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Benjamin Franklin once said, quote, democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what they
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are going to have for lunch.
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That tells you from a lamb's point of view that democracy is not enough.
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The wolves are going to vote to eat the lamb.
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Democracy by itself is meaningless unless you have a set of rules to protect every individual.
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The rules have to state that the wolves may not eat the lamb no matter how lofty their
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In modern times, we call these rules a constitution.
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The constitution is a book of rules that protects the rights of lambs by limiting the behavior
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A constitution should ideally limit what a state can do to its citizens.
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But this raises a difficult question.
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What if a popular leader says that, hey, listen, I have the people of this nation with me,
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therefore I am legitimate.
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This constitution is only legitimate as long as I say so.
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If I don't agree with some part of it, I will change it.
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What happens to the lamb then?
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Is this attitude something we should be worried about in India?
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Well, 70 years ago, this was the exact position taken by Jawaharlal Nehru.
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Welcome to The Seen and the Unseen, our weekly podcast on economics, politics and behavioral
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Please welcome your host, Amit Verma.
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Welcome to The Seen and the Unseen.
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You know, we live in times when everyone looks at the world through binaries.
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If you're not with us, you're against us.
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If you're not the purest of white, you're the blackest of black.
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This has especially happened since 2014 when Narendra Modi won elections.
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For members of the tribe of Modi, history ended in 2014.
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Nothing after that can be discussed and everything is Nehru's fault.
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For people in the anti-Modi tribe, history began in 2014.
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We can only talk about the wrong that has happened since then.
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Before that, India was a golden age and our leaders were saints.
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Now, this is obviously a ridiculous binary and it affects how we look at history.
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Consider Nehru, for example, who for one side is a saint and for the other side, a demon.
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Nehru was a complex man.
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He was a great leader during the freedom struggle and when he became prime minister of India,
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he got some things right and he got some things wrong.
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You can ascribe some of his mistakes to the temper of the times and you can ascribe some
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of them to his own temperament.
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Nehru contained multitudes.
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Similarly, our constitution contains multitudes.
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You know, people often speak of the constitution as if it is some sort of holy book, but the
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truth is, it's not a book at all.
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It was a book for just over a year between 1950 and 1951, after which, as one famous
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cartoon says, it ceased to be a book and became a periodical.
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Starting with Nehru, it became common that whenever a court called an action by a prime
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minister unconstitutional, the prime minister just went and changed the constitution.
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The first amendment came in 1951 and in that, as well as through subsequent amendments like
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the third, the fourth, the seventh, the seventeenth, our rights were diluted as the constitution
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became less and less liberal.
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No less than the father of the constitution, B R Ambedkar, said in 1954, at the time of
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the fourth amendment, that the constitution had been so degraded that he wanted to burn
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Ambedkar, of course, was in the government at the time of the first amendment, which
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is such a fascinating period in India's history.
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The government in power at the time, led by Nehru, realized that the constitution came
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in the way of much of what they wanted to accomplish, so they set about to amend it.
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My guest today is the scholar Tripur Dhaman Singh, who has written an excellent book called
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Sixteen Stormy Days lays out the details of the complex political landscape of those times,
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showing how so many of the leaders involved, including Nehru, were creatures of circumstance.
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You could even say they were responding to incentives.
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I wish every Indian, especially every Indian on Twitter, would read this book, because
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it would give so much nuance to their understanding of Indian politics.
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One of my big learnings from the book was about our free speech laws.
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I'm a free speech absolutist, and I've always railed in column after column after column
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against Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code, which is a sedition law, as well as 153A and
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These are all colonial era laws.
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They should not exist today, right?
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Well, as Tripur Dhaman points out, these laws were deemed to be unconstitutional in 1950,
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but the caveats to free speech added in the first amendment made them constitutional again.
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Some of the TIL moments in this superb book and in this episode.
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Before we get to our conversation, though, let's take a quick commercial break.
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If you enjoy listening to The Scene and the Unseen, you can play a part in keeping the
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The Scene and the Unseen has been a labor of love for me.
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I've enjoyed putting together many stimulating conversations, expanding my brain and my universe,
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and hopefully yours as well.
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But while the work has been its own reward, I don't actually make much money off the show.
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Although The Scene and the Unseen has great numbers, advertisers haven't really woken
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up to the insane engagement level of podcasts, and I do many many hours of deep research
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for each episode, besides all the logistics of producing the show myself, scheduling guests,
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booking studios, paying technicians, the travel, and so on.
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So well, I'm trying a new way of keeping this thing going, and that involves you.
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My proposition for you is this.
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For every episode of The Scene and the Unseen that you enjoy, buy me a cup of coffee.
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Or even a lavish lunch, whatever you feel is worth.
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You can do this by heading over to sceneunseen.in slash support, and contributing an amount
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This is not a subscription.
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The Scene and the Unseen will continue to be free on all podcast apps and at sceneunseen.in.
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This is just a gesture of appreciation.
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Help keep this thing going.
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sceneunseen.in slash support.
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Tripur Dhaman, welcome to The Scene and the Unseen.
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Thank you so much for having me, Amit.
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It's an absolute pleasure.
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Tripur Dhaman, before we get started at talking about your fascinating book, which I enjoyed
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so much, and I wish many more people read and internalized, I'd love to know about your
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Like, how did you become a historian?
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What were your sort of intellectual influences, the historians that you looked up to, or what
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drew you to history as a discipline?
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So I actually have always had a kind of fascination for history and for politics.
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And when I was going to university, I kind of really thought hard about, you know, which
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And I ended up going with politics.
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But I found that while I did really enjoy the kind of, I studied politics and international
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relations for my undergraduate degree, and I really enjoyed it, but I always felt that
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there was, that, I mean, history kind of always had a lot more fascination.
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I mean, it kind of interested me in a way that sort of political theory and international
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relations theory didn't.
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So then I ended up doing a master's in South Asian studies at Cambridge, where I was taken
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on as a student by Christopher Bailey.
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And that was a very, that was my first real introduction to historical research.
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It was kind of eye-opening in many ways.
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It really kind of forced me to broaden the way I think, the way I kind of work.
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And I think Bailey exercised quite a great influence on me.
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And so that's how I ended up.
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And then because I did quite well, he was like, well, you should think about a PhD.
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And I really liked him.
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I really like what I did.
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And that was kind of how I went into it.
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And progressively, the more, I think the more I read and the more I came across, the more
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I wanted to read and, you know, the more I wanted to get into the thick of sort of archival
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And I think one thing really led to another.
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And you, in the end, you know, that I've kind of ended up doing this as an academic.
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So far, so good, I'd say.
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And you know, while you got down to it, and you've written one book before this, and,
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you know, as you kind of approached that project, were you sort of just going with the flow
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and just picking up what interested you at the time, or were there sort of themes that
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had always fascinated you, which you sort of took the opportunity to explore?
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So I actually started out with working on 18th and 19th century India, because that's
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what I had, you know, 10 years ago, that's what I thought was one of the most fascinating
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periods of Indian history.
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But it was it was a kind of period of, like, real flux.
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And it's the kind of period, say, someone like William Dalrymple writes about.
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And some of the things that were kind of happening were just mind boggling.
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You had, you know, adventurers from Luxembourg setting up, you know, little kingdoms.
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You had the kind of titular Mughal Empire still kind of soldiering on.
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There was so much going on.
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And making sense of how things happened was constantly a sort of challenge, because I
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had never, when I did start with history, I'd never studied history academically before,
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not for my undergraduate, not even for my final two years of school.
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So I found the whole process of doing research really fascinating.
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And I think the 19th century was kind of a very, very interesting period to start with,
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because it was one I was working with, I mean, possibly one of the greatest historians of
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And secondly, it was a kind of project which really needed you to dig into quite old archival
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It would take, you know, you would sit through 200-year-old documents.
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And I found the whole process really fascinating.
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And that period, because it's even now such a contested sort of time in Indian history,
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it's, I mean, very politically charged to talk about, as you can see now to talk about,
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for example, the period which was the, you know, the end of the Mughal Empire and the
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kind of rise of the British.
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And so I found when I started out, I think I had a very, didn't have a very precise
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idea of where the project would go.
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But as things developed, there were kind of certain themes which have really kind of stuck
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And those include things like the idea of the law, the concept of sovereignty, the,
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you know, how these sort of kind of small adventurers or small like kingdoms set up
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political entities within the sort of framework of the, you know, of the empire really.
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And so I think those themes have kind of stuck with me.
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And some of them are kind of even reflected in this work on the constitution because the
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idea of law and ideology is kind of laced through this work as well.
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So sort of a couple of questions, one question is that, you know, most of us when, most of
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us non-historians, when we think of the telling of history, we think of it as, okay, you research
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a lot of facts and you build a story around it and you tell a story.
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But obviously for a historian, you are sort of doing many different things.
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What is the process of doing history per se as a historian really like?
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Do you have to sort of set aside preconceptions that you might have or that existing narratives
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about it and of course, the hindsight bias where we already know what happened, but you
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know, in the moment, it's never apparent what's going to happen.
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What are the sort of adjustments you have to make when you actually sit down to the
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practice of studying and writing history, especially as you say, since you, you know,
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took it up while, you know, in your post-graduation and you hadn't really studied the formal art
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of doing history before that?
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I mean, I think it's quite hard to start from a kind of blank canvas.
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We all have certain biases, certain, I wouldn't say preconceptions, but certain, you know,
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ideas about the world, about the past.
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And I don't think you can start from a blank canvas, but you have to be willing to let
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your own ideas be challenged and be willing to kind of take them apart and put them back
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So I think that's something that is really important and that's something that I've really
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learned through the last several years.
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And I think one of the problems that I first had when I started my, I'd say my work as
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a historian, was my unfamiliarity with kind of the historiographical and methodological
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tools that we use, because we do more than just tell a story.
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And facts are always, I mean, facts are never really facts in the way that people often
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They have to be contextualized.
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You have to interrogate your sources because, just because someone's saying something 200
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years ago doesn't, you know, their word doesn't necessarily make it true.
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So you have to be able to read them against the grain.
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And you have to also think of how the world was at the period that you were, that you
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And that's where the kind of, a lot of the kind of theory that we forced to really, not
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necessarily forced to, but you know, you have to come to terms with it, is sort of different
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ways of conceptualizing the past.
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And you have to be willing to, and that's, I feel that's where like most of the grunt
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It's the sort of collection of facts and retelling of facts, or is the easy part, contextualizing
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it and interpreting it in sort of in the light of, you know, the broader framework that you're
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using to assess it or other ideas about the period that you're talking about.
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That's where the real work lies, because you have to also take on board ideas that other
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people have, which may be diametrically opposite to yours, and we can't simply ignore them
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and say, well, I'm going to say this, which I guess you can in, you know, if you're writing
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as an amateur or if you're, but for something to stand the kind of, stand the scrutiny of
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your peers, it has to be willing to take on board a lot of ideas that you don't necessarily
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And I think that's one of the major, major differences between having a kind of, not
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necessarily academic, but I'd say a professional historian versus a kind of raconteur of stories.
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And you know, you mentioned that you spoke about the framework through which you approach
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history and you look at history, and obviously, as you said, none of us are blank slates going
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into looking at whatever we're looking at.
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So how much of this sort of framework was influenced by your studies of political science?
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For example, you mentioned about how, you know, in your earlier book, you were interested
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in ideas of sovereignty and law and so on and so forth.
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And you know, even in this book, there's a very, you know, a crisp, cogent, very lucid
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understanding of, you know, constitutionalism and liberalism and sort of the central fault
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lines of that period, which is of course, the political imperatives of the Congress
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Party and Nehru versus a constitutional project that they had embarked upon, which is, you
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know, a very clear line and yet a frame that I haven't seen many other people who write
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about that period use it also.
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How important was all of that political science training in defining sort of the way you look
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And do you think that that's something that all historians sort of carry with them, that
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the frame also matters?
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It's not just, you know, how scrupulously you can, you know, get all the facts and tell
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the story, but even the way you interpret it.
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I mean, you're absolutely right.
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It does, the kind of the framework that you use and the kind of narrative that you build
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are hugely important parts of the story you tell.
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And like my last book, because I felt this was, I mean, it's the kind of story that deserves
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to be really widely read.
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It's something that people are very unfamiliar with and something that affects everybody's
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life quite intimately in ways that, you know, we don't often acknowledge.
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And for that reason, I tried to keep things as lucid, as crisp, as sort of easy to access
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And that's because I was writing for an audience that may not necessarily be invested in history
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in the same way as I would have written it if I was writing for Oxford University Press.
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And I think that that kind of makes a huge difference.
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As far as my sort of background in politics goes, it was, I think it gave me a good, it's
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given me a good kind of basic idea of the kind of ideological elements that come into
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being as well as the, I'd say a sort of historical background of many of these ideas such as
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liberalism or constitutionalism.
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And I think looking back, it's probably been quite helpful because I can perhaps talk about
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both sides of the story with what I hope is like relative clarity.
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And I hope that that's something that comes across in the book as well.
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I was struck by the clarity of the writing and the fact that it's a book that can be
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read by the lay reader and not someone who only reads history for that matter.
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So were there any models in terms of historical writing that you looked at to for this kind
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There isn't really a specific model.
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I think it's just something that's come to me through reading a lot of historians.
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And there are some books which, you know, really are very, very interesting, but then
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they're also written in a kind of way that makes them quite dull to read.
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And you know, I'd read them through, you know, because of the level of interest that
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I have in it, but someone else might not.
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And I think my thought always was that anyone with slight interest in history or politics
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should be able to pick this book up and be able to read it, no matter whether they're
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like 16 or whether they're 60, and be able to make sense of it, because it's not the
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easiest subject to talk about.
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But on the other hand, it's hugely important.
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And I think that's part and parcel of a historian's craft is to, especially if you're writing
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about something that has such a huge bearing on the contemporary world, to make your material
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accessible to a wide audience.
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And I think one of the ideas, and this is like what I once watched, I watched the film
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a long time ago, but I once read a review of the old Hindi film Dhund, which is from
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And the reviewer wrote one of the reasons that he really loved the film was that he
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was like, yeah, the action moves at the pace of a gunshot.
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And that's something that's always struck with me is you shouldn't make things more
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complicated than they are, and you shouldn't unnecessarily pad out what you want to say.
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So if it can be said in a kind of way that keeps the narrative flowing quickly, and it
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can be said in a way that is clear and accessible, then that's what you should go for.
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The other thing that struck me was, like you said, it's a hugely important book.
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And we'll come to that when we discuss the book.
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But it also struck me that the writing of it at this time is also surely something that
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you must have thought twice about, because doing history means you're embracing nuance,
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as you have done in this book.
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But modern politics, especially in the last few years, is really stripping away of nuance,
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and history has almost been weaponized.
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And we've created all these stark binaries through which we look at history, where for
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one side Nehru is all black, and for the other side Nehru is all white, and there's no other
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way of looking at it, and similarly, figures like Shyamaprasad Mukherjee and all of those.
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There are many people today who purport on the one hand to support the Congress, but
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on the other hand, they treat the Constitution almost as a holy book.
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I mean, sometimes they will say in response to an argument, but that is unconstitutional,
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as if that is automatically the end of the argument and you don't need to say anything
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While the reality, of course, is that as that old cartoon goes, the Constitution is less
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of a book and more of a periodical.
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Nehru, in fact, was in the habit of every time something he did was deemed unconstitutional,
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he simply amended the Constitution, not just in the First Amendment as you write about,
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but the Fourth, the Seventh, the Seventeenth, which went to Parliament just before he died.
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He sort of did this repeatedly.
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So you would have known when you began this book that this was sort of not fitting in
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these polarized times, it would not be an easy project to do.
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What did you think about it in that sense?
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Like did that increase the urgency of doing the book that, you know, something needs to
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counter the prevailing narratives or is it something that made you think twice?
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No, I think actually that's one of the reasons why I already wrote it was that it sort of
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inverts so many of these binaries that we've come to accept as a given and if somebody
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approaches it with an open mind, it kind of really scrambles the kind of easy dichotomies
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And it is, yeah, it's a story that needs nuance, but equally it's something that really sort
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of has the potential to throw things a bit off-kilter.
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And yes, I knew when I wrote it that it, when I was writing it, that it has the potential
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to be used as a kind of political tool in the current climate.
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But of course, I finished writing it before the kind of, you know, the protests over the
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CAA, etc. happened, which really brought the Constitution suddenly back into public debate.
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So it wasn't expressly written with the intent of being a kind of intervention in the debates
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of today, but I was well aware that it is something that impinges quite heavily on today's
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And the thing is, nobody comes out of it looking like you would expect.
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So it has potential to be, I guess, used as a kind of intellectual weapon.
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But I think that potential is open-ended, so it can be used by either side to criticize
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And I think that is something that I was aware of, and I think that's what makes it interesting.
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It's a fascinating book.
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And also, you know, for the human aspects of it, you know, you've kind of made all of
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these people, Nehru Patel, Mukherjee, and so on, so much more three-dimensional than
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we otherwise knew of them.
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And you know, just as you bring the lens of politics and political science rather in your
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telling of history, I kind of, you know, invoke economics in my podcast a lot.
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So as I was reading this book, it kind of, you know, confirmed my sense of how incentives
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shape actions and shape behavior.
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And I had a question for you on that, because one of the interesting things that you've
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pointed out, and it's like a strand through the book and it's endlessly fascinating, is,
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you know, and we'll discuss the book in detail, the context and everything that happened,
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but one of the strands that really struck me was that at the time of the first amendment
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being carried out, you know, Raja Ji and Ambedkar were both part of the establishment, and they
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played a part in actually getting many of these amendments through Raja Ji, the sort
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of the anti-free speech parts of it, and Ambedkar, all the rest of it, and they were in government,
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and they were all for it.
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And yet, after they are in government, as you pointed out, Ambedkar actually represented
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the zamindars against the very act that he had helped bring about.
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And similarly, Raja Ji goes on to form the swatantra party and become a beacon of liberalism,
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while their acting while in government is contrary to that.
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And it sort of struck me about that old truism of Lord Act and that power corrupts.
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And it strikes me that their behavior is actually entirely natural if you consider the incentives
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that if you're part of the executive, that arm of government, you will obviously be drawn
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to actions that strengthen the part of the government which you are part of.
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You might not think of it like that, but that's pretty much what you'll be drawn to.
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So to me, it's not so much of a contradiction that when they were part of the government,
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they behaved in a way that would strengthen their arm of government, and then once they
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are out of it, they can go back to talking about principles.
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And you know, similarly, Nehru much earlier, before he became prime minister, warned of
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his own dictatorial tendencies.
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And yet, when he became a prime minister, you know, he ignored the warnings of his past
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Now you've obviously, you know, studied that period and these people much more than me.
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So what is your sense of this that to what extent can they be and unconsciously, of course,
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not, you know, justifying it in these terms.
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But to what extent are they actually responding to incentives and can be read as creatures
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of their circumstances?
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They were definitely creatures of their circumstances.
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And that kind of comes through in the sort of reasons that they invoke.
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And there is, I never quite point out, I mean, I never hint that they were, for example,
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somehow inherently evil, or like somehow inherently, you know, their moral compass was corrupted.
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They were obviously responding to the situation as they saw it.
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But the incentives, but how I put it is that they have, I think part of it is to do with
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the fact that they were quite, as you know, Patel once, I pointed out at some point in
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the book where Patel tells Nehru, you know, this is the result of idealistic exuberance.
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And I think the idealism had a major role to play somewhere because they just passed
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the constitution, they had, you know, all of these grand ambitions, and they either
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thought of themselves as kind of above these kind of despotic tendencies, or as people
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who would, you know, wield them with the idea of utmost benevolence.
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And that is, I feel, one major aspect of why they did what they did.
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Secondly, there was, of course, the incentive and the incentive was driven also by the fact
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that they were the only organized political force that there was.
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So there was no real incentive to take on board the views of the opposition or the warnings,
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you know, issued by, you know, figures like Mukherjee or Kriplani or people like that,
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because there was the idea that they would somehow at some point have to face the same
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tools that they were crafting was just so far-fetched.
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And the, I think, that probably made it easy enough to contemplate these measures that
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I think they probably would not have if there had been any real political organization with
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the standing to challenge the Congress.
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And I think that was one major incentive.
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I think the other, again, and this is, I think, quite common to most democracies, is that
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the incentive, if possible, to take shortcuts to gain political benefit is always there
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and a lot of these people quite clearly succumb to it.
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There's a fascinating passage from your book, which I'll read out, which is, in fact, about
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the Congress, where you write, from its earliest days, the Congress party had claimed to speak
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for the entirety of the nation and to represent all Indians.
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The party was as committed to denying every other group or party a seat at the political
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high table as it was to gaining control of the levers of power.
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As a self-declared representative of the nation, the Congress laid claim to possession of the
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colonial state and all its territory.
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With the advent of democracy and the inauguration of the Constitution, this position, incompatible
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with any idea of constitutional democracy, was strained to breaking point when its collectivist
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murings and its intolerance of opposing ideologies clashed with an expansively liberal Constitution.
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The Congress party, instead of defending the normative foundations of democracy and the
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fundamental rights enshrined in the Constitution, instinctively turned on its own creation."
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So give me a sense of, you know, in your book, what you've done, an excellent job is of laying
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out the context of that immediate period between, you know, 26 Jan 1950 when the Constitution
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comes into being and then the First Amendment 14 months later, but give me a broader sense
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of the context of these times as we come into this, that what is the Congress's approach
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and my sense in a way was that, you know, people like Nehru and Patel and whatever when
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they spoke so highly of the fundamental rights and all of that earlier, were in a sense doing
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what we would today call virtue signaling.
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But when they realized that it would impact their ability to do all the things that they
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wanted to do, which the Congress was predicated upon because the whole Congress's platform
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was social change and a certain kind of progress, progressism, which then those fundamental
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rights got in the way of.
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So you know, how was all of that sort of playing out?
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Was this clash between fundamental rights and politics kind of inevitable in the way
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the last few years shaped up or, you know, was it sort of contingent upon the circumstance
#
of Nehru being the person who happened to be the Prime Minister?
#
What is your sense of that?
#
A quick word about that quote though.
#
So that's a whole school of Indian history would kind of subscribe to that view.
#
And I think I referenced that to Sunil Khilnani.
#
But of course, there are also others like Perry Anderson, et cetera.
#
And it's so partition, for example, was something that was framed in Congress circles as a price
#
that they had to pay to have a centralized state under their own control.
#
And that kind of reflects, again, I said, I think the kind of testifiers to the idea
#
that I think that the Congress was quite committed to a centralized state under its own control.
#
And I mean, one of the sticking points throughout the 1930s and 1940s in Indian politics is
#
the Congress demand to be taken for, you know, the Congress demand for the British to consider
#
it the sole representative of the nation.
#
And ultimately, that's what becomes a stumbling block.
#
It becomes a stumbling block in the 40s with the rise of the Muslim League because it becomes
#
a position that's completely untenable.
#
You know, once the Muslim League wins the majority of Muslim seats, it becomes quite
#
apparent that the Congress doesn't represent the entirety of the nation because they lose
#
quite badly in the Muslim seats.
#
And that kind of idea still, but the idea doesn't really die because the thing is,
#
it's thought that that problem has been overcome or at least sidelined with partition.
#
And so once the exercise to write the Constitution, et cetera, begins, you have token representation
#
And I think it's done with the idea that, you know, you give the impression that it's
#
a very representative assembly.
#
But as people never tire of pointing out, even during this constituent assembly debates,
#
it's essentially a one party body in a one party country.
#
There is no other party.
#
And party that dominates the constituent assembly also holds the levers of executive power.
#
And once the Constitution comes into force and everyone knows that an election is going
#
to be held, it also creates a kind of incentive for people who are already, you know, in the
#
constituent assembly and to kind of toe the orders that come from Nehru and Patel because
#
a lot of them want to be re-elected.
#
And the only way that they will get their nominations is if they keep the party bosses
#
And so that's, again, contemporary sort of articles in the press speak about this openly.
#
And then, of course, you also have the kind of decline of Sardar Patel because he's by
#
the mid 1950s, he's actually bedridden for most of the time.
#
And he passes away in 1950.
#
And by then, Nehru is already more or less ascendant.
#
I talk about it at some point in the book with the Nazi Congress where in Patel's absence,
#
you know, Nehru kind of has his own way.
#
And eventually, after Patel's death, really, you have a system where Nehru is such a political
#
colossus that there is no one really in the cabinet who can, you know, stand up to him
#
or put forward a strong alternative position.
#
Nehru's biographer, Sarvapalli Gopal, who is actually very sympathetic to Nehru, you
#
know, calls it a sort of collection of moldering mediocrities.
#
And so the context is that the political capital that Nehru brings to bear, much like today,
#
ensures that he is capable of getting his own way.
#
And I think I make a reasonably strong case in the book for arguing that much of it is
#
driven by Nehru's own personal investment in these policies rather than any sort of
#
great pressure from the states because he resists the pressure for things that he kind
#
of feels very strongly about.
#
And on the other side, equally, you have figures like S.P. Mukherjee or H.N.
#
Kunzwaro, even Kriplani, who then resigns from the Congress, they're very articulate,
#
they're very good at, you know, the sort of ins and outs of parliamentary debate.
#
But unfortunately, no one has the kind of political organization or the public standing
#
to mount a significant challenge.
#
And I think that's a kind of interesting thing to note because it has so many contemporary
#
echoes the way like we sort of conceptualize today.
#
Yeah, I mean, those contemporary echoes are sort of echoed, as it were, throughout my
#
reading of the book, because in our modern times as well, we seem to have a single party
#
which is utterly dominant as it was then.
#
We have a larger than life figure in charge of that party.
#
You just repeated a quote about the quality of Nehru's cabinet and a similar thing could
#
possibly be said about this one about, you know, how eminences like Arun Shuri, for example,
#
were just sidelined in 2014 and you've got a much weaker cabinet than you could have.
#
And equally, you have worries about the Constitution, about how it's been degraded and sort of made
#
meaningless and how that particular arm of the state is being strengthened as compared
#
Because, you know, one could argue today that, hey, the Constitution was already degraded,
#
that you talk of the, you know, I'm struck by something Kapil Komeredi said on Twitter
#
where somebody was complaining about the murder of democracy when these recent farm bills
#
were passed the way they were, which was a murder of democracy.
#
But as Kapil pointed out, it was not just murder.
#
It was also mimicry because it's all happened before and your book is very instructive in
#
You know, I used to often joke about how, you know, despite blaming Nehru for everything,
#
Modi has actually, you know, mimicked him in many ways.
#
I mean, and what I mainly meant was the whole central planning top-down approach of the
#
But even with the approach to what's power, the approach to the Constitution, it's extremely
#
So tell me a little bit about what Nehru's imperatives and his incentives at the time
#
were, because he came in like 1950 is when the Constitution is there, he is aware that
#
he is part of a government which hasn't yet got a popular mandate.
#
It's a transitionary government in that sense.
#
He needs a popular mandate.
#
Part of that mandate rests on fulfilling the promises he has made.
#
Those promises include the Zamindari reforms and, you know, reservations and so on and
#
so forth, the whole social progressive element of it.
#
And suddenly he finds that this Constitution is in the way, you know, what the hell is
#
Tell me a little bit about sort of, you know, what are his imperatives and how is he responding
#
I think there are several actually.
#
So one, of course, is the fact that Nehru is, especially with Zamindari abolition, that's
#
a policy that Nehru is personally invested in and personally identified with.
#
So the Congress Party runs a tremendous sort of public contact program really for Zamindari
#
I think in UP alone there were like 35,000 public meetings.
#
Probably Bihar had a similar number.
#
And so there's a lot of political capital that's being invested in this.
#
And you know, from the top to the bottom, from small-time leaders like district presidents
#
to more senior figures such as, well, Nehru himself, but also figures like Charan Singh
#
and CB Gupta, et cetera, who are very, very both vocal and kind of committed to a particular
#
form of Zamindari abolition and land reform.
#
And of course, the Congress having acquired the levers of power is also a bit, I think
#
the easiest way to describe it would be suffering from a slight hangover of the Raj because
#
it's hard to convince the public that having gotten rid of one set of rulers, the other
#
set of rulers do not have similar powers or are constrained by notions of constitutionalism
#
So when the kind of first judgment, which is the staying of the Bihar Act happens, it
#
comes as a huge shock, not only because it kind of takes a sort of sledgehammer to their
#
political capital because it shows everyone that their word is not infallible, but also
#
because it's something that has been discussed over and over again within the constituent
#
And it was something article, the right to property is something that had been debated
#
extensively in past as a form of compromise between those who were kind of votaries of
#
strong, a strong right to private property and those who felt that it would come in the
#
way of Zamindari and land reform.
#
So this was something that had not been really considered possible.
#
Zamindari abolition had been considered a done deal and plenty of Congress figures are
#
on record saying this is going to happen regardless of anything else, you know, court such as constitution
#
or no constitution, you know, this Zamindari abolition will come into place.
#
So once they realize that it can't, it kind of leads to a sort of real shockwave within
#
And many suspect that with the money and the sort of local power that many of the Zamindars
#
have and can, you know, bring to bear that there is the forthcoming election is something
#
to be, you know, to be really thought about because from the other side and there are
#
Zamindari parties which are in the fray and many of them are quite confident about being
#
able to take on the Congress.
#
So that's another thing that Nehru is acutely, acutely conscious of that going back to the
#
people without fulfilling what he has personally promised would amount to a kind of betrayal.
#
And he says this in several letters to his chief ministers and to his colleagues that,
#
you know, it's something that he doesn't want to countenance.
#
Equally, it's also something that state chief ministers do not want to countenance and Bihar
#
definitely doesn't want to countenance that and they become like the first sort of people
#
to demand a constitutional amendment to pass their law.
#
There's of course a kind of longer story connected to that law which is that Bihar law is the
#
only one that is found to be unconstitutional.
#
Unlike similar laws in UP and later in Maharashtra, the Bihar law is basically held to be unconstitutional
#
on a technicality, not because it violates the right to property but because it violates
#
And so no one honestly believes that Zamindari abolition is under, you know, such serious
#
threat that a constitutional amendment is needed.
#
I mean, no less a person than the president of the republic Dr. Rajendra Prasad writes
#
to Nehru to tell him that no such eventuality seems to have arisen.
#
But I think it's again just the temptation to take a shortcut to have your own way because
#
it's politically expedient, it sort of trumps, I feel it trumps the commitment to the kind
#
of ideals that they publicly professed.
#
And this was of course, as you point out in your book, there are three prominent pain points
#
in which the constitution got in the way of what Nehru's government wanted to do and this
#
Just to sort of get into the weeds and summarize briefly, and you can tell me if I'm summarizing
#
it correctly, you know, it was of course challenged on the grounds of both the right to property
#
and the right to equality, but the High Court when striking it down in Bihar, invoked the
#
right to equality per se because, you know, they were giving unequal compensation to the
#
Zamindars in the sense that the small Zamindars were getting up to 20 times their annual revenues
#
while others were getting eight times and some of the biggest ones were getting three
#
times or something like that and, you know, which they felt influenced the right to equality.
#
That these are the grounds?
#
And, you know, you've quoted a bunch of letters that Nehru has written.
#
You know, on October 18, 1950, he wrote to Shri Krishna Sinha, who was the CM of Bihar,
#
when Nehru says, quote, I am as concerned as you are with these squibblings of lawyers
#
coming in the way of our social progress.
#
I entirely agree with you that we shall have to consider seriously an amendment of the
#
I am consulting the law ministry in regard to it.
#
And then again, you quote him in a letter to all his CMs on December 18th, where he
#
says, quote, recent judgments of some high courts have made us think about our constitution.
#
Is it adequate in its present form to meet the situation we have to face?
#
We must accept fully the judgment of our superior courts, but if they find that there is a lacuna
#
in the constitution, then we shall have to remedy that.
#
That sort of reminds me of, I think the quip, I forget if it's by Brecht or whoever, that,
#
you know, if the people don't like the government, then the government shall have to elect a
#
new people, something of that sort, where Nehru's perspective is, does the constitution
#
fit what we want to do rather than the other way around?
#
And like you pointed out, you know, everyone was saying that nowhere have the courts actually
#
said that zamindari reforms are an issue or land redistribution is an issue.
#
It's very easy to be within the constitution and just revert the law a little bit to take
#
care of these, but Nehru doesn't care to do that.
#
So this is one of the fault lines, tell me about the sort of the other two fault lines
#
and you know, the key cases in sort of those regards.
#
So the other two fault lines, one of course is over reservations, community based reservations
#
and the other which is the fault line which the book begins with is over and I think something
#
that's possibly the most relevant to the contemporary period is the question of the right to freedom
#
of speech because we start with, at least I start the book with the case of the communist
#
detainees in Salem who are, I mean, there's a scuffle in Salem prison and then finally
#
the sort of enraged policemen lock these prisoners into a hole and then open fired them at point
#
And I think some 200 end up getting shot and there are, I don't remember off the back of
#
I think you've pointed out how it kind of all begins where these detainees in Bombay,
#
they realize, you know, 26 Jan, the constitution comes into place and these guys realize that
#
according to article 22, there cannot be indefinite detention and detention without
#
access to a advisory board and no such advisory boards existed.
#
So obviously the Bombay High Court doesn't buy the government's contention that the constitution
#
doesn't have retrospective effect or that law predates the constitution and they're
#
let loose and of course that's the kind of one of the first cases that brings fundamental
#
But then there's a kind of bigger question which comes up after the shootings of the
#
detainees in Salem in Cold Blood because there is a left leaning magazine called Crossroads
#
run by the young Ramesh Thapar who is coincidentally the brother of the famous historian Romila
#
But so Ramesh Thapar's magazine, you know, eviscerates Nehru and the Congress and it
#
ends up getting banned in the Madras province.
#
And Thapar of course is not one to take it lying down.
#
He launches a collection whose readers sort of contribute to the effort and eventually
#
a petition is filed in the Supreme Court arguing that the ban is unconstitutional.
#
And this is, it's mirrored on the other side in Delhi where a pre-censorship order is served
#
against the organizer which is the weekly news magazine of the RSS.
#
And essentially the reason the government is upset with them is that they have been
#
criticizing the Nehru government's policies towards Pakistan in the context of what's
#
been happening in Bengal.
#
Bengal had been seeing a lot of communal violence triggered mainly by a sort of state-sponsored,
#
I mean I wouldn't necessarily call it a kind of genocide, but sort of state-sponsored communal
#
attrition really in East Pakistan which had led to a lot of refugees crossing over and
#
obviously retaliatory violence in West Bengal.
#
So Nehru had been trying to essentially work out a kind of agreement with Lia Katali Khan
#
on how they would stem the tide of the refugees.
#
And Nehru's peace overtures to Pakistan were heavily criticized in Bengal.
#
They were very unpopular and I mean as expected, they were also very unpopular with the Hindu
#
And so the RSS news magazine was criticizing him heavily.
#
Many right-leaning public figures such as Mukherjee and someone like the Hindu Mahasabha
#
leader Mahantik Vijayanath were kind of clamoring for some sort of stern action against Pakistan.
#
And this kind of demand for stern action saw wide echo everywhere, even within the Congress
#
There are letters from Nehru who suspects that this kind of viewpoint is being encouraged
#
And so finally he kind of demands action and obviously action is taken and a pre-censorship
#
order is passed and the Brij Bhushan who's the sort of printer and publisher of the organizer
#
NKR Malkani who's then the editor again take the matter up to the Supreme Court and a kind
#
And both cases are heard kind of concurrently in the Supreme Court which finally gives out
#
its judgment in May and they're both now quite well-known cases, Brij Bhushan versus the
#
state of Delhi and Ramesh Thapar versus the state of Madras.
#
And the court's judgment basically lays out quite clearly that the ability of the state
#
to abridge the right to free speech was limited to the exceptions that had already been written
#
into the constitution, which were libel, slander, defamation, contempt of court or undermining
#
the security of the state.
#
But the undermining of the security of the state had to create essentially was quite
#
It had to be undermined to the extent where disorder was of such a magnitude that it imperiled
#
the security of the state or like it had the potential to overthrow the state.
#
And obviously this did not reach that standard.
#
So the court not only countermanded both orders, it also held the relevant parts of the legislations
#
that were used, the public safety and public security acts to be ultra virus.
#
And that kind of really threw the government's point off because Patel obviously, as he told
#
Nehru, it kind of knocks the bottom line out of our ability to really control the press.
#
But for Nehru, it was an even bigger problem because he thought that this was something
#
being done to undermine his peace over church Pakistan or to in a way, for example, he writes
#
to Raj Gopalchari and he tells him, all of this is propaganda to try and push and bully
#
And it's a war that he doesn't want to have.
#
And it's curious to note that this is a demand that is also made within certain sections
#
of the Congress party and his government, because eventually when his finance minister
#
John Mathai resigns, John Mathai becomes one of the first people really to publicly describe
#
Nehru's policies towards Pakistan as appeasement.
#
And he becomes the kind of first, one of the first users of that term.
#
And for Nehru, this sort of criticism of his Pakistan policy, he sees it as effectively
#
a tool being used to undermine his overture to Pakistan.
#
He suspects that there is support for that position within the Congress.
#
And he, as I note in the book, he berates Patel telling him that his actions haven't
#
And I quote, Nehru obviously writes to Patel, not completely satisfied with what is going
#
I think we have taken up far too lenient an attitude towards those in India who encourage
#
this communal feeling of hatred and violence.
#
The Hindu Mahasabha talks about Akhand Bharat, which is a direct incentive to conflict.
#
The belief that retaliation is a suitable method to deal with Pakistan or what happens
#
in Pakistan is growing.
#
That is the surest way to ruin for India and Pakistan.
#
And just, I mean, even Patel who has self-confessedly been deferring to Nehru on this matter is
#
kind of taken aback by Nehru's criticism.
#
And he notes, again, I quote, action has been circumscribed only by the provisions of the
#
law as interpreted by our legal advisors and the high courts.
#
We put thousands in jail and adopted a policy of release only after we were continually
#
attacked on the score of maintaining civil liberties.
#
And then he reminds Nehru, we are now faced with a constitution which guarantees fundamental
#
rights, right of association, right of free movement, free expression and personal liberty,
#
which further circumscribe the action we can take.
#
That means that for every executive action, there must be legal justification.
#
If within these limits, you feel that our policy towards communal organizations has
#
been lenient, steps can certainly be taken in the manner you may suggest.
#
So we, I mean, these exchanges is a kind of good indication of how seriously this sort
#
of criticism of his Pakistan policy was affecting Nehru or how, indeed, how determined he was
#
to find a way to kind of, it's not, you know, crush it, at least to really smother it as
#
And then, of course, the second point of pain was the question of reservations, which had…
#
But can I, while we're on the subject, can I ask a sort of a tangential question which
#
arose from something you wrote during this time?
#
Well, one, I just want to sort of point out to my listeners some of the dates involved
#
because, you know, Tripitaman, you mentioned about how you were sort of taken in by the
#
phrase of a narrative going as fast as a bullet.
#
And I was, my jaw dropped open when I saw how fast the courts actually worked in that
#
Like you point out that, you know, the constitution comes on January 26, 1950.
#
On February 6, these communist detainees in Bombay filed a case and they are freed on
#
In two days, they are free.
#
And on February 11, the other communist detainees in Salem start their whole thing, which ends
#
with, you know, the deaths of the 22 people and that gets a crossroads to sort of, you
#
know, write about that and Nehru defends the state action, at which point I was struck
#
by this quote by Jayaprakash Narayan.
#
And if you forget who is talking about who, there are echoes of this which reverberate
#
to this time, where Jayaprakash Narayan says of Nehru, quote, the prime minister of India
#
talked in the language of dictators when he maintained that we had to choose between security
#
of the state and freedom of the individual, we must choose the former, stop quote.
#
Malkani, the editor of the organizer, which is ERSS Mag, which, you know, wins the case
#
against the precensorship order against it.
#
He writes, quote, to threaten the liberty of the press for the sole offense of nonconformity
#
to official view in each and every matter, maybe a handy tool for tyrants, but is only
#
a crippling curtailment of civil liberties in a free democracy.
#
A government can always learn more from bona fide criticism of independent thinking citizens
#
than the fulsome flattery of charlatans, stop quote.
#
And later on, you in referring to the case by the organizer, which was, you know, fought
#
Chatterjee, you write about the case, quote, this case in itself was curious, succinct
#
and informative and an example of a great tradition of liberal thought within the Hindu
#
nationalist movement that now seems to have been lost and forgotten, stop quote.
#
And you didn't elaborate on this in the book because the book is about something else entirely.
#
But I nevertheless want to go on this tangent and ask you about this tradition of liberal
#
thought within the Hindu nationalist movement.
#
And you know, why is it lost and forgotten as you describe it?
#
What is your sense of it?
#
It's interesting that you mentioned that because there were several quotes.
#
Of course, there's that one by Malkani and I mean, there are many quotes by Shyamaprasad
#
Mukherjee where he is very eloquently defending the right to free speech and the fundamental
#
rights and all of that.
#
But I'm more interested by what you term the liberal tradition within the sort of the Hindu
#
I mean, I mentioned it in the context of this because it's interesting that both Crossroads
#
and the organizer basically criticize the Nehru government along similar sort of pathways.
#
They criticize them for being heavy handed, for trampling on civil liberties, for not
#
taking oppositional views on board, for encouraging ideological conformity.
#
And they criticize them using a kind of terminology that we would now recognize as quite distinctly
#
So, respect for individual freedom, respect for the right to free speech, tolerance of
#
These are profoundly liberal virtues.
#
And this argument is made by K.R Malkani in his columns.
#
This argument is made by N.C. Chatterjee, who again, by the way, is a former sort of
#
Hindu Mahasabha stalwart in his submissions in court.
#
And this argument is made by Shyamaprasad Mukherjee in his interventions in parliament.
#
And all sort of frame their arguments in these terms.
#
Now, there is, I'm sure a lot of people would say that that's just what was expedient at
#
the time, and this is just a matter of kind of using the constitutional defenses that
#
you have to have your own way.
#
And that's perfectly, I'm sure there was an element of that.
#
But equally, it to me looks like a kind of distinct liberal tradition because you have
#
all the kind of, both the political element of it and the kind of, how should I put it,
#
the ideological element, because for want of a better word, I mean, the organizer does
#
represent the official viewpoint of the RSS.
#
And what comes across to me is a kind of element of liberal thought, which should realistically
#
have been nourished and encouraged rather than clamped down on.
#
And that's, I think, one of the more unfortunate parts of the whole story of the First Amendment
#
is the fact that this sort of Nehru dispensation is willing to countenance the use of distinctly
#
illiberal legal and constitutional tools to clamp down on a kind of ideological position
#
that while kind of discredited in the Nehruvian era, did nevertheless consistently enjoy a
#
sort of reasonable modicum of public support.
#
And I think that's something that as a statesman, he should have seen through or should, I mean,
#
it's a kind of tradition that I feel should have been encouraged.
#
Obviously, it's a kind of tradition that is lost because the ideological and political
#
successes of these people who are now, I mean, if you ever go to, if you ever see the inside
#
of a BJP office, you will always have a huge portrait of Shyam Prasad Mukherjee.
#
But even within that stream of thought, people have really forgotten or maybe deliberately
#
ignored the fact that Mukherjee was not the kind of bigoted authoritarian figure that
#
people might imagine him to be.
#
He was in many ways a sort of textbook case of classical liberalism.
#
So again, that's a very, very interesting part of the story with tremendous contemporary
#
I mean, even before reading your book, whenever I've come across the Mukherjee Nehru debates
#
in the sort of constituent assembly debates and the debates I had during the first amendment,
#
it always struck me that if you just reproduce a dialogue and you blank out the names, it
#
would appear that it is definitely Shyam Prasad Mukherjee who is a great liberal and Nehru
#
who is a dictatorial despot as it were.
#
And here also it strikes me that one thing which is I think certainly true is that it's
#
very easy to appear virtuous in opposition because you can say whatever, but you can
#
do all the signaling in the right way.
#
It's like we don't even have to go as far back as Shyam Prasad.
#
Even pre the 2014 elections, Narendra Modi was making a lot of noises which would please
#
liberals especially about downsizing government, minimum government, maximum governance, and
#
the government has no business to be in business and all of those things.
#
And obviously his actions have gone in the opposite direction, but he was making a lot
#
Even Salman Sooz of the Congress was on my show and he said that even he approved of
#
So when Modi came to power, even Salman in the Congress was cautiously optimistic that
#
he'll actually deliver on some of those things.
#
But the imperatives of actually being in government seem to me to be quite different from the
#
imperatives of being in opposition.
#
For example, when you are in that position of responsibility where you have to sort of
#
juggle a hundred different things and actually get things done, is there then a battle between
#
pragmatism and principles which plays out where Siddharth Patel can say that it is okay
#
for you to say whatever you want sitting where you are, but I have the responsibility of
#
being the home minister and therefore security does matter and you can leave your security
#
freedom debate elsewhere, but I have to keep the country together.
#
And these are, of course, in the fraud times after there has been so much trouble bringing
#
the country together in the first place.
#
So is that always a constant tussle where those who are in the opposition will always
#
seem more virtuous than those in the government because you are judging those in the government
#
by their actions while you're judging those in opposition by their words?
#
Yeah, I mean, to a certain extent that's true and Patel often makes the case that as the
#
kind of person responsible for the nation's security, there are things that just need
#
But equally, I think there is more happening than that.
#
And the reason that comes through with the kind of internal opposition that is triggered
#
within the Congress party and that comes from the sort of indications that things are not,
#
obviously, there's often a gap between the ideals that nations and governments and political
#
parties profess and the imperatives of government, but that things are not really going as had
#
There are plenty of indications to it.
#
Those indications come from the speaker at some point where he writes to Nehru, for example,
#
to express his disapproval of the frequent recourse to the use of presidential ordinances.
#
It comes from a sort of dissident congressman like figures like Acharya Kriplani now.
#
Of course, people can make the case that Kriplani was upset because he hadn't been made a minister
#
and he hadn't won the election to the Congress presidency and he was kind of sidelined.
#
And perhaps some of his criticism did come from there.
#
But if we are to kind of constantly simply assume an ulterior motive or a motive driven
#
solely by realpolitik, I think that would also be a bit unfair.
#
And the fact that perhaps it was easy for Malkani and Mukherjee, et cetera, to deploy
#
the kind of rhetoric of liberalism while not being saddled with the responsibility of government.
#
And in truth, we can never really have a firm answer to that question, but there are plenty
#
of indications that even within the Congress, there was disquiet at the way things were
#
And you get that from quite senior, quite pivotal figures, from Rajendra Prasad, from
#
Acharya Kriplani, from J.V.
#
Mavlankar, and indeed from some dissidents who kind of speak up during the debate.
#
And some of the things that are often said both by Nehru and by other figures within
#
the Congress establishment would, I mean, quite shocking if not, at least surprising
#
if not shocking to read because, I mean, you have figures like Hare Krishna Mehta who basically
#
tells Nehru that the real culprits are actually things such as the right to equality itself,
#
which shouldn't be there.
#
So there is a kind of disquiet within the Congress, which would, I think, give some
#
credence at least or at least some reason for us to give figures like Mukherjee a kind
#
of, if not 100% of high indulgence, at least, you know, 50% of high indulgence.
#
And also, I mean, Mukherjee was part of the cabinet and he did quit in protest.
#
So, you know, he could just have stayed a minister had he wanted, let's take a quick
#
commercial break and then come back to continue exploring the fault lines that led to the
#
First Amendment of the Indian Constitution.
#
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Welcome back to The Scene and the Unseen.
#
I'm chatting with the historian Tripur Dhaman Singh about his fabulous book where the narrative
#
goes as fast as a bullet, 16 stormy days.
#
And you know, while Tripur Dhaman's book, the narrative does go as fast as a bullet.
#
My show is a little bit more leisurely, which is why we have reached the break and we have
#
only finished two of the three fault lines that kind of led to the First Amendment being
#
felt necessary by Jawaharlal Nehru.
#
Two of them to quickly recap are of course that he wanted to enact Zamindari reforms
#
and that was struck down by the Bihar High Court and was, you know, there was litigation
#
in other places and the Bihar High Court struck it down on the grounds of the right to equality,
#
but it was also sort of challenged on the right to property.
#
And even though experts felt that you could have redrafted those laws and got them through
#
and made them constitutional, Nehru was a man in a hurry.
#
The second of course is the free speech laws.
#
Now we think of Article 19.1, I certainly do as, you know, being, you know, the opposite
#
of the pristine First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution which sanctifies free speech,
#
but in this particular case, it has a bunch of caveats.
#
And the interesting thing is that the original Constitution enacted on 26 Jan 1950 had some
#
of these caveats, but the First Amendment brought in a bunch more like public order
#
and so on, which can be left open to the interpretation of governments.
#
And there was a fault line there because he tried, he banned Crossroads, which was a communist
#
magazine, and he tried to impose pre-censorship on the organizer, the RSS magazine.
#
Both of those fine parties went to court and the law moved a little bit quicker than it
#
does today and both of them won.
#
So Nehru is also now thinking, okay, not just right to property, not just right to equality,
#
there's also right to free speech.
#
Where's the third fault line to put them and tell me a bit about how that came about?
#
I mean, just before I move on to that, a quick kind of detour back to what we were talking
#
about was I think when I mentioned that there was disquiet within the kind of Congress establishment
#
as well, I think the most important indication of this as early as April 1950 comes from
#
Sardar Patel, whose letter to Nehru I quoted, where he kind of reminds him of the fact that
#
whatever they have to do has to be within constitutional bounds.
#
And now Patel is quite ambivalent about his commitment to, you know, expansive free speech.
#
And he obviously tells, he once does note to Nehru that they will have to consider amendments
#
to the constitution at some point or that the sort of right to free speech was the result
#
of idealistic exuberance.
#
But Patel's letter is also a kind of, its tone is very sarcastic.
#
It notes things which, I mean, it's basically telling Nehru things that, you know, you would
#
expect a grade six student studying civics to know.
#
And so I would see that as a kind of indication that even Patel did somewhere think that what
#
Nehru was asking him to do was to essentially set aside constitutional bounds and contemplate
#
action that would quite clearly breach constitutional norms.
#
So I think knowing that we have to be willing to give some benefit of the doubt to figures
#
like Malkani and Mukherjee, obviously we can't, we can never quite know what they would have
#
done in government, but we can give them some benefit of the doubt to say that the position
#
that they were taking up were not simply the result of real politics, but also of some
#
sort of ideological conviction.
#
No, in fact, I should clarify that when I phrased that earlier question, I did not mean
#
to cynically imply that, oh, in opposition, you will be virtuous only because you're in
#
opposition and vice versa.
#
But I mean, there are complex currents in the affairs of men.
#
So you know, people do things for multifactorial reasons, many of which they themselves might
#
So while I think in general, we should take people at face value unless we have reason
#
And at the same time, as a friend of mine likes saying, assume goodwill.
#
So you know, there's no reason to do otherwise with either Malkani or Shyamaprasad Mukherjee
#
or Jaiprakash Narayan or, you know, any of the eminences who kind of oppose the amendment
#
and while we are on the subject, I'll quickly quote from your book to show what a wide range
#
of opposition there was to Nehru at this time, where you write, quote, Hindu nationalists
#
like S. B. Mukherjee and M. R. Jaikar, Gandhian stalwarts like Acharya Kripalani, committed
#
socialists like Shibbanlal Saxena and Jaiprakash Narayan, conscientious Congress rebels like
#
H. V. Kamant, Swanandan Sahay and K. K. Bhattacharya, jurists like Pranath Mehra and M. C. Chagla,
#
press associations, editors, lawyers and businessmen, men whose ideological and editorial successes
#
today might scarcely believe but would do well to remember that their predecessors held
#
Stop quote and while you brought Patel in, I was also kind of, you know, before we get
#
to the sort of the third fault line, I was also struck by a quote about Nehru and Patel,
#
which I thought I'll ask you about later but as we are on the subject now, where you wrote,
#
quote, their commitment to civil liberties and individual freedom or the lack thereof
#
represented a rare consensus between the two giants of Indian politics.
#
I guess their skepticism towards fundamental rights, which, you know, as you pointed out,
#
you know, Patel at one point said, reflected, quote, idealistic exuberance, I guess would
#
have come for different reasons.
#
For Patel, it would have been that, look, I have a tough job to do, the security at
#
stake, there is, you know, we take the nation for granted today, at the time Patel was Home
#
Minister, he had just managed to cobble it together almost in a new act of imperialism
#
as it were and the priority was to hold it together and the rights were in the way.
#
While for Nehru, to be honest, he had been consistent all his political life about his
#
values being social progressivism and all of the things that went along with that like
#
Zamindari reforms and so on.
#
And again, the constitution was sort of an impediment to that.
#
Is that sort of a correct characterization that they were coming from a different place,
#
which was, you know, and the constitution was a separate thing and today we talk about
#
the constitution and the values it embodies as almost a holy and sacramental, but in those
#
tumultuous times, it would not have had the place it did, even in the minds of those who
#
I mean, there was a kind of sense of consensus between them on the constitution, but they
#
did approach it as you rightly point out from different angles.
#
And perhaps, yes, it didn't really have the kind of same sense of sanctity that it seems
#
to have now, at least, I mean, I'm not sure how much sanctity it really has, but at least
#
in the public mind, that kind of sanctity attaches to it.
#
But it's interesting to note that when the constitution first comes into force, everyone
#
gives a statement saying, yes, you know, we have to maintain the sanctity of the constitution,
#
But on the other hand, when the amendment finally reaches parliament and it's criticized
#
for the fact that it's being amended so soon without a general election by an unelected
#
body, Nehru makes a kind of response by saying that since we were competent to make it, we
#
should be competent to amend it as well.
#
And I think that kind of just supports what you said, really, that it didn't.
#
They saw it as almost as something that was there as a kind of vehicle towards a particular
#
end, perhaps rather than an end in itself.
#
And that end, nobody was quite sure of, because for Nehru, that end represented a kind of
#
particular kind of social progressivism.
#
For others, it represented a kind of, I think, especially for Rajendra Prasad, it represented
#
a kind of stable property order.
#
And for quite others, it represented a kind of liberal democracy, as they had come to
#
expect by looking at what had happened in Europe and America.
#
And so nobody, I think, because there was no real kind of consensus on what exactly
#
the end was, people saw it as a vehicle towards a particular end, but they didn't quite agree
#
on what that end really was.
#
So can I ask you a broader question now that I'd actually say for the end, but again, we
#
are sort of on the subject, which is, I mean, two broader questions, really.
#
And the first one is about just this notion of what India should be, sort of the competing
#
early ideas of India, which can even merge into one idea of India.
#
As you've shown in your book, they can mean different things.
#
And one is, of course, the sort of democracy Nehru had in mind, which would aim at a particular
#
kind of social equality and social justice and so on and all of those things.
#
And at the same time, a constitutional republic, where you would be bound by certain rules
#
of the game, which would constrain the behavior of the state and circumscribe what the state
#
could do to its citizens.
#
And it seems to me that at the heart of this, there is an inherent contradiction.
#
And that contradiction has very much to do with how you think of means versus ends, while
#
where Nehru's thinking was that, look, my ends are that these are the things I want
#
to achieve and these are my means of doing so.
#
And one could even argue that even those means are flawed because they are based on top-down
#
thinking and they didn't actually get anywhere, but regardless, that could be his way of looking
#
While the constitutional way of thinking would be that the means are everything, that you
#
have to protect individual rights, you have to respect individual autonomy.
#
The citizen is a master of the state and not the other way around.
#
And that's where all the fundamental rights come up.
#
So do you think that there is, and to me, it seems that, your book describes a period
#
of time where the people in power are at the heart of this conflict and they are choosing
#
their democratic ends over constitutional means and to do this, they're completely subverting
#
I mean, I really think we, as your book kind of makes explicit, we had a real liberal constitution
#
for perhaps 14 months of our history.
#
And after that, we didn't.
#
It's a periodical and whoever is in power does whatever the hell they want with it.
#
So to your end, is this a tragic outcome that the two went in different directions or is
#
that conflict something that simply cannot be negotiated?
#
It's just between being a democracy, what the popular will of the people is and constitutional
#
I mean, I think, but at some level that conflict is kind of inherent in any sort of democratic
#
setup because the temptation to do certain things or to kind of take shortcuts is always
#
And one of the arguments that's often deployed is that, you know, part and parcel of a democratic
#
system is to reflect the will of the people.
#
And Nehru deploys this argument, I think in a flawed manner, because obviously there has
#
been no democratic mandate yet by, you know, saying that the legislature has to decide
#
on matters of social policy and wherever the constitution comes in the way of the will
#
of the people, then obviously the constitution has to give way.
#
So I don't think you can completely avoid that conflict anywhere, but the answers that
#
you reach or the sort of mechanisms that are devised to mediate that conflict, I mean,
#
ultimately that's where all of the action is.
#
And Nehru's view very much is of a kind that one would, you know, for example, expect somewhere
#
in some way like Britain, where parliamentary sovereignty is kind of expansive and there
#
is no written constitution.
#
So whatever parliament does is, you know, ipso facto that it is constitutional, whereas
#
a written constitution by its very nature is meant to contain and circumscribe the actions
#
of the branches of government or the branches of the state rather.
#
And that's kind of, I recently read political theorist Madhav Khosla's book on the constitution.
#
And again, that's one of the arguments that he makes is that one of the reasons that the
#
constitution is so lengthy was because they didn't simply want to delineate general principles,
#
but to kind of contain and guide the actions of future legislators, judges, and politicians
#
in a particular direction.
#
And that's one of the reasons why the constitution goes into so much detail.
#
And it's a point that Mukherjee makes repeatedly when the amendment is introduced into parliament,
#
saying that the very fact that if this is what we wanted to do, then we should not have
#
had a written constitution in the first place.
#
Having a written constitution, especially one as detailed as ours, comes with a set
#
of implications, which means that you are constrained in what you can do.
#
And yes, there is a kind of system of amendment, but even for that system of amendment to be
#
kind of scrupulously followed, you have to have an election to elected houses of parliament.
#
And so that conflict can't be avoided, but the conclusions that Nehru came to certainly
#
could have been, and there were plenty of people who disagreed with it.
#
And I think, in my opinion, they were right, I'm sure probably were others who felt differently.
#
But once you normalize, and again, if I can just go to the Mukherjee's retort to Nehru
#
really makes clear where he says, you may be in power for this generation or for generations
#
born, but supposing someone else comes into government, what is the precedent that you're
#
And that's, I think, one of the most unfortunate consequences is that once you create a precedent
#
and an avenue for something to be done, there's really nothing stopping someone else from
#
utilizing the same mechanisms to the opposite effect.
#
And that's kind of how, and Mukherjee has been proven true, I think.
#
Yeah, no, I have three kinds of observations here.
#
One is I had done an episode with Gyan Prakash on the emergency and the point he made there,
#
and you also quoted him in your book, is that look what Indira Gandhi did in 75 calling
#
the emergency was not unconstitutional or extraordinary.
#
It was delineated in the powers given to the state.
#
Those extreme powers were given to the state.
#
And that's in the design of the state, which to a large extent remains.
#
The second thought that strikes me is that in this position that Nehru is taking in constitutional
#
morality versus democracy, and I agree with you that he took the wrong position.
#
And in this position that he is taking, you could argue that in the long run, he is laying
#
down the roots of a Hindu Rashtra, because if our society is such that the kind of dispensation
#
that is in power today will one day get into the government.
#
If you follow Nehru's argument to his logical end, then that means that these guys would
#
be correct to change the constitution to reflect what they feel is a popular mandate that they
#
And many of the people from Nehru's party today would sort of perhaps not recognize
#
that, but that's a logical end of Nehru's own kind of actions.
#
And one common question that I often ask my guests so much so that it's almost become
#
a cliche, and I'm sure you've heard it in past episodes, is about this odd paradox of
#
our constitution, which is, and let's go to the original 1950 constitution and imagine
#
that the First Amendment isn't there yet, and which is of a relatively liberal constitution
#
being imposed on an illiberal society.
#
And you know, then how liberal can that imposition be that a group of unelected elites, as it
#
were, are sitting and saying that these are the values that we should live by?
#
And this is something that, you know, I feel conflicted about because those values, of
#
course, I agree with, but at the same time, I can't square that circle and say that why
#
should I, you know, the core part of my value system is that I shall not impose my values
#
So, you know, how does one square that circle?
#
What are your sort of thoughts on this?
#
There is one very revealing quote, I'm not sure who said it in the constitution assembly,
#
but someone said, you know, we were expecting the sounds of the veena and we got the sounds
#
of an orchestra or some, it's something like that.
#
Actually many people felt that the constitution wasn't rooted in a kind of, in the social
#
milieu in which it was being born.
#
And the one of, again, I kind of quote, I'm quoting Madhav Khosla here because his most
#
recent study of the constitution, the argument is that the constitution in itself is a kind
#
So by practicing what the constitution is giving, you will be creating a kind of a democratic
#
citizen rather than there being a kind of popular upsurge, which results in the constitution.
#
And it's an interesting, it's an interesting argument to make because there is a sense
#
that's what people thought, but equally it's, I mean, people are not very willing to be
#
kind of educated in that way and everyone kind of recognized that and Ambedkar most
#
prominently recognized that what was happening was that you were creating a kind of, you
#
know, in his words, a democratic topsoil based on the sort of subsoil of an undemocratic
#
society and it was an experiment.
#
It was, you know, most constitutional scholars, you know, journalists, et cetera, everybody
#
noted that it was a kind of brave and great experiment in democratic government.
#
And that's one of the things that makes it so exceptional is the fact that it was a kind
#
of leap of faith, but having committed themselves to it, the mistake that India's sort of early
#
postcolonial elite made is the same that the British made when they first introduced provincial
#
legislate like popular legislatures in the provinces is that once you introduce a kind
#
of democratic system or a constitutional system, you have to be at some level willing to bear
#
the consequences that accrue.
#
And that was something that the Indian elite was unwilling to do.
#
Now we can make the case that there was, as Nehru tried to make, that there was a kind
#
of grave threat to national security, to like public order.
#
And we can debate whether there was, but equally there are as many important figures who refused
#
to believe that such a thing existed, that there was such a great threat.
#
So I think squaring that kind of circle requires a certain broad based commitment to the constitutional
#
ideal that was, I think, not quite present even within the Congress party.
#
And that's, I think we're still kind of struggling to really square that circle because we've
#
in a way uncorked a genie almost with the first amendment.
#
And obviously now it's been amended about 105 times, I think, possibly even more.
#
And we're now at a point where without kind of going back to and redeveloping a sort of
#
consensus on constitutional first principles really, it's difficult to even contemplate
#
squaring that circle because if you ask the two sides of the political divide, they have
#
almost completely diametrically opposite readings of what the constitution is and what
#
And to square that is, I mean, it's quite a difficult proposition.
#
I mean, now, as you said, it's a done deal, by the way, I mean, people don't realize this.
#
People often express shock and horror when they think of the BJP wanting to amend the
#
But, you know, as I mentioned earlier, there was an old cartoon about how it's not a book,
#
And the economist Shruti Rajgopalan, who's a frequent guest on the show, had once given
#
a talk on YouTube, which I'll link to where she talks about all the different amendments
#
under Nehru to begin with.
#
So, you know, some people have this impression that, hey, the amendments and the messing
#
around started with Indira Gandhi and Nehru was a constitutionalist and that just rubbishes,
#
you know, your book and subsequent events also show.
#
The other thing that I'm kind of struck by to sort of continue thinking aloud and be
#
on a tangent is that what we often have, what disturbs me today, especially about politics,
#
is that politics has and I imagine it was, you know, I would have thought it was less
#
so in Nehru's time, but, you know, who knows.
#
But what it has become is that it is tribal to the extent that people just care about
#
which tribe they are part of and not about principles per se.
#
So, you know, you'll have people protesting about 153A and 295A when it's being used
#
against one of their own, but they're quite happy to, you know, see it used against somebody
#
else, where, you know, how you judge a policy really comes down to which side you're on
#
and which side is carrying the policy out.
#
Like in these recent farm bills, for example, I was, you know, it's interesting how a lot
#
of what has been enacted in these farm bills was part of the Congress manifesto in 2019
#
and they're protesting those very same things and therefore it's become a politics of just
#
tribalism of you pick your side and you go with it and not principles per se.
#
And therefore it strikes me that no view that sort of really takes constitutionalism seriously
#
is going to, you know, get any kind of traction because people don't care about principles.
#
Even today, I mean, it's just about which side you're on and then you say whatever,
#
but in practice, you don't, I mean, this is a bit of an aside from me.
#
I'm just thinking aloud, but what are sort of your thoughts on this?
#
And going back to that time, was there a sense of it then because the parties weren't so
#
hardened and, you know, different things from each other at the time?
#
They don't really think in terms of those sort of principles, but as the book bears
#
out they didn't seem to be thinking that strongly about principles, you know, in 1951 either.
#
And I think the way to really, and principles are, I feel like quite a sort of top-down
#
The leaders have to demonstrate a commitment to constitutional morality if they expect
#
it to kind of percolate downwards.
#
And they just didn't right from the word go.
#
Again, in the context of the book, you have, you know, at one point Nehru Birit, someone
#
like K. V. Kamath who, you know, intervenes at some point and he asks him not to quote
#
things which are relevant at the time of the French Revolution and, you know, the American
#
And so that was, I think, a pivotal moment in demonstrating that constitutional principles
#
could be undone in pursuit of an obviously political agenda.
#
In today's day and age, again, because it's something, I think each precedent kind of
#
builds on what comes before things get normalized very, very quickly.
#
Things that we, you know, laws such as 153A and 295A as you mentioned, which we now take
#
for granted is existing in the books, we often don't remember that, you know, they were,
#
as intended by the constituent assembly, these were not supposed to be allowed to continue.
#
So it's, even back then, the situation was not drastically different.
#
I mean, it was different to the extent that there was a sense of idealism and a particular
#
dispensation was in power and remained in power for a very long time.
#
But I don't think it was very different in terms of attitudes or in terms of commitment
#
to constitutional principles, because if the constitution itself is malleable and changeable,
#
it can't really, it obviously can't lead to a kind of enduring legal norms if those norms
#
themselves are subject to frequent change.
#
I think that's kind of what I would say to that, really.
#
Yeah, and I'll again sort of quote from your book, because we are speaking about 153A and
#
295A and there's also 124A, which is sedition.
#
And you've pointed out in your book quote, far from being a simple remnant of colonialism,
#
sedition is an outcome of the First Amendment of the Constitution and the narrow government's
#
desire to clamp down on critical voices unencumbered by constitutional obligations, a truly deliberate
#
and strategic assault on the Constitution and fundamental rights, stop quote.
#
And so just clarify this for me, that my impression about these laws, 124A, 153A, 295A, was that
#
any of the laws that are in the Indian Penal Code can be challenged if they are unconstitutional
#
And that is what would have happened in the case of these laws in the normal course of
#
But the First Amendment added those other sort of caveats to free speech and therefore,
#
you know, these laws kind of remained in the book and therefore you're saying it's a responsibility
#
of the First Amendment and Nehru therefore, that we have the law of sedition with us.
#
Not only the idea that they would have been struck down, in fact, they were struck down
#
most prominently in the case of Master Tara Singh in Punjab when he was charged with sedition
#
and the court held sedition to be unconstitutional.
#
And sedition was, I mean, it was very clear that it was unconstitutional.
#
It was very clear that the Constitutional Assembly didn't want it and they didn't want
#
it especially because of its association with repression in the British period because most
#
of the Congress stalwarts had been charged with sedition and jailed.
#
And it's a point they make repeatedly during the debate that this was an act that was used
#
against patriots and nationalists under British rule and we can't be, I mean, we really shouldn't
#
be bringing it back on the books.
#
But it was, yes, you're absolutely right, they were unconstitutional and they were brought
#
back, they were brought back for a particular end.
#
We might say that, well, the ends that Nehru thought were benevolent or somehow justified,
#
but they were brought back.
#
I mean, there was, it's perhaps hard to imagine now, but there was a period in time where
#
these sections of the Indian Penal Code were unconstitutional.
#
You could not be charged with sedition in the year 1950 because it was an unconstitutional
#
And I mean, I don't think Nehru alone is responsible because obviously there's been plenty of opportunities
#
to repeal it or replace it with something else and they haven't been taken.
#
But Nehru is responsible to the extent that he creates a set of legal tools which he describes
#
kind of quite ironically as something that he wants to leave for the succeeding generations.
#
And here we are indeed.
#
So, you know, your book goes like a bullet, this episode has been floating like a feather.
#
So let's kind of get back to the narrative and get back to the third fault line.
#
We've already spoken about the Zamindari reforms, which the fundamental rights came in the way
#
of the right to property and the right to equality.
#
We've spoken about how he wanted to control the press and the right to free speech came
#
And what's the third fault line?
#
So the third fault line is reservations.
#
And that, again, is something that begins in Madras because, I mean, Madras had been,
#
the Madras province had been a kind of crucible for social justice politics with the creation
#
of the Justice Party, the kind of appearance of Periyar, and the Justice Party had kind
#
of enacted all of these sort of mechanisms, social justice mechanisms, amongst which was
#
something called the communal general order, which allocated government employment and
#
access to educational and government educational institutes in a particular ratio amongst communities.
#
It was quite a peculiar instrument because what it did was it kind of allocated seats,
#
for example, in a particular ratio.
#
And so if the ratio was, I think it was something like every 14 seats, five could be Brahmins
#
and three would be something else.
#
So there would only be five Brahmins.
#
And it didn't matter if it was, I mean, it was almost a kind of ironclad quota, a kind
#
of government sanctioned distribution almost in a particular ratio rather than the way
#
we understand reservations now.
#
And so if only seven Brahmins were allowed, then the number of Brahmins could not be greater
#
than seven, for example, or if the number of Harijans that were allowed was six out
#
of 14, then they could not be six out of 14.
#
It's not as if someone could get greater marks and go into another quota.
#
So everyone was really subject to this system of quotas.
#
And that was challenged by a woman named Champakam Durairajan, who had, interestingly, not even
#
actually applied for admission, but wanted to apply for admission and had been effectively
#
told that her grades wouldn't allow her in through the Brahmin quota.
#
And obviously, there were other people with lower grades who would get in from their own
#
community-based quotas.
#
And so she kind of files a petition in the High Court in Madras.
#
And the High Court in Madras, it arouses quite a lot of passion because it's a question
#
that touches upon a lot of lives, and you have a lot of protests, et cetera.
#
The court holds a kind of interesting position.
#
So what the court effectively does is the court finds the communal general order unconstitutional.
#
But what it also notes is that considerations of caste and community were not only not allowed,
#
they were expressly taboo.
#
And that's the kind of language, it's quite stern, the language the court uses.
#
And they keep saying basically that the right to equality and the right to freedom from
#
discrimination will effectively become empty bubbles if the executive orders, like the
#
communal general order, are allowed to be implemented or allowed to continue.
#
So basically, again, an interesting aside, the petitioners were represented by the noted
#
lawyer Alladi Krishnaswami Iyer, who again had been one of the key architects of the
#
constitution and also someone who advised the government on the amendment, which nullified
#
a court order that he himself had won, which I still find the kind of intellectual somersaults
#
that many of these people perform to be quite interesting.
#
But the Madras government basically submits in court, it doesn't, it never really argued
#
that the quotas didn't amount to discrimination.
#
What it said was, as a result of applying the ratio prescribed by the communal geo, 77 Brahmins,
#
224 non-Brahmins, 51 Christians, 26 Muslims, and 26 Harijans had been selected for admission
#
to engineering colleges.
#
If caste and community considerations had been ignored, the numbers would have been
#
249 Brahmins, 112 non-Brahmins, 22 Christians, 3 Muslims, and 0 Harijans.
#
So to avoid this sort of system and to fulfill what they saw as their responsibility under
#
the director principles of state policy, they had created this order.
#
But again, the court, and if you don't mind, I'll just quote from the court order again.
#
What they say is the communal geo denies equal treatment for all citizens under like circumstances
#
and conditions, both in the privileges conferred and the disabilities imposed.
#
It shuts out students having high qualifications solely on the grounds of their caste or religion
#
and lets in others with inferior qualifications on the same ground.
#
As the articles of the constitution stand at present, it is difficult to see how the
#
state can make discrimination between applicant and applicant on the grounds of religion or
#
caste and restrict the number of seats that could be secured by applicants of any particular
#
religion or caste, or prescribe different qualifications to applicants of different
#
religions or castes to the advantage of some and the disadvantage of others.
#
Does social justice or the welfare of the state require a suppression of the integrity
#
and freedom of the individual personality of the citizen by reason of his belonging
#
And so the court is quite strict and even when they end the judgment, and I quote again,
#
if the person in charge for the time being of a state elected no doubt by a majority
#
of voters at the polls were free to enforce their own notions of social and economic justice
#
unfettered by constitutional restraints, there is a possibility of serious and undeserved
#
hardship and injury to large classes of citizens.
#
Declaration of a guaranteed right in article 15.1 of the constitution would be worthless
#
if the government could disregard or nullify it by executive acts like the communal general
#
And so the court is, I mean, effectively what it is saying is that any form of consideration
#
of caste or community or religion into questions about employment or education is expressly
#
taboo and what's, I mean, what's basically prevented by the sort of chapter on fundamental
#
rights cannot then be enabled through the back door by the chapter on directive principles.
#
And again, what the courts delineate is the kind of bastion of, not really bastion, but
#
a kind of bedrock of constitutional thought that fundamental rights effectively trump
#
the directive principles of state policy.
#
And this is something that the Nehru government doesn't completely agree with.
#
And it's interesting to read Nehru's responses to this because the directive principles of
#
state policy are kind of a hodgepodge of all sorts of things, including some concern education,
#
some concern backward class welfare, but equally there are others which can concern animal
#
husbandry and protection of cows.
#
And if that, again, as something that we discussed earlier on, if, for example, someone was to
#
take Nehru's position with respect to the article and the directive principles with regard to
#
protection of cows, what could then, you know, what it could lead to something, sort of consequences
#
that we would today be, you know, be right to question.
#
So again, anyway, this judgment comes in, it really shocks the Madras government because
#
the Madras government is, this has been an article of faith in Madras.
#
Initially, of course, the Congress had opposed it when it was the Justice Party doing it,
#
but this kind of social justice politics had acquired deep roots in Madras.
#
And the Congress government had continued with those policies.
#
It was committed to reservations as an ideal, there was crucially, again, the question of
#
an election coming up, the Madras Congress was right in its fears that there was a possibility
#
And so they were quite, I mean, this is something that caused a lot of agitation within Madras.
#
Interestingly, this is a question out of like the three sort of fault lines that you mentioned.
#
This is the one that Nehru was the least invested in.
#
So even though there was plenty of pressure from Madras to completely override Article
#
15, and also I think Article 29, which prohibited discrimination in the matter of admissions
#
to educational institutions receiving state aid.
#
This was something that Nehru cast, was something specifically that Nehru was kind of loathe
#
to address, I would say.
#
And so it's unlike the other two in which his mind is quite firmly made up, this third
#
fault line takes a while to kind of build.
#
There's pressure from Madras, the Chief Minister comes to Delhi to speak to him, ministerial
#
delegations from Delhi come to speak to him.
#
The initially Nehru's advice is for them to rewrite the communal general order to be in
#
conformity with the constitution.
#
But of course, eventually he comes around and I think, and the literature on this is
#
slightly hazy because it's something that is both in a way, there is a kind of consensus
#
that the state should be committed to the welfare of backward classes of citizens.
#
And in a way, there's no real clarity as to what it implies, because there had been no,
#
unlike the question of the schedule costs, which had been tackled in the constitution,
#
this was still a sort of work in progress.
#
Nobody really knew what it was going to entail or who was going to kind of be classified
#
What criteria would be used?
#
So some of the opposition that came, of course, to the amendment did note that there was no
#
There was no real way to tell what the consequences would be and no way to really tell whether
#
it would be misused by the state, although many suspected that it would be misused by
#
So this is, I think, the kind of strand in which Nehru was less the driving force and
#
more the kind of, I think his role was more or less, he wasn't against it, but it was
#
not something that he was strongly concerned with.
#
So I think just the fact that the three things kind of came together sort of provided him
#
with an opportunity to create the constitutional architecture for something that they might
#
want to do in the future.
#
And just as a sort of last point, this is something that's not very clear in their correspondence,
#
but I would suspect that it was one of the sort of ways where how someone like Ambedkar
#
was brought to agree with the whole amendment, with the whole sort of broad contours of the
#
amendment, because we know that Ambedkar was not quite in agreement with the strand of
#
it that targeted free speech, for example.
#
And so I think it might also have been a way of sort of neutralizing dissent by bringing
#
in several elements into one package, really.
#
So let me try to, you know, parse and put in simple terms what this particular judgment
#
would have meant and what the court's point of view would be.
#
And you can tell me if I'm summarizing it correctly, is that the court basically referred
#
to the fundamental right of equality and said that, look, the state has to treat everyone
#
That means the state cannot discriminate on the basis of caste.
#
And hey, these reservations are a discrimination on the basis of caste.
#
Now you might justify it in this instance saying this is my lofty goal and this is how
#
this will let me get there.
#
And that is an entirely separate argument.
#
I mean, today, of course, reservations are conflated with caring about caste.
#
So it's deeply politically incorrect to make an argument that there are better ways to
#
get rid of caste and reservations might actually be a top-down thing that make them worse or
#
Even if it is a tool that would work, the point that they're making is that once you
#
give in to the temptation of infringing this fundamental right of equality for whatever
#
reason, then what is to stop a popular government in the future from also infringing it for
#
some reason of their own in some other way that they deem fit.
#
And therefore, it is better that we hold it as sacrosanct and just stick to it.
#
Would that be a correct summation?
#
Yeah, I think that was more or less the court's reasoning.
#
They were quite certain and they see it quite clearly that if any government elected by
#
a majority of the voters were allowed to have put their own considerations, express their
#
own considerations through these sort of executive acts, then the entire Article 15 of the Constitution
#
would effectively become worthless.
#
And those are the court's words.
#
So that's a correct summation of the position.
#
Interestingly, one of the sort of questions that comes up is how do you define social
#
and educational backwardness?
#
Are the two synonymous?
#
And how much of a consideration is cast and how much of a consideration are the questions?
#
And one of the key points of the amendment is that it leaves out any mention of economic
#
And the only way, what it effectively did was the only way in which such backwardness
#
could be judged was on the basis of cost.
#
So economic considerations were expressly disallowed.
#
And so that in itself has led to the kind of, that debate in itself carries on now in
#
questions or in issues about, for example, the idea of the creamy layer that comes up
#
every time a question about reservations reaches the courts, about how do you exclude people
#
who are supposedly socially backward, but economically well to do.
#
And many of these debates go, again, go back to this kind of this moment in time.
#
And so again, on the question of Article 15, when the amendment was discussed within the
#
cabinet, there's a rare sort of consensus on what should be done, because from Madras,
#
the idea is that there should be alteration of Article 15, but also Article 29, which
#
had prevented discrimination in the matter of admissions to educational institutes.
#
And they basically wanted an amendment to the effect stating that nothing in either
#
Article 15 or Article 29-2 would prevent special provisions for the educational, economic and
#
social advancement of the backward classes.
#
And the cabinet, I think most were of the belief, or at least that's what was expressed,
#
that there was, you know, this could not be misused for any class discrimination that
#
was against the spirit of the constitution.
#
There was, I think, broad-based consensus that the spirit of the constitution implied
#
that measures were taken for social justice, measures were taken for kind of the advancement
#
But again, I'm just going to quote directly from my book, in a new twist, the cabinet
#
also recommended that all references to economic and economically be dropped, and the language
#
be limited to socially and educationally backward classes.
#
Through this sleight of hand, the cabinet sought to achieve two objectives.
#
First, it would remove any prospect of economic criteria coming in the way of calculating
#
the backwardness of a class based on their social and educational standing.
#
Second, it would preempt and negate any demands for special provisions or reservations for
#
those who could be termed economically backward without the corresponding status of social
#
or educational backwardness.
#
So basically, they wanted power to legislate for reservations, but equally, they wanted
#
to prevent a kind of open-ended, almost race to, you know, race to the bottom, because
#
as, again, as KV Kamath, you know, quite pointedly intervenes in the debate, and he says, on
#
the question of backwardness, well, 90% of the country is backward, and there is no way
#
of, you know, really differentiating who's educationally and socially backward through
#
the use of the, you know, lens of caste and community.
#
But of course, I mean, that was not a popular position.
#
And so the exclusion of economic backwardness from the kind of ambit of India's reservation
#
policy was, is again, something that can be traced back to the First Amendment.
#
And I think, again, the cabinet and many of the parliamentarians were not quite certain
#
as to how the process or the policy of reservations was going to be developed, because it was
#
something that had yet to really be, you know, finalized.
#
I think the First Backward Class Commission was appointed much after this.
#
So I think today, many of the questions that we would consider today questions about, like,
#
recent, before the 29 elections, of course, the government announced a kind of reservation
#
policy for economically weaker sections.
#
And of course, the question of the creamy layer within the backward classes keeps cropping
#
And again, that's a question that goes back to the First Amendment.
#
And I think that's, it's one of the most interesting sort of fault line of the three.
#
It's probably possibly the most interesting, because at the time, it also seems to be the
#
The least amount of attention is paid to it.
#
Except in the South, where Periyar railed against the judgment in rallies and the Times
#
of India, you know, wrote about court crusaders for a separate Dravidistan are once again
#
And I imagine this would also have sort of put pressure on Nehru that, you know, the
#
center must hold and these political imperatives also matter, along with all the factors you
#
mentioned before, such as, you know, maybe keeping Ambedkar enthusiastic was part of
#
So now that you know, all these three fault lines have come together, and you've repeatedly
#
quoted Nehru at different parts of the book, basically shitting on the constitution saying
#
that, hey, we need to kind of, you know, if the constitution isn't going along with us,
#
and we must get a, you know, change the constitution.
#
And you sum it up very well here.
#
So I'll quickly quote this book where you write at the time of the, you know, just before
#
the first amendment is happening, you write quote, the prime minister was essentially
#
First, that the failure of the Congress social agenda when confronted with the constitution
#
should be regarded as an intolerable situation.
#
Since he did not want to face the populace and be accused of breaching his promise, the
#
constitution would have to give way to the primacy of the Congress program.
#
Second, that the social policy is devised by elected legislatures, sites of popular
#
sovereignty being held unconstitutional by the courts was a denial of democracy, even
#
if the legislatures had been elected on a distinctly limited and narrow franchise.
#
In true democratic spirit, the constitution would have to bend to accommodate the will
#
of the people as represented by a legislature elected indirectly and on a limited franchise.
#
Third, the three pillars of the state, the judiciary, the executive and the legislature
#
The executive was to create and give effect to social policy.
#
And it was to have primacy over the other wings of the state, especially the judiciary.
#
It was a slippery slope, stop quote.
#
And separately in an interview, you've spoken about how the first amendment showed the judiciary
#
So what is the process like now?
#
So you know, he wants to, you know, his own cabinet members like Ambedkar Rajaji and whoever
#
are on board with him and Patel, you know, dies in December 1950 and the first amendment
#
actually goes for a, you know, all the voting happens in May 51.
#
You've spoken about all the opposition leaders kind of gathered around in, but what's the
#
overall sort of what's happening in the political space?
#
Like if Republic TV existed, what would they be showing?
#
They would still be showing film stars taking drugs actually.
#
So cancel that question.
#
Interesting that you mentioned what the media would be showing because if you were to simply
#
go by Nehru's utterances, the media didn't seem to be all that different back in the
#
day, even though we know it was, but Nehru consistently rails against the media.
#
And one of the things he keeps saying, you know, is what will be the effect on our soldiers
#
and what will be the effect on our youth as reading this trash?
#
So I think he might have probably written the same thing about Republic.
#
But to go back to your question, Nehru makes this claim, the sort of three claims that
#
you mentioned, and he makes them quite strongly.
#
So there is a letter where he basically says that the job of the government is no longer
#
simply to, you know, to make policy, it is now to basically direct social change and
#
And he's firmly committed to that line.
#
Politically things kind of progressively reach at least what he thinks as a kind of difficult
#
time because he's, Zamindari abolition is something that he's very committed to.
#
Post Patel's death, there is no real challenger within the Congress establishment.
#
And as the sort of new year kind of opens, there's this, the feeling that there has to
#
be a sort of reckoning with these questions.
#
So what happens is, and again, this is to Nehru's credit, is that Nehru initially aims
#
to hold elections in the summer of 1951.
#
He's kind of stopped because of obstructionism by the states.
#
Many of the states, mainly for these reasons, kind of not quite ready to test their popularity.
#
And you can kind of see why because, for example, in Madras, the Congress fails to win a majority
#
So there's a kind of obstructionism that happens in the states, Nehru presses his chief ministers
#
quite hard without success.
#
And so elections are eventually delayed.
#
And of course, that kind of gives them enough time to basically address these issues before
#
So basically, if I quote, on the morning of 25th January 1951, the Congress Working Committee
#
meets at Congress headquarters.
#
And again, the question, as reported by the press, is they discuss the question of how
#
to galvanize the Indian National Congress so as to maintain its moral and political hold
#
Over the final quarter of, over the sort of tail end of 1950, there had, Sardar Patel
#
There had been the formation of a kind of dissident unit within the Congress called
#
the Democratic Front, led by Kriplani and Rafi Ahmad Kidwai.
#
There was kind of speculation that several senior figures could quit.
#
The Nehru government itself had been, had, you know, three major ministerial resignations
#
over 1950, Mathai, Mukherjee, Niyogi.
#
And it's sort of surreal to look back now and read the kind of press reports because
#
there are several editorials which keep questioning being like, will the Congress survive in its
#
You know, what will be the future?
#
And so I think even if it seems surreal to us now to look back and think, well, you know,
#
why would people doubt the ability of the Congress to survive in 1951, there were several
#
And so I think this kind of backdrop is important to remember.
#
And I think that kind of gives impetus to this kind of feeling that all these questions
#
now have to be tackled head on before they go back to the people.
#
And of course, the Allahabad High Court then stops the UP, it grants injunctions against
#
the UP Zamindari Abolition Act, which it takes up for examination.
#
And that kind of builds this idea that the government is sort of under a form of judicial
#
siege because these are quite big sort of cornerstones of government policy.
#
So as things build up over the first few months of 1951, you have in January, you have the
#
Allahabad High Court judgment, which effectively stays the operation of the UP Act.
#
You then have in March the judgment of the Patna High Court, which declares the Bihar
#
Act to be unconstitutional.
#
And then you also have sort of in between, you have all of these things kind of brewing
#
in the background you have once, you know, Master Tara Singh has been released, as I
#
pointed out in the previous part of the conversation, he kind of declares his intention to bring
#
on board, invites the communists and the Hindu Masaba to join him on a common platform.
#
There is this sort of democratic front, which is, you know, bubbling within the Congress.
#
So there are all of these, I wouldn't really class it as political turmoil, but there's
#
a lot of politics going on in the background.
#
And I think it kind of leads to a situation where progressively the government, there
#
have been adverse judgments on huge matters of policy, on reservations, on zamindari
#
And progressively, the impression that one gets from reading Nehru's correspondence
#
is a kind of feeling of siege, almost.
#
And there is within the Congress broad backing for a kind of collision with the constitution
#
And when matters finally reach a head, there is, and you notice that there is more or less,
#
almost, I wouldn't say universal consensus, but there's more or less like enough support
#
within the Congress party for the amendment to be contemplated.
#
When it's done, they start drafting it as early as March, even though Nehru publicly
#
keeps denying that an amendment is coming or, you know, assures, for example, he attends
#
a meeting of the All India Newspaper Editors Conference, where he assures them that the
#
freedom of the press is something that is very dear to him.
#
And they take it to mean that he has dropped the idea of a constitutional amendment.
#
And you know, they thank him voluminously for his generosity.
#
So there's a lot that's going on.
#
And politically, the kind of sense that I get is of a government consistently being
#
forced onto the back foot and on matters that are considered very close to, if there was
#
anything that was a kind of matter of faith within the Congress, those two things definitely
#
In fact, you know, you were speaking with the press and the newspaper editors, and it
#
kind of made me smile because I'll read out a quote first by the Times of India and then
#
Nehru's response, where he sounds less like Nehru and more like Donald Trump, actually.
#
But the Times of India quote is quote, and this is after they come to know of the First
#
Amendment, obviously, quote, It is a tragic irony that our popular government should at
#
every stage feel the need of repressive laws against which leaders of our struggle for
#
freedom cried themselves hoarse for generations.
#
The whirling of times brings some strange revenge.
#
The decriers of a government, once termed satanic, flatter our previous rulers by imitation.
#
They resort to preventive detention even without declaring a state of emergency.
#
And this is written in 1951, friends, not 2020.
#
And Nehru's response to this is, you know, so he speaks to the parliament about the press
#
and then as you quote him, he's writing to his chief ministers about what he told parliament.
#
So he says about that quote, While appreciating the role of newspapers generally, I pointed
#
out that some weekly periodicals specially had passed all limits of decency and were
#
carrying on persistently a propaganda full of falsehood and malice to remain silent may
#
also have consequences.
#
I have appealed to the newspaper editors to take it in hand, but if they fail, then something
#
else will have to be thought of.
#
Stop quote, which is quite a threat at the end of it, that something else will have to
#
be thought of and otherwise is fulmination against sort of fake news to use modern terminology
#
is reminiscent of leaders one won't often associate with him.
#
No, he does it quite often.
#
I mean, it's something that is really, really sort of eating into him because he says it
#
several times in parliament.
#
He says it to the, when he addresses the All India Newspapers editors conference.
#
And most interestingly, he says it to at the end when he, you know, after the amendment
#
has been passed on 11th June, Nair was questioned on how the amendment was going to affect the
#
And he says, I do not think that in spite of the heat raised in the recent debates,
#
it affects the press much.
#
You will forgive me if I say we talk so much of the freedom of the press, but the more
#
and more I see that that freedom might as well be exercised by anyone who has money
#
enough to buy up a paper.
#
Actually it is rather an odd experience for me to see a newspaper within a week or 10
#
days completely change its policy tone and everything except in regard to one matter.
#
And that was it's rather extreme dislike of the government and me.
#
That is the freedom of the press.
#
So I mean, he's quite, it's quite easy to see that this was something that he took very,
#
very seriously and that he was very averse to any form of criticism.
#
No, and it also seems to me that, you know, he would be someone who would have felt entitled
#
to the adulation and adoration of his fellow Indians after all these years in the freedom
#
But suddenly he's actually replaced, he's in charge of the colonial apparatus, which
#
was otherwise oppressing them and I can imagine the sense of entitlement he feels and indeed
#
that his descendants still feel that they are not in a similar position of power.
#
Another standard I found interesting in your book was about how, you know, Rajendra Prasad,
#
the president at the time, spoke out against him and, you know, repeatedly asked him not
#
to go ahead with the first amendment.
#
At one point, Rajendra Prasad says, quote, part three of the constitution which lays
#
down the fundamental rights has a special importance and significance of its own.
#
And it's an irony of late that this part which stands above every other part of the constitution
#
is the first to be assailed, stop quote.
#
And you also point out and this was seemed very strange and petty to me that when, you
#
know, he wrote this letter to the cabinet and Nehru said he read it out to the cabinet,
#
but then he writes to him, quote, it would be exceedingly unfortunate if the public became
#
aware that the president had a contrary position to that of the cabinet in such a matter and
#
was pressing for his adoption by the cabinet, stop quote, in effect telling, you know, Prasad
#
So you know, how was this sort of dynamic playing out?
#
I mean, today, of course, the president is a figurehead, but Rajendra Prasad was a heavyweight
#
leader in the Congress party and, you know, and how was all of this playing out?
#
It's very interesting because Prasad and Nehru dynamic went through its ups and downs.
#
Prasad, for starters, considered himself Nehru's equal.
#
Secondly, his own conception of the president's role was not simply, I mean, he took the idea
#
that he was to advise and guide quite seriously.
#
So he wasn't a rubber stamp sort of president.
#
And equally, Prasad was very willing to intervene in government and let his views be known.
#
But crucially, he was well aware of the sort of need to maintain constitutional rectitude
#
or, you know, set good precedents.
#
And so, for example, when Nehru writes to him and tells him it would be exceedingly
#
unfortunate if your views were to become publicly known, Prasad actually doesn't let his views
#
I mean, he's quite, he's willing to write to the prime minister, but he's not willing
#
to kind of jeopardize the whole setup by, you know, stepping outside constitutional
#
bounds, which, to be honest, he could have done if he really wanted to.
#
And the same thing kind of happens when the Zamindari Abolition Act is passed.
#
The president has to certify the Zamindari Abolition Act because it obviously contravenes
#
a part of the constitution, and it can be saved, or at least it's assumed to be saved
#
by a presidential notification or presidential approval.
#
And when he gets the Bihar law, Rajendra Prasad obviously recognizes the flaws in it.
#
And he kind of tarries by asking for legal opinion.
#
And, you know, Nehru writes to him again when I quote, and he says, and effectively tells
#
him that the cabinet have agreed to it and threatens to resign if the president doesn't
#
And of course, Prasad then promptly does certify it, even though he doesn't really quite agree
#
with Nehru or recognize what the need for this sort of daring hurry is.
#
So it's interesting to note that Prasad takes his role seriously, but is also effectively
#
very committed to the constitutional order.
#
At no point does he seek to kind of overturn it or to even intervene in a way that could
#
be seen to be deliberately intervening in areas of government that he really should
#
So that is a very, very interesting dynamic.
#
Especially when Nehru often thinks that Rajendra Prasad has a propensity to exceed his brief
#
because his reading of the situation is that the president is duty bound to follow the
#
advice of his council of ministers.
#
And things kind of come to a head when the amendment reaches Rajendra Prasad because
#
he obviously doesn't sign it immediately.
#
He seeks legal opinion because he thinks the amendment itself might well be unconstitutional
#
because the method used to pass it coincidentally eerily similar to what was used recently in
#
the case of Article 370.
#
So Prasad suspects that the amendment itself may be unconstitutional and he asks for advice
#
from Alladi Krishnaswami Iyer, whose advice we don't have on record.
#
But obviously Prasad signs it in the end.
#
So I think legal advice he received probably indicated that that's what he should do.
#
So it's a very interesting dynamic, but Prasad doesn't shy away from letting his views be
#
And in most cases, those views are quite the opposite of what the government has.
#
And it's quite remarkable because in the current day, you know, your president receives a letter
#
It's like leaked in 30 seconds and on times now and all of that.
#
So and your book also has this unlikely sort of liberal hero.
#
Now you'd expect, you know, for many people seem to think of Nehru as a liberal hero for
#
some reason, but Nehru is a person who says, oh, these fundamental rights are a 19th century
#
We are not in the French Revolution and you know, blah, blah, blah.
#
But the person who is really defending them and defending them with great eloquence and
#
passion is Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, where he talks about how the First Amendment cuts
#
court at the very root of the fundamental principles of the constitution.
#
He calls it, quote, the beginning of the encroachment of the liberty of the people of free India,
#
And then addressing Nehru during the heated debates, he says, quote, by this amendment,
#
you are saying that whatever legislation is passed, it is deemed to be law.
#
Then why have your constitution?
#
Why have your fundamental rights?
#
Who asked you to have fundamental rights at all?
#
You are treating the constitution as a scrap of paper.
#
Nehru got irritated and apparently wanted to charge him with sedition and only Patel
#
stopped him from doing that.
#
But you know, what is our sense of Mukherjee?
#
Because there isn't much written about him.
#
To my knowledge, there isn't a great biography.
#
He didn't really leave much writing behind.
#
But you know, you read him in the constitutional debates with Nehru and so on.
#
And this seems like, you know, one of the tallest, most principled leaders.
#
So what's your sense of all of that?
#
He was, he was actually a remarkably principled man.
#
And he, that's borne out by, for example, his resignation from the Nehru cabinet.
#
It's also borne out, quite importantly, by his resignation from the Hindu Mahasabha.
#
Because what people don't realize is that he quit the Hindu Mahasabha because he felt
#
that once we have a secular state, there was no need or no space for a quote unquote Hindu
#
So he's, that way, he's a very, very interesting and complex figure to look at.
#
But and one of the things that comes across in these debates with Nehru is that, unlike
#
Nehru, whose debates are very impassioned, but also often short on facts and logic, Mukherjee
#
is a very incisive speaker.
#
And it's, again, this is borne out when they speak, because most of the time when the debate
#
happens, obviously Nehru presents his case, and then Mukherjee replies as the leader of
#
So the first time the bill is kind of debated in parliament, Mukherjee replies, and immediately
#
after Mukherjee replies, the person to speak is N. G. Ranga, Congress stalwart, later one
#
of the founders of the Swatantra party, and he compares Mukherjee to Edmund Burke and
#
calls it one of the greatest speeches that he's ever heard in Indian parliament.
#
So it's interesting to note that the kind of impression that you get of Mukherjee is
#
very unlike what is often believed, because you hear of him in the context of Kashmir,
#
in the context of 370, but you often don't hear of him in the context of freedom of speech,
#
And Mukherjee is one of the most docket defenders of that freedom, and in many ways very, very
#
prescient, because he keeps, one of the reasons that he criticizes Nehru again is because
#
he's well aware that what Nehru is doing is laying a precedent for something far worse
#
in the future, or in some ways providing legal and constitutional tools that are prone to
#
misuse by anyone who, you know, is willing to kind of transcend his scruples, or like
#
his sort of commitment to constitutionalism.
#
And Mukherjee almost leads the kind of charge against the bill, and it's, I think he makes
#
a very, very, very successful case for himself, and for the opposition, it's reported widely
#
in the press, it's, again, commentators often note that, you know, whatever, I think the
#
line that I remember offhand is the Times of India describing the debate between Nehru
#
and Mukherjee, noting that the Prime Minister's passion was more than outmatched by the incisive
#
logic of Mukherjee's arguments.
#
And I think that it's, that's quite apparent that he sort of read between the lines of
#
what was happening far more clearly than many of the others did, and he was willing to stake
#
out a principled position, despite the fact that it had, you know, caused him to leave
#
the Nehru cabinet, almost to kind of enter the political wilderness, and in many ways
#
stake out a position that many of his own ideological fellow travellers are perhaps not
#
the most comfortable with.
#
Yeah, and it would seem that, you know, Mukherjee was, of course, borne out by history, not
#
the history of the last few decades, but just the history of the next few years, in the
#
sense that it wasn't just about those specific amendments or those specific policies which
#
Nehru wanted to get through, but about the desecration of the constitution and of constitutionalism
#
itself, you know, which had led Chief Justice Siddhaya Tulla to once quip that ours was
#
the only constitution which needed protection against itself.
#
And the father of our constitution, B. R. Ambedkar, in fact, in 1954, I think after
#
the Fourth Amendment, when he was no longer in government, said, quote, we built a temple
#
for a god to come in and reside, but before the god could be installed, if the devil has
#
taken possession of it, what else could we do except destroy the temple?
#
We did not intend that it should be occupied by the asuras.
#
We intended it to be occupied by the devas.
#
That is the reason I said, I would rather like to burn it, stop quote, which are strong
#
words from someone who actually, you know, was a driving force behind our constitution.
#
So you know, eventually it gets passed and it's a done deal and you've, you know, sort
#
of, I want to ask you about the aftermath, but before that, I'll quickly quote you from
#
your book where you've written this very eloquent passage, quote, the relationship between the
#
state and the citizen was altered for all time.
#
The precedent was set for easy, almost casual amending of the constitution and the passing
#
of retrospective legislation, a mechanism for bypassing judicial review was created.
#
Constitution had been retrospectively validated a host of public safety and press control
#
laws had been made operational again.
#
Free speech was curtailed.
#
No longer would it be necessary for the security of the state to be seriously undermined for
#
it to prescribe free expression.
#
It merely had to be in his interest to do so.
#
The subservience of the constitution to government policy was demonstrated.
#
The constitutional groundwork was laid for a host of repressive legislation to follow
#
a vital cardinal change had occurred, which would have immense longterm consequences for
#
India, its people, and its politics, stop quote.
#
And the thing is, you know, despite people paying so much lip service, I mean, people
#
pay so much lip service to the constitution, even Prime Minister Modi once said that it's
#
his holy book and, and you know, for all practical purposes, constitution is like what Mukherjee
#
said, Nehru was turning it into a scrap of paper where any government, if it has a numbers
#
can just change it and it's nowhere near as liberal as many people seem to think it is.
#
And this is becoming, you know, more and more explicit by the day if it wasn't already before.
#
What do you think are sort of the consequences for this?
#
Does the constitution no longer matter or, you know, different question entirely, perhaps
#
do those principles no longer matter?
#
Was the experiment doomed to failure from the start?
#
I'm not sure what I would say the experiment was doomed to failure from the start.
#
I think it was, it was quite a brave leap of faith and everyone involved acknowledged
#
it as, as a leap of faith.
#
But I think, again, I'll quote you.
#
It's a quote that I took from Sunil Killani again, where he says, basically, in a setting
#
such as individuality as a way of social being was a precarious undertaking.
#
And then he describes Indian liberalism to be crippled from its origins, stamped by utilitarianism
#
and squeezed into a culture that had little room for the individual.
#
So we, I mean, everyone knew that it was a kind of challenging project to begin with.
#
It was never going to be easy.
#
It was never going to be, how should I put it, clean in a way.
#
It was always going to be a messy process.
#
But I wouldn't say it was kind of doomed to failure.
#
If anything, the kind of first, the story of the First Amendment proves that actually
#
there were many who were willing to, you know, take it at face value, the judiciary certainly
#
They were willing to, you know, they were willing to uphold constitutional freedoms
#
and kind of read them quite expansively.
#
There was certainly quite important figures within the political setup, who seemed to
#
be at least to be votaries of constitutional freedoms.
#
There was a press that was quite, like quite vigorous in its sort of position and like
#
defense of the right to free speech.
#
Organizations such as the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, who I mean
#
today we would term as probably completely obsequious, was, for example, willing to stand
#
up and, you know, and be counted in a matter of, you know, such political importance.
#
So I don't think I would say it was doomed to failure.
#
I mean, if anything, that kind of year proved that there was, that it could actually have
#
been quite a successful experiment if it hadn't really been betrayed in its sort of essentials
#
by the people who kind of midwife the experiment to begin with.
#
I mean, we can't deny that these are the people who also wrote up the Constitution.
#
So it was, I mean, it was their experiment and they failed it more than anything else.
#
And do you think sort of institutions also shaped society in a deeper way?
#
For example, you know, there's this common lament that, oh look, you know, at the time
#
of our independence, at the time of our freedom struggle, we had such tall leaders and we
#
have such not tall leaders now, so to say, and I've written a column again using incentives
#
to sort of talk about this while pointing out that all the freedom fighters who came
#
to the fore and who were tall leaders at the time of our independence had entered the freedom
#
struggle and become leaders, not because they had power at the end of it or money at the
#
They did it just to stand up for principles, there was no reward.
#
So politics attracted that kind of a person.
#
But when you have, later on, when you have a sort of a structure where the state is an
#
overarching Maibab and has so much power and essentially the similar oppressive role to
#
what the colonial state had, then it will draw the kind of leaders who are attracted
#
to power for power's sake and power to whatever.
#
And therefore those tall principle leaders will no longer emerge.
#
And it would seem to me that the degrading of the constitution in a sense would also
#
have been a further disincentive for people of principle to actually enter the fray.
#
Do you think there's something to that?
#
I mean, I think it's yes, yes and no.
#
So yes, sort of institutions and, you know, precedents and the law itself and the constitution
#
itself do shape society in certain ways.
#
I mean, it's hard to deny or even overstate the kind of normative power that they wield.
#
Even today, for example, protesters who hold copies of the constitution aloft, kind of,
#
what they try to do is they're trying to channel the normative power of the constitution rather
#
than, you know, actually looking at the nitty gritties of what the constitution says.
#
I'm quite shocked if they were to actually see what the constitution says.
#
But it's one of the reasons that the constitution was written in the way that it was, was that
#
a lot of figures, Ambedkar especially, had little faith in the ability of Indian society
#
to reform itself or for there to be a sense of corrective impulse originating from within
#
And because they didn't have that faith in the self-correcting ability of society almost
#
or the possibility of any idea of social reform really originating from within society or
#
taking hold organically within society, they almost had an over-dependence on using legal
#
forms to drive what they saw as social or political change.
#
And ultimately, I mean, recently Pratap Bhanu Mehta, for example, wrote a column where
#
he very generously quoted from my book.
#
But again, the sort of crux of the column was that there's only so much that can be
#
accomplished by the use of legal and constitutional tools.
#
I mean, there, if fundamentally, like fundamentally social questions can only partially be addressed
#
And I think that's one point where figures like Nehru and Ambedkar were perhaps over-enthusiastic
#
about how much the law could achieve.
#
And secondly, I think they were perhaps quite cavalier in thinking about the effects that
#
would be generated by these sort of institutional mechanisms, because Nehru, for example, seemed
#
almost unaware, and it's hard to judge whether he was deliberately ignorant or genuinely
#
unaware of the kind of incentives that would be generated or the kind of consequences that
#
would be generated through the First Amendment.
#
It's hard to tell, you could, I mean, at best he was naive, at worst he was, you know, malevolent.
#
And so I think both these strands kind of intersected at this point.
#
So sort of leaving history aside now and leaving your book aside and coming to the present
#
moment and coming to the personal, I'm curious about how your book has been received, because
#
you know, as we discussed at the start of the show, we are in times where history has
#
been weaponized, where Nehru is looked upon as on one side as exclusively the ideal liberal
#
who could do no wrong and on the other side as this demon who is responsible for everything
#
that has gone wrong with India.
#
And obviously, like any person, and as your book acknowledges, you know, all figures in
#
history contain multitudes, so all of it is true and all of it is false and all of that.
#
But I would imagine that nevertheless in your book, it would seem as if it's ideal fodder
#
for those who want to blame Nehru for where India is today.
#
So is that something you were wary of?
#
And has that impacted the way your book has been read, where people are not actually reading
#
the book for the nuance and the history, but they are just sort of weaponizing it?
#
I mean, I think history is always complex.
#
And it's always, I don't think the job of a historian is to be kind, really, to anyone.
#
It's to be as kind of as incisive as possible and shine the spotlight as bright as you can.
#
And that's something that I've tried to do.
#
I think I'm sure there are people who've read it because it can provide sort of intellectual
#
fodder for an attack on Nehru and Nehruvianism.
#
And I'm sure there are some people who've read it or have perhaps used it like that.
#
But most reviews have generally been quite complimentary.
#
We've most of, yeah, the book doesn't set out to target Nehru.
#
It's just that the things unfold in the way they do.
#
And the episode is not particularly complimentary to Nehru.
#
But equally, I think it's very revealing in the way that it kind of looks at Nehru as
#
well because Nehru had many aspects to his personality and the fact that he was impatient,
#
kind of authoritarian, imperious in many ways.
#
I mean, those aspects of his personality are as important as anything else, as his sort
#
of commitment, often kind of pedantic and tendentious, as it were, his commitment to
#
democracy, to the idea of collective decision making, et cetera.
#
And so to have a more complete or rounded picture, you need both sides.
#
And I think in that way, this story is very, very revealing.
#
But some perhaps might have used the book in that way.
#
But I think most people have taken it in the right spirit.
#
I haven't really seen all of the reviews have been quite sort of complimentary and quite
#
and nobody has really kind of seen the book as a sort of weapon against Nehru.
#
I mean, it is what it is.
#
So just, I mean, just one more point if I make it is that I'm sure there are plenty
#
of people who would have disliked it or not read it or not engaged with it equally because
#
they see Nehru as this kind of, you know, grand liberal figure who I've kind of set
#
And so neither of those things are true.
#
I mean, history is neither kind nor generous.
#
And I found your book was, you know, very fair to all the characters.
#
And what I found especially revealing about your book is not so much necessarily the people
#
and the events involved, but also how it shows through them that intersection of human nature
#
and the structure of our politics and how, you know, people in positions of power are
#
corrupted by that power and are, you know, responding to incentives.
#
I had a great time reading your book and I recommend to all my listeners that they go
#
Tripur Dhaman, I've taken a lot of your time today.
#
Thank you so much for sharing your insights.
#
No, the pleasure was all mine.
#
Thank you so much for inviting me.
#
And it's been a great honor to be able to have this conversation with you.
#
If you enjoyed listening to this episode, do hop on over to your nearest bookstore online
#
or offline and buy Tripur Dhaman's excellent book, 16 Stormy Days.
#
You can also follow Tripur Dhaman on Twitter at Tripur Dhaman, T-R-I-P-U-R-D-A-M-A-N.
#
You can follow me on Twitter at Amit Varma, A-M-I-T-V-A-R-M-A.
#
You can browse past episodes of The Seen and the Unseen at www.seenunseen.in.
#
Thank you for listening and please behave in a constitutional way, whatever that means.
#
Did you enjoy this episode of The Seen and the Unseen?
#
If so, would you like to support the production of this show?
#
You can go over to www.seenunseen.in slash support and contribute any amount you like
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