Rise and Demise of Nehruvian Consensus: A Historical Review

The scholarly terrain of this article charts a course from the making of Nehruvian consensus to the present times. In the true spirit of a social conciliator, Nehru created a system of governance that eschewed left and right extremism. It is this system that is popularly known as Nehruvian Consensus. The mainstream argument is that the old Nehruvian consensus has collapsed but there is no consensus capable of replacing it. This may be true of Nehruvian secularism on which there was a weak consensus right from the beginning, but we must not commit the fallacy of confusing what is true of a part with what is true of the whole. There exists alternative consensus in case of economic policy and conduct of centre-state relations whereas in the case of foreign policy the form may have changed but the substance remains the same. Surprisingly, democracy in India remains resilient in spite of the crisis.