By Inder Jit
(Released on 26 January 1982)
Several questions, wild and not so wild, are being asked in New Delhi as India celebrates another Republic Day with traditional pomp and pageantry. Will India be a new Republic by January 26 next year? More explicitly, will India continue to be a parliamentary democracy or will it switch over to a presidential form of government? The Prime Minister, Mrs Gandhi, has stated more than once that she favours parliamentary democracy and that there are no plans to go in for any change. But speculation persists, thanks largely to her own partymen and the current atmosphere of unparalleled suspicion and deep distrust. No one is sure about what anyone might do, the Constitution and conventions notwithstanding. Even the President, Mr Sanjiva Reddy, and the Prime Minister, Mrs Gandhi, are not spared. There is talk of all manner of possible moves and counter moves. One thing alone is clear. Our Republic today is in bad shape. The system needs urgent attention if the structure is not to collapse.
The delicate balance between Parliament, the executive and the judiciary, wisely provided in the Constitution, has been disturbed. The executive has become all powerful, causing grave concern all round. Parliament continues to be under attack and has been largely reduced to a rubber stamp on the strength of a two-thirds majority. Ordinance raj, denounced by India’s first Speaker, Mr Mavalankar, as undemocratic, has become the order of the day. Last year, the Union Government even came forward with a virtual budget by ordinance. Top legal luminaries, including former Chief Justices of India, are “deeply troubled” over the present state of the judiciary and its ability to function independently. Mrs Gandhi’s decision to move Mr Shiv Shankar out of the Law Ministry has provided a breather. But the approach of Mr Jagan Nath Kaushal, the new Minister of Law and Justice, has yet to be seen. Will he as an old timer help restore health to the judiciary or will he, too, play political ducks and drakes with it?
Not only that. The very basis of democracy is being increasingly undermined. Democracy means rule of the people, by the people and for the people. This is made possible through time-bound elections which are free, fair and without fear. Yet there is an increasing tendency today in the ruling party to avoid inconvenient elections, in sharp contrast to Mrs Gandhi’s own attitude in 1977, which brought her kudos from the visiting British Prime Minister, Mr Callaghan. Garhwal stands out as a bad example, made worse by efforts on the part of the former Law Minister to defend the indefensible. The ruling Congress (I) has, moreover, refused to hold a poll in Delhi for over two years despite the Chief Election Commissioner’s repeated statements that he is ready to hold the poll at short notice. West Bengal’s Marxist regime, headed by Mr Jyoti Basu, has smartly outmanoeuvred New Delhi by recommending Assembly poll in March. Quiet efforts are nevertheless on to get the poll postponed so as to enable the Centre to somehow prevent the Marxists from returning to power.
The Election Commission itself is under attack from leading lights of the ruling party. (Significantly, criticism of the Commission has over the past few years come mainly from the Government and the ruling party … and not from the Opposition). The Chief Election Commissioner’s firm stand on the last Bengal Poll and his refusal to extend the date of filling complaints beyond January 16 has directly irked the ruling party and there is fresh talk of a three-member Election Commission. (The idea was originally advocated by Jaya Prakash Narayan who envisaged a Commission which enjoyed the full confidence of the Opposition. He, thereafter, wanted one of the three members to represent the Opposition.) The Election Commission started enumeration of electoral rolls in West Bengal from January 1980 and invited complaints from September last year. Yet, the Congress (I) made little effort to ensure correct rolls and until the end of December filed only three complaints. In sharp contrast, Mrs. Gandhi made the astonishing statement that 30 per cent of the rolls were fudged!
What were the hopes and expectations of the father of the Constitution, Dr. Ambedkar? Significantly, he had his anxiety about the future as reflected in his masterly speech on the concluding day of the Constituent Assembly. He asked will India lose its independence a second time, through the infidelity and treachery of her own people. Will Indians place the country above their creed or will they place creed above the country? What would happen to her democratic Constitution? Will she be able to maintain it or will she lose it again? India, he said, was not new to democracy. Time was when India was studded with republics and even where there were monarchies, they were either elected or limited. They were never absolute. Again, it was not as though India did not know Parliaments. Not only were there Parliaments but the Sanghas knew and observed all the rules of parliamentary procedures known to modern times. “They had rules regarding seating arrangements, rules regarding motions, resolutions, quorum, whip, counting of votes, voting by ballot, censure motion, regularisation, res judicata etc.”
The delicate balance between Parliament, the executive and the judiciary, wisely provided in the Constitution, has been disturbed. The executive has become all powerful, causing grave concern all round. Parliament continues to be under attack and has been largely reduced to a rubber stamp on the strength of a two-thirds majority.
India had lost this democratic system, Dr Ambedkar added and asked: will she lose it a second time? Significantly, he answered: “I do not know. But it is quite possible in a country like India where democracy from its long disuse must be regarded as something new — there is a danger of democracy giving place to dictatorship. It is quite possible for this new born democracy to retain its form but give place to dictatorship in fact. If there is a landslide, the danger of the second possibility becoming actuality is much greater.” He next asked: If we wish to maintain democracy not merely in form but also in fact, what must we do? “The first thing,” he said, “we must do is to hold to constitutional methods of achieving our social and economic objectives.” It meant that “we must abandon the method of civil disobedience, non-cooperation and satyagraha.” Where constitutional methods were open, there was “no justification for unconstitutional methods.” These methods were nothing “but the Grammar of Anarchy.”
Dr Ambedkar added: “The second thing we must do is to observe the caution which John Stuart Mill has given to all interested in the maintenance of democracy, namely, not to lay their liberties at the feet of even a great man or to trust him with powers which enable him to subvert their institutions.” There was nothing wrong in being grateful to a great man. But he quoted the Irish patriot Daniel O’Connel to assert: “No man can be grateful at the cost of his honour, no woman can be grateful at the cast of her chastity and no nation can be grateful at the cost of its liberty.” This caution, he pointed out, was far more important in the case of India than of any other country. For in India, bhakti or hero-worship was “a sure road to degradation and eventual dictatorship.” The third thing, he said, we must do is to make our political democracy a social democracy as well. Political democracy could not last unless there was at the base a social democracy as well. Social democracy implied recognition of society, equality and fraternity as the principles of life. The three formed a union of trinity. To divorce one from the other would defeat the very purpose of democracy.
Equally important was what Dr. Rajendra Prasad had to say as President of the Constituent Assembly: “We have prepared a democratic Constitution. But successful working of democratic institutions requires in those who have to work them willingness to respect the viewpoints of others, capacity for compromise and accommodation. Many things which cannot be written in a Constitution are done by conventions. Let me hope that we shall show those capacities and develop those conventions. The way in which we have been able to draw this Constitution without taking recourse to voting and to divisions in lobbies strengthens that hope. Whatever the Constitution may or may not provide, the welfare of the country will depend upon the way in which the country is administered. That will depend upon the men who administer it… If the people who are elected are capable and men of character and integrity, they would be able to make the best even of a defective Constitution. If they are lacking in these, the Constitution cannot help the country… India needs today nothing more than a set of honest men who will have the interest of the country before them.”
Mahatma Gandhi struggled hard to put some character back into us. Over the past two decades and more, we have recklessly cast away whatever little we had gained. Public morality has touched a new low. Accepted norms have collapsed all round. Appearances were once sought to be maintained, at least outwardly. Even the pretence is now shed. Conscience is no longer troubled in doing something wrong. There is no sense of shame in being found out. Lies are told brazenly and hawked as truth even in the country’s highest temple of democracy. Might is once again right and, as boldly stated by Mr B.K. Nehru recently, we have degenerated in one single generation from an honest society into a dishonest one. Status and position today are determined not by the character, calibre and culture of an individual but by the money one has somehow amassed. Unbridled pursuit of wealth has consequently become the be-all and end-all of all activity. India seems to be fast losing its soul in the rat race for material progress — and joining what Yehudi Menuhin aptly described as the suicide gallop of the West.
Dr Ambedkar had cautioned among others: “The second thing we must do is to observe the caution which John Stuart Mill has given to all interested in the maintenance of democracy, namely, not to lay their liberties at the feet of even a great man or to trust him with powers which enable him to subvert their institutions.”
Can something be done? Yes, undoubtedly. India has encountered such challenges before and successfully overcome them. Much, however, depends upon Mrs Gandhi in the first instance and on the people themselves in the ultimate analysis. Mrs Gandhi today enjoys a position and power which is unrivalled. None after her may have the same opportunity to pull the country out of its deepening crisis. She did well to give the country recently a new 20-point programme to put the economy back on its feet and tackle the demon of inflation. But a lot else remains to be done. There is need to reaffirm our commitment to the Constitution and give ourselves a code of conduct and values — values which all can share and values which will rekindle trust between man and man. But mere commitment or a code will not do. An ounce of practice is better than a tonne of precept. Mrs Gandhi herself and those close to her will have to act according to the code and enforce it rigorously if India is to become a strong, healthy and truly prosperous Republic. — INFA