The Diversity And Unity, The Indian Federalism Practice Research

Multiple, complicated social structure has brought enormous challenges forthe construction of a modern nation state in India. But decades of politicaldevelopment had broken the prediction of many scholars about the collapse ofIndia. India today has become a modern federal state and its political situationis relatively stable, as well its democratic operation is in order. This makesIndia the special case that general theory of multiple social democracy can notexplain. For India, including Lijphart’s consociational democracy theory,Horowitz’s model of centralization, Stepan and Linz ‘s State Nation Model, aswell as the domestic debates between the first generation of national policytheory and the second generation of national policy theory, etc., offer differentmodels of explanation. The core of the debate among these differentinterpretation models is: in multiple society, should we take the strategy of"distinguish" or "integrate" as guidance？Based on the criticism of the traditional model, this paper put forward itsown research method. This paper argues that, the research of India multipleintegration issues must be based on the perspective of social structure andhistorical institutionalism dimension. Based on Matthew Dugan’s socialstructure theory, this paper argues that India has the typical horizontal splitstructure, which represents India’s unique type of social conflict. And anysystem is a product of unequal power relations. Its generation and evolution inthe history is subject to the type of social conflict. From the horizontal splitstructure and historical institutionalism perspective, different from the othergrand theory, this article put forward a more micro level of interpretationmodel.The core thoughts of the article carry out into two aspects. Firstly, theIndian federalism was born in horizontal split structure in India. Horizontal split structure has two impacts on Indian federalism: one is that internalconflicts from horizontal split structure of Indian society forced the framersmust choose an institutional framework of pluralistic society, and federalismget approved with its inclusive of diversity. On the other hand, the risks ofseparatism from horizontal split structure forced the framers had to considerthe construction of Indian nationality and Indian federalism is not based onan American-style federal system, but in authoritarian features, known as"totalitarian federalism" or elastic federalism. In federal system design, thedebate between elite, external pressure under special historical conditions,and the congress party’s one-party political power structure also played animportant role in shaping federalism. The base of unity constructed byfederalism created system premise for India to deal with the unity ofdiversity in the future.Secondly, the social conflicts contained in horizontal split social structurehad led to a federal system evolution in the direction of decentralization. Indiacentralized federalism was born in the condition of unequal power relationsbetween central and local governments under the one-party system. With thegrowth of the Indian multiple social factors, the one-party system of thecongress party inevitably evolved to multiparty system, at the same timefederalism was transforming accordingly. But the decline and disintegration ofcongress’s one-party system went with visible characteristics of pathdependence, federalism also evolved smoothly towards decentralizationdirection. In this process, the term of President Governance and the localseparatism became a typical manifestation of the conflict between pluralismand unity. Finally, through the creation of language states, the boost of localautonomy, and the adjustment of the constitution of federalism, the diversityof Indian society received strong support, and national political unity has never been broken.India’s federal system contains two simultaneous processes, one is theprocess of unification, and the other one is diversification. The processes ofdiversity and unity carry on without conflicts. For now, though, India still can’tcompletely avoid multiple social conflicts, but from the general internationalexperience, there was no doubt that India had dealt with the relationshipbetween diversity and unity better. Combined with the current domesticdebate between the first generation of national policies and the secondgeneration of national policies, this paper argues that although the Indiannational condition is different from China, but India’s experience about thedialectical relationship between diversity and unity is worthy of ourinvestigation. Only if we fully respect the diversity, can we effectively maintainunity, and only if we maintain unity, can we better respect for diversity.Diversity and unified relationship, of course, depends on the processing ofcomplex political system design, and also inseparable from the special socialstructure and these are the limitations of Indian experience.