Constitution Review
By Inder Jit
(Released on 6 March 2000)
India faces and has faced in the post-Nehru era many crises mainly on one score. It has lots and lots of politicians, but very few statesman. While a politician merely thinks of today, a statesman also thinks of tomorrow. But the situation has greatly worsened in India over the years. Sadly, most Indian politicians do not think of the whole day any more. They only think of the moment and live for the moment —- and talk about yesterday, not tomorrow.
This has made most of our politicians brazenly opportunistic. Self is unabashedly placed before the country and power exploited for personal ends. There is little attempt among most of them to educate and inform themselves. Mere literacy is mistaken for knowledge and wisdom. Few care to remember that a parliamentary democracy is a civilised form of Government based on discussion, debate and consensus. Consequently, the Opposition ignores its positive role and acts as though its only job is to oppose.
These thoughts are prompted by a wholly unnecessary and indeed a juvenile controversy which erupted when the President, K.R. Narayanan, surprisingly chose valour to discretion and publicly expressed his strong reservations against the NDA Government’s decision to set up a Constitution Review Commission in accordance with its election manifesto. Sadly, the wrangle has continued, fanned by unbelievable ignorance on all sides. Hardly a day passes when the Opposition does not denounce the exercise as politically motivated, machiavellian and designed to “saffronise” and undermine the democratic Constitution. In fact, Sonia Gandhi has led in New Delhi a Congress rally to protest against the review and other policies of the Vajpayee Government.
Even as Congressmen object mindlessly to a review of the Constitution after a reasonable span of 50 years, they are blissfully unaware that Jawaharlal Nehru had got the Congress Working Committee to set up a 10-member Committee on 4 April 1954 under his own Chairmanship “to study the question of changes in the Constitution and the Representation of People Act and to suggest amendments” in the light of difficulties experienced by the Centre and the State Governments. That was just four years after the Constitution came into effect!
We need to ask a few questions. Is the Congress justified in its opposition to the review? The answer is an emphatic no. In fact, it would have talked differently if Sonia Gandhi and her aides on the one hand, and the powers that be and their advisers on the other were not ignoramuses. Even as Congressmen object mindlessly to a review of the Constitution after a reasonable span of 50 years, they are blissfully unaware that Jawaharlal Nehru had got the Congress Working Committee to set up a 10-member Committee on 4 April 1954 under his own Chairmanship “to study the question of changes in the Constitution and the Representation of People Act and to suggest amendments” in the light of difficulties experienced by the Centre and the State Governments. That was just four years after the Constitution came into effect!
Indira Gandhi next set up a Congress panel, headed by Swaran Singh, in 1976 to take a good, fresh look at the Constitution and make whatever recommendations it considered necessary for stability, development and the well-being and happiness of the masses. It was even permitted to go into the question whether India should continue with the Westminster model or switch over to the presidential form of Government. That the panel favoured the former is another matter.
The Swaran Singh panel also went into the bar imposed by the Supreme Court on Parliament in the Kesavanand Bharati case against amending the basic structure of the Constitution. He proposed that Parliament’s supremacy in the matter be restored by providing that the Constitutional amendments made by it “shall not be called into question in any court on any ground.” The idea was, however, dropped when top legal experts cautioned that the Constitution could well become a book of contradictions if Parliament was allowed unlimited power to amend and upset the delicate equilibrium between the executive, the legislature and the judiciary.
Top Congress leaders are presently talking ad näuseum of the “basic structure” of the Constitution and how Parliament is barred from changing it. Yet they (and even Government leaders and their aides) are unaware that Indira Gandhi rubbished the concept in the Lok Sabha on 27 October 1976. She said: “Revision and adjustment in changing conditions are part and parcel of our Constitution. Those who want to fix it in a rigid and unalterable frame do not know the spirit of our Constitution and are entirely out of tune with the spirit of new India… We have always maintained that Parliament has an unfettered, unqualified and unbridgeable right to amend the Constitution. We do not accept the dogma of basic structure!”
That is not all. At one stage Indira Gandhi even toyed with the idea of setting up a Constituent Assembly to ensure that the Constitutional amendments she favoured did not run into difficulty with the Supreme Court because of the Kesavanand Bharati case. But she dropped the move once it was pointed out that a proposal mooted in the Constituent Assembly for providing for such a body was turned down by the Founding Fathers. Expert opinion eventually persuaded Indira Gandhi to get Parliament to amend the Constitution as Parliament on the ground that “there is something bigger than all of us, that is the nation and the future.”
In my opinion, the review has not come a day too soon. In fact, the demand for a fresh look at the Constitution has grown with each passing year in preference to hasty ad hoc amendments totalling 70. Way back on 31 March 1974, I raised the issue nationally through a cover story in the Illustrated Weekly, then India’s leading magazine edited by Khushwant Singh, fervently pleading for effective steps “to stop the slideback to a feudal, sham democracy.” A welcome and heart-warming endorsement came from Loknayak Jayaprakash Narayan who wrote from Patna: “I congratulate you on your article on the erosion of democracy in our country.”
The exercise would still be most useful so long as it tells us “whether it is the Constitution that has failed us or whether we have failed the Constitution” — and what needs to be done.
Another question. Can the BJP use the review to subvert democracy and saffronise the Constitution? No way, even if it so wanted. The BJP, indeed the NDA, lacks the strength both in the Lok Sabha and in the Rajya Sabha to get any Constitutional amendment adopted. An amendment of the Constitution requires to be passed “by a majority of the total membership of the House and by a majority of not less than two-thirds of the members of that House present and voting.” The NDA has 303 members in the Lok Sabha with a strength of 545. It has only 84 members in the Rajya Sabha with a strength of 245. Furthermore, such an amendment has to be ratified “by the legislatures of not less than one-half of the States. This is well nigh impossible at present.
No less astonishing and absurd are some recent statements made by top leaders, who should know, better (or be better advised) before speaking. Former Prime Minister Chandra Shekhar reportedly criticised the Vajpayee Government the other day for “by passing” Parliament in regard to the Constitution Review Commission. Sonia Gandhi, for her part, said the Vajpayee Government appeared to be in “a great hurry to rewrite India’s Constitution” and added: “they have not even bothered to take Parliament into confidence.”
Yet, as we all know President Narayanan informed the first session of both Houses of Parliament on 25 October 1999: “A Commission comprising noted constitutional experts and public figures will be appointed to study a half-century’s experience of the Constitution and make suitable recommendations to meet the challenges of the next country.”
Finally, would the proposed review then prove to be pointless and futile? Once again, the answer is an emphatic no. The exercise would still be most useful so long as it tells us “whether it is the Constitution that has failed us or whether we have failed the Constitution” — and what needs to be done. The Swaran Singh panel came out strongly against any change in the parliamentary system. But it failed to tell us what precisely had gone wrong with the system as practised in India and what might be done to get it to function in a clean, smooth and effective way. Democracy, after all, is only a means to an end. Ultimately, it must deliver and serve the best interest, welfare and happiness of our people.— INFA