Mridula Mukherjee
MAINSTREAM, VOL
LII, NO 23, MAY 31, 2014
The Nehru era ended half-a-century ago, bringing
to a close the age of innocence and excitement marked by the epic struggle for
freedom’s tryst with destiny and the first phase of independent India’s efforts
to redeem that pledge. And yet, the strong roots sent down by the
founders of the Indian nation have ensured that we just concluded our sixteenth
general election with an electorate of over 800 million of whom a staggering 64
per cent cast their votes. And yet again, power has been transferred without
any hiccups or hesitation from the outgoing government to the incoming one.
Indeed it is a measure of its success that we forget to notice how
remarkable this achievement is, and celebrate it, for we are so used to taking
it for granted. But we only have to look around us in South Asia, at Nepal,
Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Myanmar, and at South-East Asia, and
East Asia, and West Asia and Africa, to see how exceptional it is. Scholars sometimes
quibble over whether it is a formal or substantive democracy, forgetting that
the very survival of democracy is an achievement.
We owe this undoubtedly to the millions who fought the battle for
freedom from autocratic and undemocratic colonial state and the feudal and
monarchical princely states to set up a republic in which they would be
citizens and not subjects any more. They were led by a galaxy of leaders of
such exceptional ability that it is indeed unfair to single out any one. And
yet, the name of Jawaharlal Nehru cannot but be singled out since destiny chose
him as the one who shouldered the major part of the task of building and
shaping democratic institutions and democratic habits and demo-cratic culture
in the newly independent India. Mahatma Gandhi was removed within six months on
independence by the cruel hands of an assassin who did not want a secular
democratic India. Sardar Patel, who had stood firmly by Nehru’s side in
steering the republican Constitution to its goalpost through many winding
paths, and had unhesitatingly cracked down on the forces responsible for the
Mahatma’s murder—banning the RSS and sending 25,000 RSS workers to jail—had
also died by 1951. So it was left to Nehru as the first Prime Minister
and pre-eminent leader to nurture the infant of Indian democracy and bring it
to maturity.
For Nehru, democracy and civil liberties were absolute values,
ends in themselves, and not merely a means for bringing about economic and
social development. There was in him what his biographer S. Gopal has called “a
granite core of intellectual and moral commitment to democratic values”. “I
would not,” Nehru said, “give up the democratic system for anything.”
Nehru was a firm believer in freedom of thought and expression,
and particularly freedom of the press. He believed that even the demands of
public safety should not normally encroach on these freedoms. During the days
of the freedom struggle, he had founded the Civil Liberties Union. It was he
who took up and popularised the demand for a Constituent Assembly to draft
India’s Constitution since 1935-36. He was also the main campaigner for the
Congress in the 1937 elections.
His commitment to parliamentary democracy is shown by the
seriousness with which he treated the business of elections. He did not use the
excuse of the partition of the country and the consequent communal violence and
influx of refugees to postpone elections. On the contrary, he was impatient to
go to the people and was unhappy that the elections could not be held earlier.
He converted the election campaign into a referendum on ‘the idea of India’,
challenging the communal forces responsible for the Mahatma’s assassination who
had been demanding a Hindu Rashtra.
In the election campaign for the first General Elections of
1951-52, Nehru travelled some 25,000 miles and addressed in all about 35
million people or a tenth of India’s population. The following extract from a
letter he wrote to Lady Mountbatten on December 3, 1951 shows how much he
enjoyed this hard work:
Wherever I have been, vast multitudes gather at my meetings and I
love to compare them, their faces, their dresses, their reactions to me and
what I say. Scenes from past history of that very part of India rise up before
me and my mind becomes a picture gallery of past events. But, more than the
past, the present fills my mind and I try to probe into the minds and hearts of
these multitudes. Having long been imprisoned in the Secretariat of Delhi, I
rather enjoy these fresh contacts with the Indian people. It all becomes an
exciting adventure....
In the first general elections, over a million officials were
involved. One hundred and seventythree million voters were registered through a
house-to-house survey. Three-quarters of those eligible were illiterate.
Elections were spread out over six months, from October 1951 to March 1952, and
candidates of 77 political parties, apart from some independents, contested in
3772 constituencies. All observers, Indian and foreign, were agreed that it was
fair.
The Manchester Guardian wrote on February
2, 1952:
The Working Committee of the Indian National Congress can draw
pleasure from the extra-ordinary demonstration which India has given. If ever a
country took a leap in the dark towards democracy it was India. Contemplating
these facts, the Congress Working Committee may purr with satisfaction.
¨
It is a measure of his faith in the wisdom of the people that the
communal forces were badly beaten, securing only around six per cent of the
vote and 10 out of a total of 489 seats as against the Congress’ tally of 364
seats. And this barely four years after the partition in which an estimated
600,000 people lost their lives in communal violence and another six million
were displaced from their homes.
In Nehru’s understanding, democracy was necessary for keeping
India united as a nation. Given its diversity, and differences, it could only
be held together by a non-violent, demo-cratic way of life, and not by force or
coercion. Only a democratic structure which gave space to various cultural,
political, and socio-economic trends to express themselves could hold India
together. “This is too large a country with too many legitimate diversities to
permit any so-called ‘strong man’ to trample over people and their ideas.”
Nehru through his actions helped root parlia-mentary democracy in
India. Even though he enjoyed tremendous popularity and power, he did not fall
prey to plebiscitary democracy or populism, but strengthened representative
institutions. He used his popularity to push for civil liberties and democratic
culture. He played a major role in framing a democratic Consti-tution with
civil liberties and adult franchise.
He treated Parliament with great respect and was often seen
sitting patiently through long and often boring debates as an example to his
colleagues and young parliamentarians. He spoke frequently in Parliament, and
used it as a forum to reach his ideas and views to the people of the country.
Despite the majority enjoyed by the Congress party, he ensured that Parliament
reflected the will of the entire people, and a very large number of
non-official bills were passed during his tenure, a practice that has declined
since. Even when he was quite ill during the last few months of his life, he
did not miss any session and would even insist on rising to his feet whenever
he had to speak to maintain the decorum of the House.
He helped institutionalise the Cabinet system of government, a
crucial part of parliamentary democracy, by resisting the tendency among his
Cabinet colleagues to leave all policy-making to him.
He said democracy is something deeper than voting, elections or a
political form of govern-ment: “In the ultimate analysis, it is a manner of
thinking, a manner of action, a manner of behaviour to your neighbour and to
your adver-sary and opponent.” A quote from a letter Nehru wrote to Bidhan
Chandra Roy, Chief Minister of Bengal, on December 25, 1949, shows his
understanding of how to work in a democracy:
It is not good enough to work for the people, the only way is to
work with the people and go ahead, and to give them a sense of working for
themselves.
Nehru understood that at the heart of democracy lay a respect for
difference of opinion, for opposition. He said on June 2 1950:
I am not afraid of the opposition in this country and I do not
mind if opposition groups grow up on the basis of some theory, practice or
constructive theme. I do not want India to be a country in which millions of
people say “yes” to one man, I want a strong opposition.
He opposed the banning of the Communist Party even though he was
against their policy of sabotage and violence. He wanted that they should be
countered by normal legal processes, and urged Chief Ministers to respect civil
liberties.
When the Congress lost a by-election in Calcutta, Nehru wrote to
N.R. Sarkar, acting Chief Minister of Bengal, on July 2, 1949: “We as a
government, whether at the Centre or in the Provinces, have no desire to
continue governing people who do not want us. Ultimately, people should have
the type of government they want, whether it is good or bad.”
The forms of limited representative govern-ment which the British
had granted lacked substance and life. Nehru transformed them into vibrant
institutions. The experience of other ex-colonial countries where the first
generation of nationalist leaders concentrated over time all power in their own
hands, or were succeeded by military rulers, throws into sharp relief Nehru’s
achievement. The success of parlia-mentary democracy in India, which we tend to
take for granted, was the exception and not the rule in newly independent
nations. He chided Nkrumah, the leader of Ghana, for promoting a personality
cult by asking him on his first meeting: “What the hell do you mean by putting
your head on a stamp?”
Nehru, to his credit, did not permit his enor-mous personal
position to be institutionalised; on the contrary, he showed great deference to
institutions such as Parliament, the judiciary (even when he disagreed), the
Cabinet, the party.
He constantly educated the people during his continuous travels
about the value of adult suffrage and their duty to discharge their right to
vote with responsibility. His tremendous faith, a Gandhian legacy no doubt, in
the capacity of the poor, unlettered people to understand issues and exercise
reasoned choices was at the heart of his democratic convictions.
To quote S. Gopal,
Achieved against daunting odds, democracy in India—adult suffrage,
a sovereign Parliament, a free press, an independent judiciary—is Nehru’s most
lasting monument.
For the sake of the health and longevity of Indian democracy, it
is to be hoped that the incoming Prime Minister will acknowledge the
contribution of the chief architect of this edifice of democracy, before whose
physical form he bowed his head while entering its portals, and pay homage to
him on his fiftieth death anniversary.
Prof Mridula Mukherjee is a Professor of Modern Indian
History, Centre for Historical Studies, and Dean, School of Social Science,
Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She was earlier the Director, Nehru
Memorial Museum and Library, Teen Murti Bhawan, New Delhi.
कोई टिप्पणी नहीं:
एक टिप्पणी भेजें