India became a republic on this day 32 years ago. It did so by virtue of the enforcement of the Constitution and not of a revolution. As such it would have been equally appropriate if we had decided to celebrate January 26 as the Constitution Day. It would certainly have been more useful. It would have helped lend the Constitution the legitimacy and sanctity it needs to fulfil the role v it has to in our case – to serve as the framework within which we must act if we are to become and remain a viable nation. If anything, we have followed the opposite course.
Unlike Britain where conventions and institutions have grown over centuries as a result of interaction of ideas, ideals and social forces, India needed a written Constitution – to serve as the basic law of the land and to define the aspirations of the most enlightened and progressive section of its society. It would be ridiculous to suggest that the Indian people as a whole shared the ideals of secularism, liberty, equality and progress towards modernity or that the elected representatives were so committed to the British-type of Parliamentary system that they would, on their own, have given the country the Constitution which they finally approved under pressure from Nehru and Sardar Patel.
Tender Plant
The Constitution, let us admit, was the product of a happy combination of circumstances. Without Nehru and Sardar Patel, we could well have gone the way of Pakistan. We might have failed to produce an internally consistent and progressive Constitution. We had our own “fundamentalists” who in the name of Gandhiji spoke of village republics, of decentralised administration, of the need to break away from the British traditions of governance. Rajendra Prasad is one such example. In the absence of a strong leadership committed to modern government and laws, the obscurantists could have created enormous confusion.
It is necessary to recall all this more than three decades after the event to make the point that the Constitution was the handiwork of a small minority, that it was a tender plant and that it needed to be nourished if it had to survive and prosper. It has survived. But it has not prospered. We have not tended it carefully enough.
The Constitutional arrangement was bound to come under enormous strain on several counts. It introduced into the administrative system inherited from the Raj an alien element in the form of elected representatives who were bound to claim and wield considerable power. As the administration moved away from essentially law and order functions and took upon itself the task of promoting economic development and social justice, it expanded greatly in size and armed itself with more and more powers. The end of centuries of near-stagnation – economic and social – was sure to complicate the task of governance. Change inevitably produced a revolution of rising expectations.
The magnitude of the challenge should have made us acutely sensitive to the need for developing the necessary mechanism for mastering it. Precisely because the new arrangement was exposed to ever growing pressures, we should have emphasised its importance and tried to secure its observance. In plain words, we should have sought to elevate the Constitution to the highest status. We did nothing of the kind. We behaved as if we could go on battering at it and yet expect it to fulfil its central function.
This does not mean that we should not have amended the Constitution when necessary as in the case of the land reforms legislation, But we should have done so only when it was absolutely unavoidable and with the greatest of care and deliberation. This attitude of regarding the Constitution sacrosanct has served the Americans well. And contrary to the popular impression born out of ignorance, America has been a revolutionary society. It could
not have been a pioneering one without being a revolutionary one.
Fortunately, in the first 17 years of independence we had the Congress party and Mr. Nehru to absorb the shocks which the process of development, social change and politicisation of the people produced and to maintain broadly an equilibrium between the political executive, the legislature, the administration and judiciary as envisaged in the Constitution. The Westminster model could not and did not work smoothly in India, especially in the States where the politicians were less willing and felt less obliged to observe the rules. But departures did not amount to distortion and perversion of the ideal laid down in the Constitution. But this has happened since. We are close to becoming another banana republic – a land without the law where life is brutish and short.
Judiciary’s Role
No limb of the Indian state is working well. Politicians as a class have become a byword for venality, corruption and incompetence. They may all be swept away in a tidal wave of popular indignation when Mrs. Gandhi is not there to keen that in check on the strength of her personality. The administration, known more for its red-tapism than for its concern for efficiency, has compromised its autonomy and integrity. Most top bureaucrats buy peace by carrying out the behest of their political masters, however irregular and unjustified. Some even enter into a partnership with the latter as we have witnessed recently in Maharashtra at the highest level of the administration.
The judiciary vindicates itself through judgements like Mr. Lentin’s in the Antulay case. But those who ask for and receive the gift of prized land and other favours like appointment of relations to high offices from a chief minister facing trial before them on serious charges of abuse of office cannot hold the candle to others. And when did a legislature anywhere in the country last assert itself to get rid of a notoriously corrupt minister or chief minister or check patent abuse of authority on the part of the executive? Most legislators are not interested in performing their assigned role as watchdogs of the public interest. They are as a rule busy feathering their own nests. No wonder a “resourceful” chief minister can manipulate them and ensure their “loyalty” to himself.
Not surprisingly, no one is a beneficiary of this blurring of the lines in a true and long-term sense. If ministers and other politicians have made money, they have done so at the cost of their credibility and longevity. Politics has become a very precarious profession. Top officials have ensured their survival or even amassed fortunes by bending and/or disregarding the rules at the behest of their patrons, political and others, but the price has been high – loss of self-respect and esteem of the people. The top judiciary is currently basking in the sunshine of the esteem of the intelligentsia which in despair of the other limbs of the state has come to look upon it as the main bulwark of personal liberty. This, however, cannot last long. The judiciary is tending to overreach itself and arrogate to itself powers which legitimately belong to the executive. And witness the disarray in its ranks as evidenced by conflicting judgements by members of a bench and the supersession of one verdict after another. The top judiciary itself is in danger of getting politicised.
More Durable
We are all familiar with the exodus out of sheer disillusionment of highly educated, talented and enterprising individuals in their hundreds to lands of greater opportunities. But we are paying scant attention to the equally significant process of alienation which the decay of institutions is producing on a massive scale. More and more decent individuals are shutting themselves into their small private worlds and becoming indifferent to the larger social, economic and political issues.
This is a characteristic Indian response. In times of political and economic upheavals and distress, we have always sought refuge in our families and caste groups. But today we cannot repeat the past. For one thing, the state intrudes into every aspect of our lives in one way or another. For another, institutions themselves have ceased to be stable. We can abandon wider issues but only at the certain risk of having nowhere to turn for refuge and security.
In this world of crumbling certainties, it is necessary to find and sustain lodestars. Individuals can fill the bill at best only temporarily, though it is no small help to have such an individual around. We need something more durable. The Constitution can serve us if we begin to lend it the sanctity the Americans have invested their basic law with. Mrs. Gandhi’s presence can help but only if she is guided by a larger criterion than personal loyalty and if a sufficiently large number of others in key places begin to recognise at once the obligations and the limitations of their offices.
The system which we have adopted is extremely difficult to operate. But no other can serve half as well the needs of a variegated and complex society such as ours. Any other system is likely to produce either tyranny or chaos, indeed in all probability both. Much of the third world is victim of both. The two feed on each other. We can no longer afford to ignore the experience of others around us and fail to draw the necessary lesson.
The Times of India, 27 January 1982