Books​ Reviews

‘Governance by Stealth’: The Ministry of Home Affairs and

the Making of the Indian State

By Subrata Mitra

Oxford University Press, India 2021

The India government’s Ministry of Home Affairs, the successor to the Home Department under British colonial rule, is a remarkable example of institutional resilience. How a colonial institution, whose key task was to hold Indian nationalism at bay, became the architect of the post-colonial state and nation is one of the main questions to which Subrata Mitra’s book responds. It explains the salience of the ministry and its resilience, in terms of its singular expertise in enabling ‘governance by stealth’, which implies the use of minimum force to generate maximum order. Over the years, this has been achieved through a deft combination of regulation and self-regulation as well as the creation of rules that embody the sense of identity and deeply held values of the citizenry, which are implemented in a manner that is fair and accountable. The Constitution of India recognises the key role of the ministry in the process by formally endowing it with an advisory role in these critical functions. These points are illustrated in this book through the analysis of appropriate evidence based on declassified files of the Ministry of Home Affairs, correspondences, biographies and interviews.

Avid collaboration between Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Patel, the first Home Minister of independent India, during the foundational years of the Republic, had set the mould of ‘competition and collaboration’ between ideological opposites present within the cabinet. This created space for the functioning of the ministry’s civil servants to maintain law and order and generate consensus on many critical issues that independent India faced in its initial years. The ministry enabled the smooth functioning of the government, its accountabililty and timely intervention to effectively manage the transition from colonial rule to democratic governance. The decline of the ‘Congress system’ and the rise of authoritarian tendencies within the ruling party as well as the breakdown of the tacit understanding between the political and administrative organs of state shrank the ministry’s room to manoeuver, however, paving the way for the national Emergency of 1975-77 when the subtlety of governance by stealth was overtaken by authoritarian tendencies.

The book, in 12 chapters, clusters around four key arguments. The first cluster introduces the creation of the Home Department and origin of governance by stealth as a strategy of survival of the East India Company. Alien rulers in a foreign land, faced with the challenge of ruling a dispersed, restive subject population, the East India Company integrated British norms and institutions with local customs and orderly rule. This knowledge and tradition passed on to the ministry after Independence, thanks to the continuation in high office of civil servants who had been groomed by their British predecessors.

The second cluster (Chapters 3-7) progresses through the organisational evolution of the ministry during years of rapid change (1947-1950) when the Constitution of India took shape. The ministry, as the quintessential intermediary – between state and society, the Union government and regional states, ministries vying with one another for resources and influence, and crucially, between ambitious leaders and professional civil servants – played a vital role in the state’s formation. Backed by a body of superbly trained civil servants adept in the art of bureaucratic adaption to the exigencies of political context, the ministry became a buffer between the party in power and the country at large. In the 1960s, the dissolution of the Indian National Congress’ one-party dominance eventually led to the National Emergency (1975), which was proclaimed by the President at the advice of the Prime Minister, thus side-stepping the Ministry of Home Affairs altogether. Finally, the author explains the ministry reaching its nadir in 1984 during the anti-Sikh riots (Chapter 7).

The third cluster (Chapters 8, 9 and 10) analyses the process of accommodation and how the administration of agencies held the Union together; it contains, for instance, the ‘sacred’ issues of language and religion enframed by the ‘secular’ state. The ministry was at the forefront of attempts to bring language and religion within the framework of India’s ‘fuzzy’ secularism. Beyond rule by consent – the forte of democratic governance – lies the contested issue of the role of force and political intelligence in establishing orderly rule. This is the ultimate weapon in the armoury of the Ministry of Home Affairs, which is exercised through a vast array of organisations to collect intelligence and dispatch paramilitary forces under its direct control to supplement the local police and Indian army when all else fails in ensuring domestic order.

Limitations of the Indian model of governance by stealth are discussed in the fourth and final cluster (Chapters 11 and 12). Denied the political support indispensable to its effective presence, the home ministry declined in its influence over the process of governance. However, adept at survival, it clawed its role back as ‘charlady’ of the government once the Emergency commenced. It regained its bureaucratic foothold and helped to stabilise the Emergency regime.

The Indian case shows that the presence of an order-making, conflict-mediating, politically sensitive bureaucratic apparatus might explain why the Indian transition has followed a relatively smooth and seamless course from colonial rule to democratic governance rather than one of collective violence. However, the book concludes with a cautionary note. The ministry, with its specialised manpower resources, deep knowledge of the political system and expertise is, in the final analysis, a technical resource. Like all tools of governance, its effectiveness consists in the willingness of the political executive to seek its professional advice, while, at the same time, retaining its prerogative as the ultimate seat of authority and accountability. What matters in the end is the extent to which the political executive is willing and able to read the signals emerging from the community of citizens, and chooses an appropriate course of action which is both feasible and politially appropriate, based on the expertise of the Ministry of Home Affairs.

This exemplary effort by Mitra will be a landmark contribution to the literature on the evolution of the Indian state and how governance norms were created and recreated to suit the multiple hues of those governments occupying the seat of ‘power’. It is the fruit of painstaking research from pouring through thousands of pages kept in the Archives of India. The result is an excellently crafted manuscript that captures the subject ‘ministry’ as it transformed over 50 years of India’s independence. The book is a magnum opus, which records the transformation aptly. A path-breaking effort!

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Mr Vinod Rai is a Distinguished Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies (ISAS), an autonomous research institute at the National University of Singapore (NUS). He is a former Comptroller and Auditor General of India. He can be contacted at isasvr@nus.edu.sg. The author bears full responsibility for the facts cited and opinions expressed in this paper.