India After Independence: 1947-2000 (7 page)

From 19 to 20 March, the promised convention of Congress legislators and AICC members was held at Delhi, with Jawaharlal Nehru in the chair. Nehru told the delegates that they had to work for a ‘
panchayati raj,
fashioned by a Constituent Assembly, a grand
panchayat
of the nation, elected by all our people.’ In unequivocal terms, he said ‘this constitution must therefore go, lock, stock and barrel, and leave the field clear for our Constituent Assembly.’
¹²

In July 1937, Nehru again, this time a trifle impatiently, pressed the legislators to introduce resolutions in the assemblies rejecting the present constitution and demanding a Constituent Assembly. In August, the Working Committee of the Congress accepted a draft resolution prepared by Acharya Kripalani, which was sent to Congressmen in the provincial assemblies. Between August and October 1937, all the Congress provinces—Bombay, Madras, U.P., Bihar, Orissa, Central Provinces, North-West Frontier Province—as well as Sind passed this resolution which demanded that ‘the Government of India Act, 1935 . . . be repealed and replaced by a constitution for a free India framed by a Constituent Assembly elected on the basis of adult franchise.’
¹³
On 17 September 1937, a resolution recommending replacement of Government of India Act 1935 by a constitution framed by a Constituent Assembly was introduced in the Central Legislative Assembly. S. Satyamurti, the Congress leader who introduced it urged the British government to grasp the hand of friendship extended by Mahatma Gandhi because, once a great people make up their mind to obtain their freedom, there is no power on earth, not even Great Britain, which can stand in their way.’
¹⁴
The Haripura session of the Congress in February 1938 repeated the same demand.

Following the outbreak of the Second World War, Congress ministries resigned in protest against their being made a party to the War without eliciting their opinion or consent. At this juncture the ministries passed resolutions in the legislative assemblies which asserted that ‘India should be regarded as an independent nation entitled to frame her own constitution.’ Soon after, Gandhiji added his voice to that of Nehru and the Congress. In an article titled ‘The Only Way’, he declared that he was now even more enthusiastic about the Constituent Assembly than Nehru himself. ‘Look at the question from any standpoint you like, it will be found that the way to democratic
Swaraj
lies only through a properly constituted Assembly, call it by whatever name you like.’ He also thought that a body based on unadulterated suffrage including both men and women would do full justice to rival claims. ‘I seem to see in it a remedy . . . for our communal and other distempers, besides being a vehicle for mass political and other education . . .’
¹⁵

A discussion between Gandhiji and Jawaharlal Nehru at a meeting of the Congress Working Committee held at Wardha from 15-19 April 1940 brought out Gandhiji’s outstanding qualities of foresight and pragmatism.

While Jawaharlal Nehru maintained that the British government must first declare India independent and then call a Constituent Assembly, Gandhiji felt that the Assembly could be called first and be left free to decide on the issue of independence. As it happened, and not for the first time, Gandhiji’s view was closer to the actual turn of events.
¹⁶

The ‘August Offer’ made by Viceroy Linlithgow in 1940 in an attempt to secure Indian cooperation in the War effort for the first time conceded that the framing of the new Constitution should be primarily (though not solely) the responsibility of Indians themselves. It also offered to set up, after the conclusion of the War, ‘a body representative of the principal elements in India’s national life in order to devise the framework of the new Constitution.’ How this body was to be constituted—by direct or indirect elections based on adult or restricted franchise, or by nomination—was not spelt out.
¹⁷

The August Offer was spurned by all the major political parties in India. Congress proceeded in December 1940 to launch the individual Civil Disobedience campaign to register its protest against being made a party to the War without its consent. The party refrained from active obstruction of the war effort since it sympathized with the aims of the War. What it denied was the right to Britain to presume co-operation on India’s behalf. The door was still left open for negotiations.

In March 1942, in the wake of the British collapse in South-east Asia and three days after the fall of Rangoon, Winston Churchill, the prime minister of Britain, announced the dispatch to India of Sir Stafford Cripps, a prominent Labour Party member of the War Cabinet and a friend of Nehru. The Cripps proposals, as these constitutional concessions came to be called, for the first time clearly spelt out the procedure for the setting up of the Constituent Assembly. To quote:
¹⁸

Immediately upon the results being known of Provincial Elections which will be necessary at the end of hostilities, the entire membership of the Lower Houses of Provincial Legislatures shall as a single electoral college proceed to the election of the constitution-making body by the system of proportional representation . . . Indian States shall be invited to appoint representatives in the same proportion to their total population as in the case of representatives of British India as a whole and with the same powers as British Indian members.

The Cripps’ proposals were a major advance in the position of the British govermnent. For the first time, it was clearly accepted that the Constitution would be the sole responsibility of Indians alone. The idea of a Constituent Assembly was also unambiguously accepted and its modalities spelt out. However, other aspects of the Cripps’ proposals, which had divisive potential, stood in the way of the scheme being accepted by the Congress.

The failure of the Cripps’ Mission led to another round of confrontation between the national movement and the British. The famous AICC
resolution of 8 August 1942 which asked the British to ‘Quit India’ and exhorted the Indians to ‘Do or die’, also said that the provisional government of free India would evolve a scheme for a Constituent Assembly. The mass upsurge that followed left the British in no doubt that the time for the final negotiations had arrived. Therefore, soon after the War ended in Europe in May 1945, a White Paper on India was issued. This was followed by the abortive Simla Conference in June-July 1945.

The victory of the Labour party in the British elections in July 1945 provided the opportunity for a fresh initiative. The Viceroy, Lord Wavell, announcing the India policy of the new government on 19 September 1945, promised to convene a constitution-making body as soon as possible. On 19 February 1946, the British government declared that they were sending a Cabinet Mission to India to resolve the whole issue of freedom and constitution-making.

The Cabinet Mission, which arrived in India on 24 March 1946, held prolonged discussions with Indian leaders. On 16 May 1946, having failed to secure an agreement, it announced a scheme of its own. It recognized that the best way of setting up a constitution-making machinery would ‘be by election based on adult franchise; but any attempt to introduce such a step now would lead to a wholly unacceptable delay in the formulation of the new constitution.’
¹⁹
Therefore, it was decided that the newly-elected legislative assemblies of the provinces were to elect the members of the Constituent Assembly on the basis of one representative for roughly one million of the population. The Sikh and Muslim legislators were to elect their quota on the basis of their population. There were numerous other details about procedures and suggestions about the powers of the Union and the provinces. Particularly important were the provisions relating to grouping of provinces into sections A, B, and C. Section A consisted of Madras, Bombay, U.P., Bihar, the Central Provinces and Orissa—the ‘Hindu-majority’ provinces. Section B and C similarly consisted of the ‘Muslim-majority’ provinces of Punjab, NWFP and Sind in the west and Assam and Bengal in the east. The Cabinet Mission scheme proposed that the Constituent Assembly, after meeting to elect the chairman and complete other formalities, should divide into sections. The provincial representatives meeting in their respective sections should first decide the constitutions of the constituent provinces and also whether they wanted to adopt any group constitution. It was only after this process had been completed that the representatives of all the provinces and those of the princely states were to meet again to settle the Constitution of the Union. The Union of India was to deal with foreign affairs, defence and communications.

The Congress responded to the Cabinet Mission scheme by pointing out that in its view the Constituent Assembly, once it came into being, would be sovereign. It would have the right to accept or reject the Cabinet Mission’s proposals on specifics. Though an assurance on those lines was not forthcoming from the British, the Congress nevertheless decided after a great deal of debate to accept the scheme, and try to work it, as there
was a feeling that outright rejection would again delay the process of transfer of power. This is what the Muslim League hoped to achieve by its intransigence. The League continued to oppose the Constituent Assembly at every stage, before, as well as after it was constituted.

The first task of this Assembly is to free India through a new constitution, to feed the starving people, and to clothe the naked masses, and to give every Indian the fullest opportunity to develop himself according to his capacity.

These were the hopes expressed by Jawaharlal Nehru before the Constituent Assembly.
²⁰

The Constituent Assembly was to have 389 members. Of these, 296 were to be from British India and 93 from the princely Indian states. Initially, however, the Constituent Assembly comprised only of members from British India. Elections of these were held in July-August 1946. Of the 210 seats in the general category, Congress won 199. It also won 3 out of the 4 Sikh seats from Punjab. The Congress also won 3 of the 78 Muslim seats and the 3 seats from Coorg, Ajmer-Merwara and Delhi. The total Congress tally was 208. The Muslim League won 73 out of the 78 Muslim seats.

Especially since the Constituent Assembly was not elected on the basis of universal adult franchise and was thus not as truly representative in character as the Congress had wished and demanded, and also because only Muslims and Sikhs were recognized as ‘minorities’ deserving special representation, a special effort was made to see that the Assembly did indeed reflect the diversity of perspectives present in the country. The Congress Working Committee in early July 1946 specifically instructed the Provincial Congress Committees to include representatives of Scheduled Castes, Parsis, Indian Christians, Anglo-Indians, tribals and women in the Congress list for the general category.

The other important consideration in choosing names for election to the Assembly was that the very best talent available in the country must be involved in the task of the making of the Constitution. The lead was given by Gandhiji himself who suggested the names of sixteen eminent persons for inclusion in the Congress list. Altogether thirty people who were not members of the Congress were thus elected on the Congress ticket. Further, ‘the ideological spectrum of the Assembly was broadened by . . . the diverse nature of the Congress membership itself.’
²¹

Having failed to prevent the election of the Constituent Assembly, the Muslim League now concentrated its energies on refusing to join its deliberations. The Congress and Jawaharlal Nehru as president of the interim government continued to make conciliatory gestures, but to no avail. Accordingly, on 20 November 1946, the decision to convene the first session of the Constituent Assembly on 9 December 1946 was announced.

The Viceroy, Lord Wavell, in fact, had seemed reluctant to call the Assembly and it was Congress, which insisted that now that the Assembly had been elected, it was necessary that it begin to function, regardless of the wishes of those who chose to stay away. Nehru had also to firmly quash the Viceroy’s desire to appoint the provisional president of the Assembly and issue invitations to the members to attend the first session in his own name. At Nehru’s insistence, the oldest member of the Assembly, Dr Sachchidanand Sinha, became the provisional president and invitations were issued in the name of the secretary of the Constituent Assembly. In doing this Nehru was establishing, for all to see, the independence of the Assembly from British control. It would hardly be fair if the Constituent Assembly, which from conception to fulfilment was an achievement of the Congress and particularly of Nehru, should be finally presented to the world as a child of the British government. Besides, its credibility as a legitimate constitution-making body for independent India depended not only on its being autonomous but on its being seen as autonomous.

At 11 a.m., on 9 December 1946, the Constituent Assembly of India began its first session. For all practical purposes, the chronicle of independent India began on that historic day. Independence was now a matter of dates. The real responsibility of deciding the constitutional framework within which the government and people of India were to function had been transferred and assumed by the Indian people with the convening of the Constituent Assembly. Only a coup d’état could now reverse this constitutional logic.

The first session was attended by 207 members. The Muslim League, having failed to prevent the convening of the Assembly, now refused to join its deliberations. Consequently, the seventy-six Muslim members of the League stayed away and the four Congress Muslim members attended the session. On 11 December, Dr Rajendra Prasad was elected the permanent Chairman, an office later designated as President of the Assembly. On 13 December, Jawaharlal Nehru moved the famous Objectives Resolution, which was debated till 19 December but its adoption was postponed to enable the representatives of the Muslim League and the princely states to join. At the next session, which took place from 20-22 January 1947, it was decided to not wait any longer for the League, and the Objectives Resolution was passed.