Why India Needs the Presidential System

By Bhanu Dhamija

'Well written, solidly researched and cogently argued'

--Shashi Tharoor

 

'Bhanu has ably argued the case'

--Kuldip Nayar

 

'This timely book... looks at the many advantages of the presidential system.'

--Shanta Kumar

At one time or another, Dr Ambedkar, Mahatma Gandhi, M.A. Jinnah, Sardar Patel and many other top leaders strongly opposed India's adoption of the parliamentary system. History has proven them right. Given its diversity, size, and communal and community divisions, the country needed a truly federal setup -- not the centralized unitary control that the parliamentary system offers.Why India Needs the Presidential System tells the dramatic story of how India's current system of government evolved, how it is at the root of the problems India faces. The result of years of meticulo

• Language: English
• Publisher: Collins
• Release date: Oct 15, 2015
• ISBN: 9789351363477

Bhanu Dhamija

Bhanu Dhamija is the founder and chairman of the Divya Himachal Group, the largest newspaper publishing company in Himachal Pradesh, India. Earlier, in America, Dhamija founded a media company that published trade journals and organized conferences for the magazine publishing industry, becoming in effect a 'publishers' publisher'.He was born in Bulandshehar (UP) in 1959, but has lived almost half his life in the United States. After attending Punjab University in Chandigarh, he acquired a postgraduate degree from the Stern School of Business at New York University. He has worked in the financial, computer and media industries in the US and India. While in the US, Dhamija married an American and soon after they moved with their three children to Dharamshala in Himachal Pradesh.

Book preview

Cover

Title Page

Why India Needs the Presidential System

Bhanu Dhamija

Dedication

To all those who care for India

Contents

Preface

1. The System of Government Matters

2. British System Was Deceptively Attractive

3. Predilection for a Parliamentary System

4. Nehru Decides; Snubs Gandhi and Patel

5. A System Favoured by Party Oligarchs

6. A Major Reversal in the Constituent Assembly

7. A Case of Systemic Failure

8. India’s System Is ‘Rotten’ to the Core

9. Americans Reinvented Government

10. A Different Approach to Government

11. Towards Better Governance

12. Repelling Authoritarianism

13. The Dissipation of Prejudices

14. Presidential System: The Answer to India’s Problems

Select Bibliography

Index

About the Author

Copyright

Preface

A great society is languishing. The citizens of India have access to a pathetic quality of life and discredited institutions. The result is a morally weak populace. Rather than lament or just comment, I decided to do something concrete. I moved back to India after living in the US for nearly two decades and launched a daily newspaper for the community in which I was going to live. The thinking was that the ideas and exposure that my newspaper brought would change public opinion. It probably did. But the rot, I realized, was much deeper than just a lack of awareness. This hardened my resolve and the result of that process of churning is this book. India is my only cause. I have no political, ideological or party affiliations.

This book is an attempt to save India. With each passing day, the current system of government in India is doing irreparable harm by killing people’s initiative and destroying their moral fibre. The book offers a prescription, not just a diagnosis. It is no lecture, but a heartfelt effort to heal India of its ailments. That the treatment is not a new invention is reassuring. I do not ask the reader to follow me, but the much wiser founders of the American system. Whatever else ails that society, my study convinces me of the efficacy of their system of government.

I am thankful to HarperCollins for publishing this controversial book, and to its highly professional yet kind-hearted editors. For bringing me to them, I am forever grateful to Kanishka Gupta, a literary agent with a divine eye. As I was about to lose faith in the face of many rejections, Kanishka was a godsend. The doyen of India’s political analysts, Kuldip Nayar, gave me invaluable advice; and the political rising star Shashi Tharoor provided tremendous words of encouragement. I am indebted to both. I also thank my newspaper colleagues – chief editor Anil Soni and columnist and editorial advisor, Prof. N.K. Singh, for their suggestions and encouragement. My deepest gratitude is owed to my wife, Lisa, who read through shoddy first drafts without showing any loss of respect or love for me.

Bhanu Dhamija

Dharamshala

March 2014

1

The System of Government Matters

Confucius came upon a woman who was weeping bitterly by a grave. ‘Your wailing,’ said the Master, ‘is that of one who has suffered sorrow on sorrow.’

‘O Master that is so,’ she replied, ‘once my husband’s father was killed here by a tiger, my husband was also killed and now my son has died in the same way.’

The Master said, ‘Why do you not leave the place?’

She paused. ‘There is no oppressive government here,’ she answered.

‘Remember this, my children,’ the Master said, ‘oppressive government is more terrible than even tigers.’¹

All history has shown that governments can indeed be horrific. Countless many have lost their lives in resisting or escaping oppressive governments. Behind every revolution there is tyranny of one form or another. And behind every violent protest lies an injustice left unaddressed by government.

The system of government under which man lives is fundamental to his being. It affects man more than anything else. From his material well-being to his spiritual development, the state touches everything. What he eats, how large his family is, what information he gets, what he thinks, how he expresses himself, the kind of work he does, the type of entertainment he enjoys, whether he prays, how he worships – government impacts everything. Government is behind every evil in society, and every virtue. It shapes a society’s character. A good government allows individuals to become honest and virtuous; a bad one makes them wicked and corrupt. A system of government, therefore, isn’t simply a matter of man’s prosperity or liberty, it is also a matter of his morality.

‘The Constitution of the United States,’ said Thomas Jefferson in 1801, ‘has committed to us the important task of proving that a government … can be so free as to restrain [man] in no moral right, and so firm as to protect him from every moral wrong.’² The system they invented was mindful of man’s dignity and decency; it strived to provide an impetus for right actions but protection from wrong ones.

In the more than 200 years since its adoption, and the many successes of the nation, the American system has shown that the vision of its founders was not only moral but also practical. The Americans are no better or worse than any other people. They have made their share of mistakes and have faced many of the same ordeals as the rest of the world: a bloody war for independence, a brutal civil war, two world wars, a great depression, a cold war, and several regional conflicts and recessions. This small nation of thirteen colonies that went up against the mighty British Empire wasn’t born with a silver spoon in its mouth. Contrary to what many believe, it wasn’t rich, or homogenous, or literate, or anything special. It acquired its wealth and power through centuries of hard work.

The only thing unique about the United States of America is its system of government. This system is the secret behind America’s success. In order to understand that assertion let us consider what a good political system ought to be.

WHAT’S IN A SYSTEM?

A nation’s political system must foster a national vision, ensure fairness and encourage participation. When a nation has vision, when its citizens’ efforts are fairly rewarded and when there are opportunities for participation, the nation rises.

A people need to see where they are going and why. When there is no national vision, the society remains unmoved. It is never sure what the government’s agenda is and for what reasons. The process of developing a national agenda is crucial for both its quality and its implementation. If it emerges from the masses, after openly debating competing proposals across the entire nation, it becomes the people’s agenda, not something that is of interest to politicians.

Similarly, without fairness in the political system there is no hope for building strong character in people. Political fairness must precede social and economic fairness. It is not possible for a society to be fair if a faction cannot have fair representation in government. By the same token, it is not possible for the economy to be impartial if groups or individuals are barred from public contracts or licences. Once a system becomes politically unfair, it destroys any chance of social and economic equality.

The nation’s political system must also provide a genuinely participatory democracy. Not just one where people simply vote, but one in which they feel they have equal opportunity. Otherwise, every area – sciences, arts, sports, business, etc. – becomes mired in politics. Those who are politically connected receive opportunities, others shrivel. If one needs a godfather to enter politics, or to run for office one has to make back-room deals with party bosses, or to get the government’s attention one has to become partisan, these factors act as a strong disincentive for society-wide participation. Limited avenues for political participation only help the haves become more and more powerful. Without equality of opportunity, a society’s drive and creativity fades.

India’s current system fails to deliver any of these three ingredients. The failure of India’s system is more profound than it appears because it does its biggest harm in not fostering a national vision. Without a nationwide election for the topmost government official, a national agenda doesn’t emerge from the bottom up. The oligarchs at the top render the entire system in the hands of a few. The people don’t participate, beyond just voting in frustration. No vision, no character and no true participation.

Churchill once said, ‘It’s a wicked thing to take away a man’s hope.’ What’s most worrisome about India’s system is that it has killed hope. Today, a common man in India doesn’t believe that this system can ever change. It is sapping people’s energy and killing their initiative. In 2002, when the National Commission to Review the Working of the Constitution reported that ‘maladministration has paralyzed the creative energies of the people,’³ it was only half right. Because the chief failing of India’s Constitution was that it created hopelessness.

Within the binary of the Presidential vs Parliamentary systems of governance, it must be asked: how does the US system deal with these issues?

FOUR LAWS OF POWER

History has shown that the taming of power is behind every good government. When powers are unfettered, governments become abusive. When they are too restrained, governments become timid. And when powers are poorly assigned, governments tend to be ineffective.

Power can be said to have four laws. First, as expressed by Lord Acton, ‘power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely’. Second, power consolidates when it is more than essential. Third, power dissipates when it is less than sufficient. And fourth, power cooperates only when it can be encroached. If the powers are properly assigned, government serves the people; otherwise, it becomes useless, or worse, it becomes their master.

About how power corrupts, it turns out that Lord Acton was right, but not because, as he said, ‘great men are almost always bad men.’⁴ Power corrupts only when the system allows it. In a column entitled ‘The Psychology of Power’,⁵ two university researchers recently concluded that ‘power corrupts, but it corrupts only those who think they deserve it.’ The researchers were investigating whether power corrupts, or whether it merely attracts the corruptible. They discovered that not only do people with power tend to think they can get away with it, but also ‘they feel at some intuitive level that they are entitled to take what they want’. In other words, people in high office are not innately corrupt; they become so because the system gives them an elevated sense of their worth, and an opportunity. It is therefore not the politicians, but the system that is to blame.

The other three laws of power were first confirmed by James Madison, the Father of the US Constitution. He had undertaken an exhaustive analysis of confederacies that existed in the three thousand years preceding. ‘It is a melancholy reflection,’ he had noted at the end of his study, ‘that liberty should be equally exposed to danger whether the government have too much or too little power.’⁶ What Madison had found was that governments failed to serve not only when they were too powerful, but also when they were too weak. A strong government was as necessary as a non-oppressive government. And the trick was to balance the powers just so.

As for the fourth law, which states that two powers cooperate only when each can encroach upon the other, there were two further conditions. One, the encroachment must be limited. In other words, a power must not be able to completely overwhelm the other. And two, the limits of infringement must be precisely defined. When Madison and his colleagues began to think about their system of government, they concluded that simply separating or unifying their government’s departments was not going to work. Madison declared that ‘unless these departments be so far connected and blended as to give to each a constitutional control over the others, the degree of separation … essential to a free government, can never in practice be duly maintained’.⁷ In short, separation of powers in government works only when its departments are also given powers to infringe.

Methodically, the American Constitution makers addressed all four power-related problems. To deal with power’s tendency to corrupt, they separated powers. As Jefferson declared, ‘the way to have a good and safe government is not to trust it all to one, but to divide it among the many’.⁸ For the basic problem that their national government was too weak, they did the opposite. They bolstered its powers. Then, to ensure that it didn’t become too strong and tyrannical, they set up a system of powerful state governments. Each government, national and state, was assigned only limited and essential powers. And finally, to solve the problem of cooperation, they created a system of ‘coordinated’ departments through checks and balances. This gave each department certain constitutional rights over the others.

No other framers of a nation’s Constitution ever had more experience than the fifty-five men who gathered in Philadelphia in 1787 to make the US Constitution. They already had first-hand experience with fifteen different Constitutions – the British; their own decade-old first Constitution, the Articles of Confederation; and the thirteen different Constitutions of the colonies that were joining together to form the United States.

As for India’s system of government, this book shows how its powers are severely and irreversibly out of balance (Chapter 7). And why a US-type system will deliver better governance and a healthier polity if applied to India (Chapter 11). The Indian system began to break down almost immediately after Independence, because the powers of its two topmost officials were poorly defined.

When it came to prescribing powers, the Indian system got almost everything wrong. It concentrated powers at the Centre, farthest away from the people. It centralized them in one institution, Parliament, giving it supremacy. Since power consolidates when more than essential, this created an oligarchy. On the other hand, the Indian system diminished the powers of state governments, the organ closest to the people. Here, since power dissipates when it is less than sufficient, governance on the ground suffered. What made matters worse was that the parliamentary system’s design was ill-suited to separate powers to begin with, because it didn’t have separate institutions. With no separation of institutions, the question of giving one power of encroachment over any other, in order to check or balance it, had no meaning.

BRITISH SYSTEM IS DECEPTIVELY ATTRACTIVE

The Indian Constitution makers did not really understand the subtle power play of the British parliamentary system. This was most evident in the Indians’ view of the monarchy. The framers of India’s Constitution felt that a king wasn’t essential to the system and that they could do with an ‘elective monarch’. They were wrong on both counts. A non-partisan institution in whom were reposed all powers was a crucial part of the system. The system of a constitutional monarchy didn’t fit in with a pure republic. And as Walter Bagehot, Britain’s famous constitutional scholar had cautioned, ‘you might as well adopt a father as make a monarchy’.⁹

In fact, the entire British system was deceptively attractive. Almost every one of its constitutional principles was something different on the inside than its appearance. It wasn’t a system controlled by the legislature as it was made out to be. In reality, the hegemony of the king in this system had been replaced by the hegemony of the Cabinet. The government controlled the legislature. As Sir Ivor Jennings had noted, ‘The theory is that the House controls the Government. … The truth is, though, that a member of the Government’s majority does not want to defeat the Government.’¹⁰ The British system promised ‘responsible’ government, but in reality government under this system worked in secret. It spoke of ‘popular’ government, but a parliamentary government could be run only by a faction. It professed ‘collective’ responsibility of ministers, but it was impractical since it was up to the Cabinet to own a minister’s decision. It boasted coalition governments, but the system fell apart when the number of parties was any greater than two. In the name of efficiency, it created an oligarchy. Sir Sidney Low, also a renowned British constitutional authority, had described these and other similar features of his nation’s system as its ‘fantastic attributes’. In the same vein, Bagehot had said of his nation’s Constitution: ‘An observer who looks at the living reality will wonder at the contrast to the paper description.’¹¹

To make matters worse, India was an unsuitable nation for the British system. It had none of the ingredients necessary for the parliamentary system’s success. By definition, the parliamentary system was a sectarian government, while India’s severest problem was a sectarian divide. This system needed no more than two non-sectarian parties. It needed a polity in which there was no permanent majority. It needed a society that was deferential. As stated earlier, it needed a monarch. It needed a small homogeneous nation with no religious controversy. It was a system fit for a unitary state, not a federation. And it required a bureaucracy that was apolitical. As early as 1934, after a review of the factors necessary for the success of parliamentary government, the British themselves declared: ‘In India none of these factors can be said to exist today.’¹²

SYSTEM ADOPTED FOR POOR REASONS

The truth is that the Indians adopted the British parliamentary system for poor and unsubstantiated reasons. Vallabhbhai Patel, the first leader to attempt a justification of this system in India’s Constituent Assembly, could come up with only one reason: familiarity. ‘It would suit the conditions of this country better to adopt the parliamentary system … with which we are familiar,’ he said.¹³ Nehru, who almost single-handedly picked this system of government, never really bothered to explain his choice in the Assembly. The only clue to his thinking came when he was compelled to respond to the members’ demand that the topmost official of the country, the president, be directly elected. Refusing to accept their request, he said, ‘We want to emphasize the ministerial character of the Government that power really resided in the Ministry and in the Legislature and not in the President as such.’¹⁴

Ambedkar was the chief defender of the parliamentary system, but he came on the scene only after the decision to adopt this system was already taken, and he lacked credibility. For years, and to the moment he was appointed chairman of the Drafting Committee, he had always opposed this system. Only seven months before his stint with the Assembly, Ambedkar had declared that ‘there is no doubt that the British type of executive is entirely unsuited to India’.¹⁵ To one of the subcommittees of the Assembly he had proposed forming a ‘United States of India’, with some features similar to a US-type presidential system of government. Ambedkar’s justifications of the parliamentary system were all made after the Assembly had voted in its favour.

In return for his support in the Assembly, Ambedkar drew many benefits. He was appointed law minister in Nehru’s interim government. As a known Gandhi hater, he was able to play a role in denying Gandhi any say in the making of India’s Constitution. He was also able to obtain reservations for his constituents, the scheduled castes. Scheduled castes were the only group granted reservations in the original Constitution. As law minister, he was able to push the Hindu Code Bill, an omnibus measure to reform personal and property laws, but only for Hindus. And, of course, he was appointed chairman of the Drafting Committee.

But Ambedkar’s love for the parliamentary system quickly disappeared. Within three years after the adoption of the Constitution, he would become the first framer to disown this system. During a debate in the Rajya Sabha in 1953, he said: ‘My friends tell me that I have made the Constitution. But I am quite prepared to say that I shall be the first person to burn it out. I do not want it. It does not

suit anybody.’¹⁶

In the Constituent Assembly, Ambedkar had alluded to two main benefits of this system, that it provided ‘more responsible’ governments and a ‘strong centre’.

This book exposes how these benefits were more than just unrealistic, they were impracticable. More importantly, the Constituent Assembly did not examine or adequately debate how concentration of powers in a Central government created a ‘strong’ government. What made a national government ‘strong’ in a large diverse nation, a union based on willing participation of units or one based on force?

ONE MAN’S DECISION

These and other similar questions were never really debated in the Constituent Assembly. The decisions were made by a coterie of the Congress party. In fact, it turns out that they were really made by one man – Jawaharlal Nehru.

The choice for the parliamentary system was a fait accompli a decade before India’s independence. It seems Nehru had made up his mind in 1937. It was then that the British had allowed the first Indian-only governments in the provinces. The Congress party under Nehru’s leadership had won an overwhelming majority and formed Congress-only governments. Nehru refused to share powers with Jinnah and his Muslim League followers because this system of government allowed one faction to rule. Jinnah declared that he was ‘irrevocably opposed to … a majority-community rule … under the guise of democracy and a parliamentary system of government’.¹⁷ But Nehru did not relent. Within three years, the movement for a separate state of Pakistan went from a mere academic thesis to an irreversible political demand.

Nehru was the chairman of two all-powerful committees – Experts Committee of the Congress party and the Union Constitution Committee of the Constituent Assembly – that put India firmly on the path of adopting the parliamentary system. Once these two committees had decided, the selection became immutable; not that powerful leaders didn’t try to change Nehru’s mind.

One of the astonishing stories about the making of India’s Constitution is that in a joint meeting of Nehru’s Union Constitution Committee and Patel’s Provincial Constitution Committee on 11 June 1947, Nehru was asked by a resolution to reconsider his decision to have the president elected by the legislature, instead of directly by the people, but he refused to do so.¹⁸ Years later, one of those

in attendance in the joint committee meeting, K.M. Munshi, would write that ‘when the protagonists’ [of direct election of the president] view gained their point, those who were opposed raised a protest that the Joint Committee had no power to bind the Union Committee by its decision.’¹⁹

Nehru’s refusal to reconsider led to a major split between Patel and Nehru. Patel’s committee had approved that the chief executive of state governments, the governor, be elected directly by the people. Patel’s adoption of this hallmark principle of the presidential system was even approved by the full house. But the Assembly would later be compelled to drop this feature because it didn’t fit in with the Union Constitution. This was the Assembly’s only major reversal. When it came, Patel wasn’t in attendance.

Patel, Ambedkar and Jinnah were not the only ones who recommended a different system of government. The Father of the Nation, Gandhi, did too. Instead of the parliamentary system, Gandhi wished for a system based on village panchayats. He wanted to develop a Constitution of India that was entirely its own rather than a copy of the British. ‘If India copies England, it is my firm conviction that she will be ruined,’ he had written. In 1930 Gandhi had noted that it was ‘very difficult to get rid of our fondness for Parliament’²⁰ But he was totally ignored. This was a telling difference between the framing of India’s and the United States of America’s constitutions. While India’s framers ignored the father of their nation, the US framers cajoled theirs to ensure that he participated in their Constitutional Convention. George Washington had retired after long service to his nation, but not only was he invited back to sit in the Convention, he was also elected the first president of the United States under the new Constitution. America would have had a very different Constitution, if not for Washington’s presence during its making.

Nehru and his men could ignore everyone else because India’s Constituent Assembly was an unabashedly packed house. It was owned by the Congress party and Nehru was its unquestioned leader. The Congress controlled more than two-thirds of the seats. Ambedkar was the first to declare that it ‘holds this House in its possession’.²¹ But that wasn’t all. The framing of India’s Constitution occurred in a blatantly partisan fashion. Decisions were made in party meetings outside the Assembly and then whips were issued to Congressmen to vote along party lines. If any member tried to push unauthorized amendments, he was compelled to withdraw. Many acknowledged in the Assembly that they were not free to speak or vote their mind. If a member so much as raised the issue that the Congress party was issuing whips, he was heckled. ‘This august House has a total of 303 members at present,’ said a member, ‘…the Congress party controls 275 votes and if members of the party are to follow the ukase, there is no chance for any other opinion to prevail.’²² This was an astonishing way to make a Constitution, unprecedented in any republic in the history of mankind.

As India’s Constitution was being adopted, it was quite evident that it had failed to inspire. Nearly a third of the members rose to criticize it in the Constituent Assembly itself, but no one rose in praise of the parliamentary system. Members used words like ‘farce’, ‘deception’, ‘façade’, ‘queer’, ‘unwholesome’, ‘futile’, ‘misfortune’, and ‘lifeless’ to describe the document. One said, ‘Democracy of this country has yet to be realized, and certainly not in this Constitution.’²³ Another said, ‘According to me, parliamentary democracy is not democracy at all.’²⁴ Another commented, ‘If the present Constitution can be described in a nutshell it is one intended to fit in with the present administration.’²⁵ Even a member of the Drafting Committee came forward to criticize the Constitution’s ‘over-centralization’, calling it ‘entirely repugnant to a free democratic Constitution’. He also revealed how the Drafting Committee was ‘only asked to dress the baby’.²⁶

When some members praised the Constitution’s adoption of adult suffrage, its abolition of untouchability and its ending of princely India, one member couldn’t hold it back: ‘After all, what have we done so as to deserve this self-praise and mutual congratulations,’ he asked. Kamalapati Tiwari, a Congressman, went on to chastise the Assembly: ‘If you had not included these broad features in the Constitution, what else would you have included in it? We shall have reason for self-gratification only when the nation praises us,’ he said.²⁷

It was the parliamentary system that had received the Assembly’s most scathing criticism. And to the surprise of many, it was delivered by a Congressman. Ramnarayan Singh, a member of the Bihar Legislative Assembly, had come forward to speak his mind regardless of the consequences. ‘This parliamentary system of government must go,’ he had screamed. ‘It has failed in the West and it will create hell in this country.’²⁸ As a man of experience, he argued that ‘it will develop surely into the party system of government’ and that ‘strikes at the very root of democracy’. ‘In the presidential system of government it is easy to find one honest president,’ he said, ‘but it is not so easy to find an army of honest ministers.’ In a similar vein, another member had thrown Ambedkar’s own words back at him, that ‘it is wiser not to trust the legislature to prescribe the forms of administration’.²⁹

WORSE THAN THE BRITISH

The Indian version of the parliamentary system was worse than even the British. Its extreme centralization of power had most in the Constituent Assembly deeply worried. Speaker after speaker scorned this aspect of India’s system, even as they voted to adopt the Constitution. Many worried that it had the makings of a dictatorship; some even likened it to the situation in Germany that gave rise to Hitler. ‘Not that I do not want a strong central government,’ said one, ‘but just contemplate for a moment what is likely to happen if another Hitler were to arise and take charge.’³⁰ Others worried that the concentration of power would cause corruption and kill people’s initiative. A senior Congress leader and a member of the House Committee, H.V. Kamath, said that this system was nothing but ‘a centralized federation with a façade of parliamentary democracy.’³¹

Even in its original form the British system was elitist. It was designed for oligarchs to rule, not for multitudes to self-govern. In the guise of creating a government that was strong, it created one that was autocratic. As Bagehot once said, in the British system a government could ‘despotically and finally resolve’.³²

One would expect the Indians to know better than anyone else the true nature of the British system. It was evident as early as the 1700s. In 1783, an India Bill, which would have completely reorganized the British East India Company, as it was found guilty of incompetence and mismanagement in handling the affairs of India, was passed in the House of Commons by a two-to-one margin. The Bill provided for a seven-member governing board responsible to Parliament. But it was rejected by the House of Lords because King George III declared that he would regard anyone voting in its favour as his enemy.³³ Such examples had continued to the days of Nehru. Twice during the early 1900s, the British people had voted in a government of the Labour Party, due largely to its platform of ‘Dominion status for India’. Both times the government was brought down by the Conservative Party, which held a permanent majority in the House of Lords. If the 1924 government of Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald had been allowed a full term, India’s partition might have been avoided. His bill to create a Commonwealth of India was introduced in the Commons – it only went through one reading before his government fell – a decade before the idea of Pakistan was even born.

Gandhi was the one Indian leader who clearly understood how arbitrary the British system really was. ‘Your democracy is a superficial circumscribed thing,’ he had told the British Secretary of State in 1932. ‘My whole being rebels against the idea that in a system called democratic one man should have the unfettered power … To me this is a negation of democracy,’ he said of the British system.³⁴ But in the making of India’s Constitution he was completely sidelined.

Not only did Nehru and his men adopt this system of arbitrary rule, in their version they made the centralization of powers even worse. A promised Instrument of Instructions which would have delineated powers between the president and the prime minister was purposefully dropped from the Constitution. This left the president at the mercy of a more popularly elected prime minister. As such, arbitrary use of power by the latter quickly became a matter of routine. Although skirmishes between Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and President Rajendra Prasad never became public, the one-man rule, that of the prime minister, began within days of the Constitution’s adoption. A system with two elected top officials – Sir Ivor Jennings had called it a ‘hazardous experiment’³⁵ – failed almost immediately. Within the first year, Nehru would threaten to resign three times, and each time he acquired more powers. By late 1951, the concentration of powers was complete. Nehru was prime minister as well as the president of the Congress party, and Prasad a mere figurehead president.

Subhash Kashyap, a constitutional scholar wrote recently of how completely Nehru controlled the system: ‘I believe that if Jawaharlal Nehru had been India’s first president and Rajendra Prasad its first prime minister, our political system would today be more presidential than parliamentary without any change in the Constitution.’³⁶ Although inaccurate – the structure of the Indian system is entirely different from that of the United States – Kashyap’s comment illustrates how the Indian system was open to power grabbing by an individual.

Nehru believed that he knew what was best for the nation. As such, he felt that his views deserved to reign supreme. He was attracted to this system because it offered all the trappings of aggrandizement. It provided the wherewithal for one man to prevail.

ABSOLUTE FAILURE

But no single man, or even faction, can always know what is best for the whole nation. A good system of government must ensure that even the minority views have teeth. Each view must not only have the opportunity to be aired, it must also have a chance of being adopted as policy. In this, India’s system was a total failure. In the end, it failed even Nehru. His China policy was a one-man show. When it led to war and brought India a humiliating defeat, Nehru was exclusively responsible. And the frequently touted parliamentary benefits of ‘responsible government’ and ‘collective responsibility’ were nowhere to be seen. Nehru remained in office, and his defence minister, Krishna Menon, faced only a small demotion. But it was clearly ominous that the system had failed in the making of vital national security policies for the nation.

This inherently arbitrary system continued to fail the Indian people. Within twenty-five years of its adoption, and as many in the Constituent Assembly had warned, the system turned into a brazen dictatorship. In the mid-1970s, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi all but extinguished India’s democracy with her Emergency. India’s system allowed a leader of the political party, who came to power with less than 44 per cent of the votes, to rule the entire nation single-handedly from her residence. She had a puppet president issue a proclamation within hours. Cabinet wasn’t even informed, making a mockery of ‘collective responsibility’. She put thousands in jail, razed homes, allowed torture, imposed censorship, curtailed liberties and denied fundamental rights. ‘Repression would be piled upon repression,’³⁷ as Granville Austin, the famous constitutional historian, would write. She had already replaced the Chief Justice of India with a pliant judge, superseding three others who were senior. She passed laws for personal benefit. She amended the Constitution with retroactive effect. She decided on her own what Constitution the nation was to have, pushing through amendments that removed every semblance of separation of powers. Nani Palkhivala, a famous constitutional scholar, could only beg the Indians to awaken ‘before the light goes out of the Constitution’.³⁸

Indira Gandhi’s reign exposed in no unmistakable terms that in the parliamentary system it was impossible to hold the Constitution supreme, or have a truly independent judiciary, or practise genuine federalism. Parliamentary supremacy trumped them all. The government controlled the president, the legislature, the governors and the justices of