Ahira, Jats, Bhumihars, etc.-who account for as
much as 30 percent of the state population, on the other hand, form the bedrock
of Mr. Charan Singh's [Lok Dal party] support.7

Hence middle caste groups in the state do not form lobbies within the
Congress(I), but rather try to have their interests served through Lok Dal
party members of the U.P. Legislative Assembly.

U.P. Factions of the 1950s and 1960s

Both Paul Brass and Bruce Graham in their seminal studies of U.P. poli-
tics view the growth of factionalism as the most important development in
the politics of U.P. since India became an independent nation in 1947, and
they identify the faction as the basic political unit in the state Congress
Party. Brass attributes the growth of factionalism in part to "the adapta-
tion of the [Congress Party] organization to the traditional [forces in the
society], for the faction belongs to the traditional order." Beyond this nat-
ural interpenetration of state and society, the primary cause of growing
factionalism was the replacement of the charismatic leaders, "the prophets
of independence," with "'political' leaders-men whose positions depend
less upon their personal esteem than upon the political patronage they dis-
tribute." Brass characterizes the factions during the 1950s and early 1960s
as "loose coalitions of local, district faction leaders, tied together at the

7. B. K. Khanna, "Casteism in U.P. and Bihar," Times of India (Bombay), October 30,
1984.

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 1022 ASIAN SURVEY, VOL. XXVIII, NO. 10, OCTOBER 1988

state level partly by bonds of friendship, partly by caste loyalties, and most
of all by political interest." He adds that "the inner core of a faction,
which is usually very small, is bound together by a relationship which is in
many ways similar to the guru-disciple relationship in education and reli-
gion."8
Bruce Graham portrayed the C. B. Gupta faction, which dominated
U.P. politics in the mid-1950s, as consisting
in part of his "machine," made up of local leaders recruited to him and loyal to
him, and in part of loyal minority factions, based primarily on regional but also
to some extent on caste support-the main ones being those behind [K.]
Tripathi, a Brahmin, and Charan Singh, a Jat with considerable standing among
the Jat communities of western U.P.9

Both Brass and Graham agree that during the period they were studying,
factions in the U.P. Congress were not divided along caste or religious
lines, but rather attempted to cut across those divisions in order to build a
coalition that could control the state leadership. Similarly, and for similar
reasons, state-level factions attempted to draw in the support of varied
regional constituencies.
Factional politics in U.P. clearly had undergone dramatic change by the
early 1980s. One area of some continuity, however, has been the tendency
of groups within the Congress(I) to have a single identifiable leader. Yet
the responsibilitiesof today's lobby leaders are not as broad as those of the
earlier faction leaders. A 1950s faction leader like C. B. Gupta was at once
guru, political leader, and power broker for those who chose to side with
him, and he virtually constituted the raison d'etre of his faction. Leaders
of caste and religious lobbies may at times take on such responsibilities for
their group, but they are there primarily to win government resources for
their caste or religious group and, in the event that the leader is no longer
able to serve that function, he will eventually be replaced.
The transformation of U.P. factional politics was influenced indirectly
by major changes in Indian politics generally. Most notably, the Indian
political system has ceased to be a dominant party system, led by the polit-
ical party that brought the nation to independence from the British, the
National Congress. Instead, current Indian politics is characterized by a
national party, the Congress(I)-which has lost much of its support in key
regions of India so that it now competes effectively only in the Hindi belt
states of the north-and a complex array of regional, ideological, and com-
munal parties that compete for power among themselves and with the

8. Paul Brass, Factional Politics, pp. 2-3, 33, 55.

9. B. D. Graham, "The Succession of Factional Systems," p. 330.

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 BREWER S. STONE 1023

Congress(I). But Uttar Pradesh, located in the Hindi belt and except for
the brief period of Janata Party rule in the late 1970s, has remained a
stronghold of the Congress(I). The diminution of the national stature of
the Congress(I) increased Indira Gandhi's sense of the precariousness of
her party's political position, feeding her inclination to centralize power
and intervene in state politics in U.P. and elsewhere.

Party Decay and High Command

Intervention
There were occasions during the first two decades of independent India
when U.P. Congress factions sought High Command arbitration of their
disputes. In the 1980s, by contrast, High Command diktat had become a
regular feature of the political landscape of Uttar Pradesh. As noted ear-
lier, the center micromanaged the formation of the Sripati Misra cabinet in
1982. National concerns also underlay the decision to appoint N. D.
Tiwari chief minister in July 1984, the main consideration being the na-
tional elections scheduled for the end of the year. Congress had done
poorly in state by-elections in December 1983 and May 1984, losing four
of the six seats it contested in December and significantly reducing its mar-
gin of victory in one other. The party lost both of the seats it contested in
the May by-elections, and the loss in Malihabad, which had traditionally
voted for Congress(I), was especially frustrating as 90% of the Muslim
vote went to the Rashtriya Sanjay Manch, a political party formed by a
splinter group from the Congress led by Sanjay Gandhi's widow, Maneka
Gandhi. 10
Although the Punjab crisis in the summer of 1984 caused a postpone-
ment of any immediate action to shuffle the state leadership in U.P. after
the May defeats, Indira Gandhi decided in July to make some high-profile
changes. On July 31 she appointed N. D. Tiwari as chief minister and
V. P. Singh as president of the state party committee. These two were
considered men of political weight, and Mrs. Gandhi's clear intent was to
put some real leaders in office in U.P. so she could have some hope of
winning that crucial state in the upcoming national elections. Mrs. Gan-
dhi was assassinated before this election could take place and was suc-
ceeded in office by her son, Rajiv. In September 1985, with the strong
support of Arun Nehru, Rajiv appointed Bir Bahadur Singh to the chief
ministership. Bir Bahadur managed to hold office until June 1988 when
Rajiv replaced him with Tiwari, the veteran Brahmin, again with an eye to
the 1989 national elections. In addition to his loyalty to Rajiv, national

10. "The Nibbling Makes a Dent, Sends Tremors," The Hindu, May 27, 1984.

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 1024 ASIAN SURVEY, VOL. XXVIII, NO. 10, OCTOBER 1988

caste calculations played a role in Bir Bahadur's long survival. Through-

out India no other Thakurs were in charge of a state, while Brahmin chief
ministers abound. The center takes into account the national caste balance
when deciding who will control state offices.
To better understand why the center in recent years has easily been able
to control the U.P. leadership, it is necessary to appreciate the extent of
corrosion in the Congress Party machine. In 1981 James Manor observed:
Both in ideas and in action, the old Congress machine had crumbled during the
1970s.... By the early 1970s, the Congress machine suffered from mounting
complacency and corruption as old men grew weary, retired, or died.... [Mrs.
Gandhi's] efforts to centralize power in her own hands led her to abandon the
principle of representation for the selection of personnel at every level of the
party. After 1972, Congress committees and party offices, both great and small,
were filled by appointment rather than by election. 11

Further, with the 1969 split in the party, much of the organization in U.P.
went with the Congress(O)-the anti-Indira Gandhi faction. This splinter
group included many of the old-time Congress elite who had worked to
build up the party as a political machine in the preindependence years.
Though ideology had already ceased to be a major factor in Congress poli-
tics by the late 1960s, after the split there was no longer any pretense of
debate about ideas. That break had some ideological basis, as many of
those who formed the Congress(O) were associated with a more prag-
matic, less socialist approach to public policy. This meant that all who
remained within Mrs. Gandhi's Congress Party were committed, at least
on a rhetorical level, to advocacy of pro-poor policies. The resultant in-
ability of what became the Congress(I) to tolerate any constructive ideo-
logical debate within its ranks led to an increasingly cynical misuse of the
same ideals that had once engendered commitment and coherence.
However, it was the centralization of power in the hands of Mrs. Gan-
dhi during the 1970s that was arguably the most important factor in the
disintegration of the Congress Party machine in Uttar Pradesh. Since
1977 there have been no elections to the party's 8,000 cooperative societies,
which form an essential link to local constituencies. The local party or-
gans (zila parishads) largely went out of existence when the Congress lost
the 1977 election and have not reappeared. In the past the Congress had
both absorbed and reflected many local, district, caste, and regional con-
stituencies, but in the absence of a strong party organization it has no
longer been able to serve in this manner. Instead, constituencies at the

11. James Manor, "Party Decay and Political Crisis in India," Washington Quarterly,
Summer 1981, p. 28.

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 BREWER S. STONE 1025

state level operate by forming caste and religious lobbies that try to get
goods from the government through lobby leaders who win positions in
the state ministry or through MLAs who represent them. To influence the
national government on issues of importance to the state, it is now com-
mon for groups of MLAs to travel to New Delhi and camp out at the
offices of top figures in the High Command. In addition to the increased
frequency of these excursions, what makes these efforts to involve New
Delhi different from those of the 1950s and 1960s is their purpose. Rather
than seeking arbitration when needed or cementing a victory already won
in the state, they now go to plead for new commands.

The Muslim Lobby Agitation of February 1984

The response of Muslim MLAs to the expansion and reshuffling of Sripati
Misra's cabinet in early 1984 offers a useful example of how a religious or
caste lobby works to get the national and state governments to respond to
its demands. In this instance the Muslim dissidents took their case to the
center after some agitation in the state legislature; in the end they got
some, though evidently insufficient, concessions from Chief Minister
Misra.
It was only after more than 50 appeals that Misra was given the center's
blessing in early 1984 to expand his cabinet. On February 7 it was an-
nounced-in New Delhi by then All India Congress(I) Committee Presi-
dent Rajiv Gandhi-that nineteen new ministers would be inducted into
the Misra ministry, including two new cabinet ministers and seventeen
new ministers of state. In addition, a Harijan, Gulab Sehra, was elevated
from minister of state to cabinet minister to replace Bajinath Kureel, a
Harijan cabinet minister who had died in office. Reports of the expansion
focused on caste, religious, and gender arithmetic. The previous cabinet
was criticized for the predominance of Brahmins and Thakurs who each
controlled six spots.12 With the expansion, Harijans were given a consid-
erable boost; their number was increased from four to nine and Sehra was
promoted within the cabinet. Women improved their strength, adding
four seats to their earlier two. The Brahmins and Thakurs also fared quite
well, however, as the former caste group gained five more seats and the
latter got three. The group that fared poorest was the Muslim, though it is
a minority that had traditionally supported the Congress(I) in elections
and was an important component of the Congress coalition. The Muslims
obtained only one new seat, bringing their total to four.

12. "The Sripati Shuffle," India Today, February 29, 1984.

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 1026 ASIAN SURVEY, VOL. XXVIII, NO. 10, OCTOBER 1988

The expansion also took into account representation of the several re-
gions of the state. Lauding the move, a pro-Congress newspaper noted
that "Cabinet making is not an easy task, especially in a state like Uttar
Pradesh where representation has to be given to different regions to avoid
any feeling of discrimination."13 However, another source noted that with
the expansion seven ministers would be representing the Faizabad region,
which includes six districts. Chief Minister Misra is from Faizabad and
his district, Sultanpur, along with two other districts outside the region,
had three ministers each in the expanded ministry. Just under half of the
state's districts had no cabinet representation at all.
Calculating the relative value of cabinet positions is a subject of study on
its own. In general, the value attached to a portfolio is closely tied to the
value of the resources controlled by that portfolio. Finance usually goes to
the top minister, often a seasoned bureaucrat. In declining value, the
Home, Agriculture, Public Works, Industries, Health, and Education min-
istries would follow. The only change in February 1984 that has relevance
in this respect was that the Muslim leader, Ammar Rizvi, lost the Public
Works portfolio and was asked to take over Education. However, this
move was caused mainly by dissatisfaction with the prior minister of edu-
cation, Mrs. Swarup Bakshi, who was criticized for not taking a hard
enough line on persistent agitations by secondary school teachers. None-
theless, the loss of the powerful Public Works portfolio may have been
seen as a slight to Rizvi and his Muslim constituency.14
The U.P. Legislative Assembly convened on February 13, less than a
week after the announcement of the cabinet expansion. The session
erupted in pandemonium. According to one account: "opposition [party]
members kept standing, shouting slogans, and throwing papers. A dozen
of them stormed the desk below the podium, and a Lok Dal member
snatched away the copy [of the speech] from which the Governor [C.P.N.
Singh] was reading. Mr. Singh, however, picked up another copy."1 5 An-
other newspaper, inclined to be more critical of the Congress(I), empha-
sized the disruptive activities of a Muslim Congress(I) legislator, Manzoor
Ahmed: "At the moment when Mr. Ahmed was shouting at the top of his
voice that he will not let the house run till the chief minister was made to
resign, a group of ruling party legislators pounced on him and forced him

13. "Sripati Misra's Team," National Herald (Lucknow), February 8, 1984.

14. "Feeble Exercise in Cabinet Expansion," The Hindu, February 14, 1984.
15. "Pandemonium Marks U.P. Session Opening," The Hindustan Times, February 14,
1984.

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 BREWER S. STONE 1027

to stop speaking. One of the members held Mr. Ahmed by the neck in a
bid to confine him to his seat." 16
Ahmed was subsequently expelled from the Congress(I) for "indulging
in anti-party activities." In the eyes of the High Command, he had over-
stepped the bounds of acceptable dissidence. But it became evident that
the frustration he felt with the Sripati Misra government-dissatisfaction
evidently heightened by the dashing of expectations regarding the cabinet
expansion-was shared by other Muslims as well. On February 16, twenty
of the 32 Congress(I) Muslim MLAs met to express their dissatisfaction
over the low representation of their community in the expanded ministry.
The group said it planned to meet with Mrs. Gandhi, and that if it failed to
win cabinet seats proportional to the percentage of Muslims in the state
population (roughly 15%), they would all resign their positions in the As-
sembly. They pointedly noted that nine Muslims had been in the Janata
state government that had held power in the late 1970s.
In the days following, five of the dissident leaders were given permission
to proceed to New Delhi to plead their case before Mrs. Gandhi and other
high officials at the center. They were to a large extent rebuffed, as Rajiv
Gandhi subsequently made a series of statements strongly backing Chief
Minister Misra, and threatened "strong action" against any who persisted
in dissident activity. However, Misra did hold a meeting with the Muslim
legislators and agreed to appoint a standing committee to look into the
problems of minorities. He also stated that it was impossible to appoint
more Muslims to the cabinet because the 50% quota of reserved positions
had already been filled. Misra did, however, express willingness to support
efforts to promote Urdu by defining it as the state's "second language."
It should be noted that Muslims were not the only group agitating dur-
ing this period. While the Muslims were making their case, a large group
of legislators joined in sending a letter to the prime minister calling for
Misra to be replaced. All the dissidents had somehow felt slighted by the
cabinet expansion, or had other reasons to be frustrated with the govern-
ment. One newspaper, in an editorial about the dissidents, said: "Many
are [cabinet] aspirants whose hopes had been dashed.... What concerns
them are the tangible benefits of office. In this case, their calculations seem
to have been that a show of collective strength might prompt the Congress-
I High Command to take notice of them."17 This applied as much to the
Muslim dissidents as to the others. The greater success of the Muslims at
getting the center to encourage some effort to meet their demands resulted
from the facts that as a group, their claims were more legitimate, and as a

16. "Anti-Misra Voice Rises High," Indian Express, February 14, 1984.
17. "Dissidence in U.P.," Indian Express, February 18, 1984.

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 1028 ASIAN SURVEY, VOL. XXVIII, NO. 10, OCTOBER 1988

voting bloc, they needed to be looked after. Nonetheless, Muslims had

further reason for frustration in May 1984 when they faced strong opposi-
tion from within the U.P. Congress(I) to efforts to reinstate an ordinance
giving Urdu the status of a second language. Misra followed through on
his earlier commitment to support the Muslim lobby (led by Ammar
Rizvi) on the language issue, but vocal opposition was expressed by
Thakur and Brahmin leaders. India Today speculated that part of Thakur
leader Bir Bahadur Singh's reason for opposing official recognition of
Urdu was to cut Ammar Rizvi down to size.18

Conclusions
These events in 1984 demonstrate the manner in which religious and caste
groups in U.P. act as blocs to increase their political leverage. Here the
Muslim lobby did succeed in securing the support of the chief minister for
bolstering the status of Urdu in the state. However, the U.P. Congress(I)
remained sharply divided on the language issue and that, together with the
backlash from an apparently inadequate state government response to a
failed mango crop in a Muslim district, contributed to significant defec-
tions by Muslim voters from the U.P. Congress(I) in the May 1984 by-
elections. Reactions to the Misra cabinet expansion also give some insight
into current rules governing factional politics in the state Congress Party.
Lobbying, holding meetings, and traveling to New Delhi to plead on behalf
of a caste or religious group generally seem to be accepted. But when these
activities become too incendiary, as was the case with Ahmed's harangue
in the Legislative Assembly, or too public, as were the repeated calls for
the resignation of Misra by other Congress dissidents, then the High Com-
mand feels it must take decisive action. But quiet efforts to get the goods
out to the group that one's lobby represents is deemed normal political
activity.
The essential structure of the factional system, or system of lobbies, dur-
ing the 1980-87 period has been described as consisting of single groups
acting on behalf of Brahmins, Muslims, and Harijans, and a divided
Thakur lobby. This description can be further qualified in two respects.
First, the Thakur and Brahmin groups have been more influential on the
whole than the others, and so could be characterized as dominant lobbies.
The Muslim and Harijan groups behave in general as minor lobbies,
though nonetheless able to assert their views when galvanized by frustra-
tion, as were the Muslims in 1984. Second, simply because these groups
persist and stand out on the landscape of U.P. Congress(I) politics does

18. "The Language Lobby," India Today, May 31, 1984.

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 BREWER S. STONE 1029

not imply that they are the most important local factors in any given polit-
ical conflict or debate. On certain issues, different types of fissures may
determine who plays the prominent role. For example, in November 1987
a conflict centering on whether the city of Rishikesh would be included in
a new political district emerged between two leading U.P. politicians.19
The new district would become one of the 49 districts of the plains, as
distinct from the hill districts which tend to receive disproportionately
more government resources. Rishikesh traditionally had been included in
the hill district of Dehra Dun. Hence, this dispute was more about re-
gional competition than about caste or religious divisions. It would seem,
however, that caste and religious lobbies have been an important force in
most of the state's political battles in recent years.
The central factor that caused the shift from factional politics in the
form that Brass and Graham described-factions that attempted to be in-
clusive of various religious, caste, and regional groups-to the caste and
religious lobbies of more recent years has been the growing intervention of
the central government into U.P. politics and the related decay of the state
Congress(I) machine. Intervention and decay were part of the same broad
trend. The High Command must have recognized that a robust party
machine in U.P. would be more difficult to manipulate, and consequently
made no effort to encourage the resurrection of the party apparatus after it
was repeatedly damaged, beginning in the late 1960s and especially follow-
ing the 1975-77 Emergency. Mrs. Gandhi recognized the importance of
U.P. to her party's national political fortunes, and she evidently believed
that personal control of key turns in state politics was more important
than a healthy state party that could reach down, absorb, and be respon-
sive to the many constituencies in U.P.
The past two decades have, therefore, witnessed a significant transfer of
the nucleus of power in U.P. politics from Lucknow, the state capital, to
New Delhi. This would seem to move counter to broader national trends.
India on the whole has been moving toward federalism, largely because
more and more state governments have come under the control of parties
other than the Congress(I). Uttar Pradesh and the Punjab (especially
since the events of 1984) have been the most salient exceptions to this
trend. That U.P. is in the minority in having experienced a loss of political
power to the center would argue for resisting the temptation to generalize
the central propositions in this study to other states. As has been men-
tioned, U.P. is unusual both in its importance to national politics and its
proximity to the national capital. Further, some of the other Congress(I)

19. "Divisive Move," India Today, November 15, 1987.

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 1030 ASIAN SURVEY, VOL. XXVIII, NO. 10, OCTOBER 1988

controlled states that were rife with factional activity during the 1980s
(much more so, in fact, than U.P.), including Bihar and Madhya Pradesh,
seem to have retained a form of factional politics in some respects similar
to that in U.P. in the 1950s and 1960s.
However, the fact that in Uttar Pradesh the transfer of power from state
factional competition to the national party leadership has resulted in the
growing prominence of caste- and religion-based lobbies raises important
questions. In U.P. the dominant political groups increasingly mirror the
dominant divisions in the society. Is it to be expected, then, that where the
political institutions designed to modernize society progressively experi-
ence decay, then the society will increasingly traditionalize what remains
of those institutions? Paul Brass observed in his 1965 study that "in India,
modernization is not a one-way process; political institutions modernize
the society while the society traditionalizes institutions."20 Uttar Pradesh
in the 1980s would appear to conform to this characterization of a pro-
tracted struggle between competing realms, the state versus the society.
During periods of institutional vigor, modernity gains the upper hand, and
in times of institutional decay, society's traditions seep into and ultimately
dominate political life.

20. Paul Brass, Factional Politics, p. 2.

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