Objections overruled

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 neglects its own 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 President K.R. Narayanan, surprisingly preferring valour to discretion publicly expressed strong reservations against the government’s decision to set up a Constitution Review Commission in accordance with the ruling NDA’s election manifesto. Sadly, the wrangle has continued, fanned by unbelievable ignorance on all sides. Hardly a day passes without the Opposition denouncing the exercise as politically motivated, Machiavellian and designed to “saffronise” and undermine the democratic Constitution. In fact, Sonia Gandhi is due today to lead a Congress rally to protest against the review and other policies of the Vajpayee Government.

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 differen-tly 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 ye- ars, they are blissfully unaware that Ja-waharlal Nehru had got the Congress Working Committee to set up a 10-me-mber committee on April 4, 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 lig-ht 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.

Top Congress leaders are presently talking ad nauseam 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 Ga-ndhi rubbished the concept in the Lok Sabha on October 27, 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 amendme-nts she favoured did not run into difficulty with the Supreme Court because of the Kesavanand Bha-rati case. But she dropped the move once it was pointed out that a proposal mooted in the Constituent Assembly to provide for such a body was turned down by the founding fathers. Expert opinion eventually persuaded Indira Gandhi to get Parliament to amend the Constitution 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 dema-nd for a fresh look at the Constitution in preference to hasty ad hoc amendments totalling 79 has grown with each passing year. As far back as on March 31, 1974, I raised the issue nati-onally through a cover story in the Illustrated Weekly of India, 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 heartwa-rming endorsement came from Loknayak Jayaprakash Narayan who wrote from Patna: “I congratulate you on your article on the erosion of democracy in our country.”

Another question. Can the BJP use the review to subvert democracy and saffronise the Constitution? No way, even if it so wanted. The BJP and, indeed, the NDA lacks the strength in both the Lok Sabha and 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.

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.

The writer is Editor of India News & Feature Alliance and a former member of the Lok Sabha