In a sense, November 9, 1989, led Europe to a strategic cul-de-sac, a sort of End of History moment. For India, it represented the desperate quest for a new opening, the search for a turning point in history
In a world increasingly given to hyperbole, the adjective ‘historic’ is used and prefixed over-generously. It is necessary to separate the truly historic from what appears to be momentous but is only a passing fancy. Yet, by any reckoning, November 1989 — exactly 25 years — would count as historic, and as one of the most eventful and influential months in human history.
November 9 that year was particularly important, in hindsight but also in real time, for those who lived through it. The final phase of the Cold War and the slow crumbling of the East Bloc gathered pace in 1989 and by November had reached an irreversible, unstoppable velocity. On November 9, just days after the communist Government in the then East Germany resigned, a panicky successor administration threw open the Berlin Wall and allowed East Berliners (and East Germans) to cross to the West at will. It was only a matter of time before German reunification was announced. The Cold War was over; it had been lost — and it had been won.
One-by-one, the dominos fell that November. Governments changed in Bulgaria and the then Czechoslovakia. In the same month, lech Walesa, the dockyard electrician who had become the face of the democratic revolution in Poland, was invited to address the United States Houses of the Congress. Newspapers reported he was the first foreign non-head of Government/state to do so since Marquis de lafayette, the French General who had fought alongside George Washington, addressed the House of Representatives in 1824.
It was a moment of change in India as well. A pulsating election campaign was afoot and Rajiv Gandhi seemed set to lose his large majority. Eventually, the Congress halved its strength in the lok Sabha. Before that, on November 9, the shilanyas (foundation stone ceremony) had taken place in Ayodhya of the proposed Ram Janmabhoomi Mandir. This was done at a distance from the shrine that was at the centre of the dispute and was the culmination of a massive religious, social and political mobilisation. The first stone was put in place by Kameshwar Chaupal, a Dalit activist of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad who had travelled from southern Bihar (now Jharkhand).
A quarter-century on, how does one look back at those twin events of November 9, 1989IJ Are they forgotten and is that energy spentIJ Will they recur, if so in what formIJ Did they represent struggles of the immediate or were they sending a broader messageIJ What does history whisper in our ears, if it whispers anything at allIJ
To be honest, there are no easy answers. Certainly there is no obvious connection between how Germany and the erstwhile East Bloc have evolved and how India and the Hindu current of 1989 have. What one is looking at then is two separate and largely unrelated pieces of analysis, the first about Europe and Eurasia and the second to do with India.
Begin with the reunification of Germany and the dissolution of the Soviet Empire. When a monolith collapses, its aftermath and aftershocks, the consequences, the hidden treasures and pitfalls in its debris, are not possible to decipher at once. The end of the Soviet Union released many forces, from Islamic extremism in Central Asia to robber-baron plutocrats in Russia. For Europe itself, it proved a mixed blessing.
In the 1990s, buoyed by the euphoria of East-West reunification and the prospect of a common continental identity, Europe rushed into integration. This did two things. It effaced the idea of comparative advantage, a cornerstone of trade, and made, say, a standard meal in lisbon about as expensive as one in Paris. With its clear winners and losers, the future of the Eurozone is seriously in doubt, at least in its current form.
That aside, the departure of the Soviet challenge and the fact that countries such as West Germany were no longer frontline states in a conflict against a nuclear-armed rival, made Europe throw down its spears. Diminishing since 1945 anyway, Europe now completely lost its nose for hard power and its relevance as a strategic actor and factor. It can only regain that if Germany, the reunited industrial giant in the middle of Europe, can assume its natural leadership position in the politics of the continent. For a whole host of reasons, that is unlikely to happen in a hurry.
As such, 25 years after the Berlin Wall fell, Europe is better off but also makes less of an impact. The rising powers of Asia both marvel at its single-visa, common-market framework, and think of it as a foreign-policy anachronism.
How has India fared in these past 25 yearsIJ To answer that it is crucial to understand the underpinnings of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement, of which November 9, 1989, was an inflection point. It is easy to describe it as a faith-based protest and attribute all motivations to “religious revanchism”, to use a phrase made popular by critics of that hour. While religion and Hindu identity was certainly a consideration, was it the only oneIJ In reality the Bharatiya Janata Party and its partner organisations got a huge response to the Ayodhya call for reasons that went well beyond the temple.
Consider the India of 1989. The tripod on which the New Delhi consensus and the Congress system had stood for four decades had fallen to pieces. A policy of constitutional equality for all citizens with legitimate rights and guarantees for minorities had been distorted into a vacuous and coarse pandering to the worst and most obscurantist elements of the Muslim leadership. The economy was in such a mess that the middle classes in India not only no longer competed with their cousins in America but had figured out even Singapore and Malaysia were beginning to leave India behind.
Finally, the policy of non-alignment had devolved from a principled decision to steer clear of other people’s wars to empty, third-world sloganeering and a refusal to read the currents of history. For all the pseudo-moralism, it had placed India on the losing side of the Cold War, with even Pakistan ending up (in 1989 at least) at an advantage. As the old order corroded, Indians sought an outlet of protest. The Ayodhya movement become a handy platform. It released new energies in India. The economic deregulation of 1991 was an analogue, as were the nuclear tests of 1998 and the new, modernist foreign policy they ushered.
In a sense, then, November 9, 1989, led Europe to a strategic cul-de-sac, a sort of End of History moment. For India, it represented the desperate quest for a new opening, the search for a turning point in history. That quest and that search continue. Come to think of it, their fingerprints were visible in the mandate of May 2014.
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