From Tryst to Tendulkar: The History of Independent India
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By 1913, the Qing dynasty would completely collapse in China and Tibet would expel all of the remaining Chinese representatives from Tibet.
Simla Convention of 1914
In 1914, Tibet was an independent, but weak country. British India negotiated hard and got Tibet to accept that the region of Tawang and the area south of it belonged to India. Everyone was happy except China. The Chinese representative in the meeting withdrew from it, and since then China has refused to accept the accord that resulted out of the meeting.
After the meeting, the border was not fully enforced. Except for Tawang, there was not much interesting going on in the state and it was ignored by everyone.
In 1935, a British administrative office would go back to the convention ruling and unearth the finding. Soon, India would start using the region in her maps.
Who Does it Belong To?
China never recognized Tibet's independence nor the 1914 Simla convention. In 1950, China would completely take over Tibet. Thus, according to China, the Tawang region belongs to her. China especially wanted to hold on to the monastery as that was a leading center of Tibetan Buddhism in India.
According to India, most of the state had ancient Indian influence from Assam, and in 1914 Tibetans signed an agreement to give the state to India. Also, from an Indian perspective, keeping the Tawang monastery within India was the best way to protect whatever remained of Tibetan culture.
In 1962, India and China warred over the region, but the geography clearly favoured India forcing China to pull back from Tawang. Since then India has established complete control over the region. It is now a full fledged state part of India.
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Summary
India should be highly thankful to Patel, VP Menon, Nehru, and Mountbatten for forging the modern India. It was a miracle that they could do this without starting a civil war. A complete unification seemed highly unlikely in the summer of 1947, but it was done. They built a great platform for India to run a sustainable society.
Nehru's 1961 takeover of Goa was in sharp contrast to Suharto's (Indonesian dictator) takeover of East Timor in 1975. Both Goa and East Timor were Portuguese colonies taken over by the newly independent nations of India and Indonesia. While Goans were peacefully integrated with the rest of India, East Timorese fought hard against Indonesia's occupation and finally got independence from Indonesia in 2002.
Nehru might get justified criticism when it comes to economic policies and some tactical mistakes, but he is one of the main heroes of this chapter in Indian history. He not only helped capture the provinces, but also helped integrate them in a peaceful manner.
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The job was not fully done yet though. The instrument of accession allowed India control only over defense, foreign policy, and currency of the princely states it acquired. The princes still had a lot of power, were practically immune to the Indian courts, and commanded a lot of riches.
The princes were used to an obscenely rich life. Nawab of Junagadh Sir Mahabat Khan owned 1,000 dogs. The Hyderabad Nizam owned a collection of more than 50 Rolls Royces. There were extraordinarily opulent weddings and magnificent palaces built at a time when the nation was still reeling in famines.
How would India manage such a fractious group of monarchs - most of whom didn't care about much more than their personal lives?
Could India afford to give them huge treasuries and a lavish lifestyle while their populace was dying? Would free India keep up the promises to these monarchs?
In short, what about the assurances of autonomy that India promised to these 565 monarchs?
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Chapter 2: Making of the Indian Constitution
Fundamental Rights were to be framed amidst the carnage of Fundamental Wrongs.
-- Granville Austin (historian of the Constitution)
No Constitution can please all the different sections of any country, let alone a country like India, but, the overall picture, to my mind, is very satisfactory and not disappointing . I have great faith that this man-made Constitution will succeed if men will be genuine and generous enough in the working of the Constitution.
-- Jaipal Singh (Member of the Constituent Assembly)
Sir, I see in this Constitution that the despotic rule has come to an end for ever and the day of popular rule has dawned.
-- Kaka Bhagwant Roy(Member of the Constituent Assembly)
December 9, 1946
Louisiana, Italy In this village of northern Italy, was born a baby girl into a family of masons. It would have been very surprising if the poor girl in the tiny village had become a politician in that village. But, it is astonishing that the girl, Edvige Antonia Albina Màino, became the most powerful leader of a country that the family had not even thought about.
Around the hour Ms. Maino (later rechristened as Sonia Gandhi) was born, an eclectic group of Indians met in the library of a grand building in New Delhi. The 207 men and women there embarked on writing a Constitution that would seal the fate of the future citizens of India. There were conservatives, liberals, dreamers, cynics, Hindus, Muslims, northerners, southerners, upper castes, lower castes, rich, poor, capitalists, and communists. However, they were all visionaries in some sense.
All the major luminaries of India's freedom struggle were assembled there, except for the one - Mahatma Gandhi - who was busy dousing religious fires in Bengal. But, again the Mahatma had little interest in committees or paper work and even if he were in Delhi he might not have attended the assembly.
In Mahatma's absence, the veteran freedom fighter Acharya J. B. Kripalani called upon the oldest member of that room, the parliamentarian from Bihar, Dr. Sachchidananda Sinha, to act as the Interim President of the Assembly until a new one was elected. Two days later the assembly would elect another Bihari parliamentarian, Dr. Rajendra Prasad, as the President of the Constituent Assembly.
In the course of the next three years, they would debate to great lengths on the merits of various democratic ideals from all over the world - from ancient Athens to the world of post-Second World War. With an expenditure of 3.4 crores (34 million rupees) they wrote the longest Constitution in the world and disproved the notion that Asiatics cannot rule themselves through a democratic process. Dr. Prasad later went on to become the first President of India and the Constitution that he helped write has stood the tumultuous 64 years of Indian history.
Why Do We Need a Constitution?
A Constitution defines the structure and scope of a government and articulates the relationship of the people to its government. It provides the rights and responsibilities of the citizens as well as a guideline for the lawmakers to create the laws the citizens will follow.
Some countries do not have a well defined written constitution. The UK, for instance, provides Parliament the full authority to create laws and uses tradition to bring structure and order. Many other commonwealth nations like Canada and New Zealand follow this principle. Then there are countries like Israel that do not yet have a codified constitution as an agreement on the provisions of the constitution eluded consensus.
Before 1947, there were only a handful of countries that had a well defined written constitution and the Indian framers primarily looked to US and Irish constitutions for their inspiration. Until the enactment of the Constitution, India was officially a Dominion of Britain and used the Government Act of 1935 as the official law.
Mr. Basanta Kumar Das (Constituent Assembly member from West Bengal) eloquently put this as:
Mr. President, Sir, there are mainly three factors which have given our Constitution the present shape. I like to call them the three legs of this Constitution, viz.
(1) The experience gained through the working of Government of India Act of 1935.
(2) The needs and aspirations of the people who have become free, and
(3) The impact of events occurring in the country and abroad and of those that may be expected during at least the coming 10 years.
Sir, the
Government of India Act, 1935, is an almost perfect mechanism for the smooth running of a Police State and is worded in a very suitably legalistic language standing the test of time. The Constitution has therefore, done well to draw largely from that document so far as its administrative side is concerned.
But with freedom achieved, the State has to pass from a 'Police State' to a 'Welfare State' and along with the peace and security of the country the full growth of the people is to be assured.
The Constituent Assembly
A Constituent Assembly is a key body that creates the Constitution of a nation. Americans were among the first to create such an organized process in creating a constitution and their constitutional convention produced their first draft in 1787 (that still stands). The French followed the American ideals and drafted their Constitution soon after the French Revolution. But, that one didn't really last long. The idea of a Constituent Assembly for India goes back to 1934 when a radical Communist from Bengal, Manabendra Nath Roy, fervently argued for it. Later in 1946, when the Cabinet Mission was sent to discuss the independence terms with India - the final move to build a constituent assembly for India came.
India's Constituent Assembly was elected by the legislators from the provinces for which elections were held in 1946. Three hundred and eighty-nine members were to be drawn from the various provinces and princely states - 296 from British ruled provinces and 93 from the princely states. However, the princely states had not conducted elections and the Muslim League didn't participate in the Constituent Assembly either. Thus, the inaugural session consisted of only 207 people.
Eventually, the Princely States nominated their representatives and the Muslim League members who were not part of Pakistan joined the Constituent Assembly too. This formed the first Parliament.
The Constituent Assembly then sought to create a Drafting Committee that would get into the legal nitty gritties of the constitution. The articles produced by the drafting committee would then be put to vote by the main body.
There were seven key members of the Constituent Assembly who played a key part:
Jawaharlal Nehru - the big dreamer and the Prime Minister who sought to bring a Constitution that would encompass the dreams of all sections of the society.
Vallabhai Patel - the home minister, who was instrumental in backroom negotiations. Patel often had much more sway over Congress than Nehru. His right wing slant gave some balance to the assembly - many other leaders leaned left.
Rajendra Prasad - he was elected as the head of the Constituent Assembly and later the first President of India. He was a school teacher and a professor of economics. It was his job to reconcile the various arguments that the different sides brought.
BR Ambedkar - although he was politically opposed to Congress, Nehru drafted him as a law minister and made him the head of the Drafting Committee. Ambedkar brought a lot of new perspectives as he was from the low castes [most in the assembly were upper caste Hindus], educated in the US [most of the Indian stalwarts were UK educated], anti-Congress, and not from the Gangetic plains [many of the influencers were]. Nehru truly believed that Ambedkar's smartness and new perspectives would make the Constitution much more relatable to a vast chunk of the population.
Alladi Krishnaswami Aiyer - an eminent lawyer from Madras who served as the Advocate General of the state. A key legal luminary and a representative of the south.
KM Munshi - a lawyer from Gujarat who found the famed Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan education trust. He was a key representative of the conservative interests in the Constitution.
BN Rau - a constitutional expert, who served as a Prime Minister of Jammu & Kashmir. He also helped write the constitution of Burma. Rau was the ultimate constitutional authority in the group and he intimately studied the various Constitutions of the time.
Drafting Committee
The first task of this Assembly is to free India through a new constitution, to feed the starving people, and to cloth the naked masses, and to give every Indian the fullest opportunity to develop himself according to his capacity.
-- Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru
The key members started creating the drafting committee which would actually create the various schedules that would then be debated by the broader assembly.
Iyer, Rau, Munshi, and Ambedkar became a part of the drafting committee. They were assisted by TT Krishnamachari, an economist from Madras who later served Nehru as his Finance Minister; Gopalaswami Ayyangar, who served Jammu & Kashmir as its Prime Minister; Muhammed Saadulah, a former Prime Minister of Assam who represented North East India's interests; and Maadhav Rao, a Diwan of Mysore who provided one of the key voices of the Princely States.
The drafting committee was fairly transparent in its transactions and also asked the public to send their opinions and suggestions. Feedback poured from all over the nation and the committee deliberated on the key issues.
Debate 1: American vs. English vs. Swiss
One of the key debates was regarding the form of the government. There were three primary alternatives before the framers of the Constitution. The British Westminster system provided for the supremacy of the Parliament and the elected executive would be directly responsible to the Parliament. In the American system, there would be a President directly elected by the people and there would be a separate legislature elected in parallel to pass the laws. In the Swiss system, there would be a direct democracy with the people directly electing the ministers.
Firstly, let me deal with the form of Government. Dr. Ambedkar's view is that the British parliamentary executive is preferable to the American non-parliamentary executive on the ground that the former is more responsible though less stable, while the latter is more stable but less responsible.
But if you look at another system of Government, namely, the Swiss form of Government, where the elected parliament again in its turn elects the executive, there the responsibility is emphasized. Having elected its executive, it leaves the executive to work out its schemes in a satisfactory way for a period of four years and the decisions of the Parliament are binding on that executive, unlike in the case of the American Presidential executive. Therefore, if we want both stability and responsibility, the Swiss system of executive is preferable.
-- Mahboob Ali Baig Sahib Bahadur(member from Madras)
Ambedkar had a good understanding of the American form of government and he put his weight against it. He believed that an American system could cause a rift between the legislature and the President leading to less responsibility on the part of the President or a perpetual chaos. Both seemed scary for the framers.
They eventually settled for the British-style system, the one they were most comfortable with. However, a number of extra protections were added.
The Constitution provided for a President, who is not directly elected by the people, but through the representatives of various elected bodies, a strong Supreme Court and an independent Election Commission to provide the due checks on the Parliament. While the Parliament is the supreme in Britain, in India the Supreme Court has the power to interpret the Constitution and strike down certain laws.
In the landmark Kesavananda Bharati v. State of Kerala case, the Supreme Court of India ruled that the Parliament didn’t have the right to amend the basic structure of the Constitution. Article 141 makes the Supreme Court the ultimate authority on land.
Debate 2: Hindi vs. English
The top political hierarchy - Gandhi, Nehru, Patel and Rajendra Prasad wanted Hindustani or Hindi to be the common language that would connect the people of India. They reasoned that a nation should speak a common tongue and English was not accessible to a vast chunk of the population. However, this was strongly opposed by TT Krishnamachari, Madhav Rao, and other members of the southern group.
We disliked the English language in the past. I disliked it because I was forced to learn Shakespeare and Milton, for which I had no taste at all… [I]f we are going to be compelled to learn Hindi… I would perhaps
not be able to do it because of my age, and perhaps I would not be willing to do it because of the amount of constraint you put on me. … This kind of intolerance makes us fear.. Sir, it is up to my friends in U. P. to have a whole-India; it is up to them to have a Hindi-India. The choice is theirs…
--TT Krishnamachari
The framers finally agreed to a 15-year timeline in which English would be used alongside Hindi. At the end of the 15 years, Hindi would become the sole official language. However, in 1965, when the deadline ended, protests engulfed the nation and India terminated its push for Hindi as the sole national language. I will cover this part in later chapters.
Debate 3: Strong Centre vs. a Weak Federation
This was a very critical issue and among the most debated. India was formed by a patchwork of diverse provinces and princely states. There were two options - make a Unitary system - where the central government had most of the powers, like most of Europe and Africa. Or have a Federation - where there would be a central government and a strong provincial government each with their own defined rights. How powerful should the central government be?
In the meetings before independence, the assembly was leaning towards a leaner central government that primarily handled defense, foreign affairs, currency, and communication. The rest would be handled by the states. This was what the British-led Cabinet Mission suggested for India. The US was founded on such a federal structure. India's diversity and vastness meant that a central government would not be able to adequately handle the socioeconomic demands of all the citizens living in every corner of the land.