REWIND
New Delhi, 25
January 2024
THE REPUBLIC IN BAD SHAPE
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.”
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.
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
(Copyright, India
News and Feature Alliance)
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