How Diversity is handled in the Indian Constitution

Sat Nov 3 15:58:49 UTC 2007

October 31, 2007

Diversity in the Indian Constitution (Guha Chapter 6)History[Part of
an ongoing series on Ramachandra Guha's India After Gandhi. Last
week's entry can be found here. Next week we will skip a chapter, and
go directly to Chapter 8, "Home and the World," which explains how
India evolved its "non-aligned" status.]

I've actually written a longish post on the idea of "secularism" in
the Indian constitution in the past, but of course there's more to
say. The entire proceedings (more than 1000 pages of text!) of the
Constituent Assembly have been posted online by the Indian Parliament
here. Guha's account comes out of reading through those proceedings,
and is also deeply influenced by Granville Austin's classic book, The
Indian Constitution: Cornerstone of a Nation, which is still as I
understand it the definitive book on the subject.

As many readers may be aware, the Indian Constitution was worked out
over the course of three years (1946-1949), by a Constituent Assembly
that contained 300 members, including representation by religious
minorities, members of marginal groups (i.e., Adivasis), as well as a
small but vocal group of women.

Three of the profound disagreements that the members of the Assembly
had to resolve included: 1) the proper role of Gandhian philosophy in
defining the new nation, 2) the question of "reservations" for Dalits
and Tribals (Scheduled Castes and Tribes), and 3) the status of Indian
languages, and the idea of an "official" language.

1. Panchayats.

Let's start with the question of the Gandhian idea of village
panchayats, which was essentially rejected by the Constituent Assembly
in favor of a strong, modern, centralized government. The lead voice
in rejecting the Panchayat system was of course the Dalit lawyer and
political figure B.R. Ambedkar. Here is Guha:

Some people advocated a 'Gandian constitution,' based on a revived
panchayat raj system, with the village as the basic unit of politics
and governance. This was sharply attacked by B.R. Ambedkar, who held
that 'these village republics have been the ruination of India.'
Ambedkar was 'surprised that those who condemn Provincialism and
communalism should come forward as champions of the village. What is
the village but a sink of localism, a den of ignorance,
narrow-mindedness and communalism?'

These remarks provoked outrage in some quarters. The socialist H.V.
Kamath dismissed Ambedkar's attitude as 'typical of the urban
highbrow.' The peasant leader N.G. Ranga said that Ambedkar's comments
showed his ignorance of Indian history. 'All the democratic traditions
of our country [have] been lost on him. If he had only known the
achievements of the village panchayats in Southern India over a period
of a millenium, he would not have said those things.' However, the
feisty female member of the United Provinces, Begum Aizaz Rasul,
'entirely agreed' with Amdedkar. As she saw it, the 'modern tendency
is towards the rights of the citizen as against any corporate body and
village panchayats can be very autocratic.' (119)
(Incidentally, the entire text of Ambedkar's speech is at the
Parliament of India website, here. Go check it out — it's a
fascinating document.)

I know that there are still neo-Gandhian thinkers out there who value
highly decentralized government as a way of preventing tyranny. And it
has to be admitted since independence, the Indian "Centre" has often
overstepped its bounds, culminating perhaps in Indira Gandhi's 1975
"Emergency" (many other instances could be mentioned).

But the fact that the most prominent Dalit representative and one of
the most prominent women in the Assembly saw the "village" as a site
of backwardness and repression, not liberation, cannot simply be
ignored. They saw the move to centralization — and a focus on
individual, rather than group or "corporate" rights — as a necessary
step towards nudging Indian society towards caste and gender equality.

In my view, it's a remarkable thing that the Indian Constitution
essentially rejected Gandhian thinking, especially given how powerful
Gandhi's ideas and political methods had been in achieving the state
of independence that led to the writing of this Constitution to begin
with. But it may be that Gandhi had too much faith that people were
going to be good to one another, and even in 1948 itself some members
of the Assembly were aware that something stronger than mere idealism
would be required to guarantee the rights of the disenfranchised.

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2. Reservations.

Reservations is a huge topic, one that I can't possibly deal with in a
very substantive way right now (see this Wikipedia page for a brief
tutorial). Suffice it to say that when the Constitution was ratified
in 1950, it contained reservations for Scheduled Caste (SC) and Tribe
(ST) groups in Parliament and State Assemblies, but not for what were
known as "Other Backward Castes" (OBCs), though reservations for those
groups would be recommended later. (And this latter question became a
hot issue yet again in 2006, though as far as I know the
recommendation for national OBC reservations in Indian higher
education has not yet been implemented.)

Guha's brief account of the debate over this question focuses on an
Adivasi (tribal) political figure I hadn't heard of, Jaipal Singh from
Chotanagpur in the southern part of Bihar. Jaipal Singh had been sent
by missionaries to study at Oxford, where he became a star at field
hockey, and indeed, won a gold medal in the sport in 1928. In the
Constituent Assembly, he made the following remarkable speech:

As a jungli, as an Adibasi, I am not expected to understand the legal
intricacies of the Resolution. But my common sense tells me that every
one of us should march in that road to freedom and fight together.
Sir, if there is any group of Indian people that has been shabbily
treated it is my people. They have been disgracefully treated,
neglected for the last 6000 years. The history of the Indus Velley
civilization, a child of which I am, shows quite clearly that it is
the newcomers—most of you here are intruders as far as I am
concerned—it is the newcomers who have driven away my people from the
Indus Valley to the jungle fastness… . The whole history of my people
is one of continuous exploitation and dispossession by the
non-aboriginals of India punctuated by rebellions and disorder, and
yet I take Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru at his word. I take you all at
your word that now we are going to start a new chapter, a new chapter
in of independent India where there is equality of opportunity, where
no one would be neglected.
You can see the anger and the pain — but also the impressive
willingnes to turn a new page, and cooperate fully in an "independent
India where there is equality of opportunity."

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3. "Hindi imperialism."

Finally, one of the most divisive questions of all was the status of
English vis a vis Indian languages. At the moment of independence,
it's not surprising that a large number of participants in the
Constituent Assembly found it galling that the proceedings were
occurring largely in English, and some were insistent that the Indian
constitution be "primarily" written in Hindi. There was also a strong
movement to make Hindi India's national language, which was of course
rejected.

The simple truth is that there is no one, universal Indian language,
and the people who were insisting that Hindi should be become that
language had to give way, or risk provoking separatist sentiments from
South Indians. Guha quotes one particular figure, T.T. Krishnamachari
of Madras, along those line:

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 that the strong Centre
which we need, a strong Centre which is necessary will mean the
enslavement of people who do not speak the language of the Centre. I
would, Sir, convey a warning on behalf of people of the South for the
reason that there are already elements in South India who want
separation… , and my honorable friends in U.P. do not help us in any
way by flogging their idea [of] 'Hindi Imperialism' to the maximum
extent possible. 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.
(131)

What's interesting about this for me is the way it already shows the
contradictions in the desire to have a strongly centralized government
— it can't be done easily in a country with such strong regional
language traditions.

For more on how "official language" questions in India have evolved
since the writing of the Constitution, see this Wikipedia entry.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Official_languages_of_India

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People have lots of complaints about the Indian Constitution — it's
ridiculously long, for one thing, and punted on several highly
controversial questions (one of them being language, the other being
the "Uniform Civil Code"). People who dislike caste reservations also
often cite the Constituent Assembly as in effect the starting point
for a system they feel has spiraled out of control.

But what I think is impressive about this process is the strong
attempt made to include as many of India's diverse voices as possible,
without sacrificing a vision of effective centralized government. By
contrast, the U.S. Constitution may be clearer and simpler, but it was
written exclusively by property-holding white men who all spoke a
single language (early America was actually much more linguistically
diverse than people think). Native Americans were not invited, though
in fact this was their land before the colonists came. Women were not
invited, nor were African Americans. Despite its flaws, India's
Constitution did a much better job at defining the new nation
inclusively than America's did.

http://www.sepiamutiny.com/sepia/archives/004831.html
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