Kindle Notes & Highlights
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June 6 - July 8, 2019
P.K. Deo and R.K. Khadilkar termed the history of Sino-Indian relations as ‘one of blunders on our part and breach of faith on theirs.’
On 27 October 1962, the People’s Daily brought out another article ‘More on Nehru’s Philosophy’, an aggressive attack, more vicious than in May 1959, accusing Nehru of having ambitions to build an empire to satisfy the Indian bourgeois and Western imperialists.
In Jagat Mehta’s assessment, Nehru’s failures were not of naiveté but of idealism without the yeast of statecraft. His conceptual vision had some flaws of wishfulness and suffered aberrations
B.K. Nehru has stated: Lieutenant General S.D. Verma, who had been Chief of the General Staff earlier, told me that he had written a long note on the inevitability of war with China, our lack of preparedness to face it and, therefore, the virtual certainty of our defeat. This had gone up to the Prime Minister through the Chief of Army Staff and the Defence Minister but had no effect. It had come back with a minute by the Prime Minister saying that a war with China was not possible during his lifetime… The ignorance at that level of the conditions on the ground were such that when the invasion
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R.D. Pradhan, former private secretary to Defence Minister Y.B. Chavan, and later, Union home secretary and governor of Arunachal Pradesh, has written: Flying over Rongla, Zimithang towards Tsangdhar, I saw the terrain where in October-November 1962 our troops were sent to face the Chinese, spread over a wide front, on the southern face of the Thag La. They were equipped with light rifles, small quantity of ammunition. Many were in summer clothing and canvas shoes as they had been rushed from the western front in the Punjab to the Valley across Bomdi La and Se La and for want of transport and
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B.N. Mullick, former director, Intelligence Bureau, in his book My Years with Nehru—The Chinese Betrayal (1971) has brought out how detailed information about the Chinese preparations was being given to the government and the army but this, too, was disregarded. Perhaps a fuller discussion of this aspect may have been given in the Henderson-Brooks report. But, this report too has not been released by the government so far.
India’s defence expenditure increased from ₹192.15 crore in 1956–57 to ₹289.54 crore in 1961–62 and to ₹505 crore in 1962–63 (RE). The Union Budget for 1963–64 provided an outlay of ₹867 crore. (GOI 1964; p.1)
Bulganin said: ‘While we are discussing the general international situation and reducing tension, we propose suggesting at a later stage India’s inclusion as the sixth member of the Security Council.’ Nehru had replied, Perhaps Bulganin knows that some people in USA have suggested that India should replace China in the Security Council. This is to create trouble between us and China. We are, of course, wholly opposed to it.
Article 356 of the Constitution is based on the notorious Section 93 of the GOI Act, 1935 which provided for ‘Governor’s rule’ in the provinces, just as Section 45 provided for Governor-General’s rule at the centre. A.G. Noorani has emphasized that ‘the crucial expression of Section 93 was adopted bodily and unwisely; it lends itself readily to abuse, almost invites it.
It was widely acknowledged that Nehru had set the country a bad example. (Granville 1999; pp.606–7) SarDesai and Mohan have emphasized that in the centre–state arena, Nehru made use of Article 356 for the imposition of President’s Rule on six occasions, under pressure from within his own party, to institutionalize the predominant position of the Congress Party. The net result of this was that no non-Congress chief minister lasted his full term of office in the Nehru era.
Congress played on threats to undermine the opposition. In the 1953 Kerala elections, T.T. Krishnamachari, Union minister of commerce and industry, threatened that ‘even if communists win the elections, we will not allow them to rule in Travancore–Cochin.’
But the remedy proved to be worse than the disease. By the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution in 1955, seven more acts were included in the Ninth Schedule. Of these, only three pertained to land acquisition. (Sathe 1989; pp.101,103) It is important to note that this happened during Nehru’s regime. This pernicious trend gathered momentum over the years and, with 284 central and state acts such as the Urban Land Ceiling Act, Maintenance of Internal Security Act, the Tamil Nadu law extending reservation to 69 per cent, and so on, included in it, the Ninth Schedule threatened to become larger
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A.G. Noorani has, in his article ‘Ninth Schedule and the Supreme Court’ published in the Economic and Political Weekly (3 March 2007; p.731), rightly underlined that ‘an incongruity, introduced as a result of sheer neglect, became an obscenity created by wilful resolve.’
‘Property’ became a dirty word in Nehru’s concept of the socialistic pattern of society. Nehru was not a believer in an individual’s right to hold property. In fact, he had opposed the inclusion of the right to property as a fundamental right.
While the citizen of India has no right whatever to hold property and his property can be taken away by the legislature without any restraint, a foreign investor has all the protection of his investment under the bilateral and multilateral agreements entered into by India. The property of a foreign investor cannot be acquired or expropriated without full compensation.
K.M. Munshi, in his speech in the Constituent Assembly on 23 November 1948, had emphasized that: Nowhere in advanced Muslim countries has the personal law of each minority been recognised as so sacrosanct as to prevent the enactment of a civil code. Take for instance Turkey or Egypt. No minority in these countries is permitted to have such rights…
Munshi had further elaborated: The sooner we forget this isolationist outlook on life, the better it will be for the country. Religion must be restricted to spheres which legitimately appertain to religion, and the rest of life must be regulated, unified and modified in such a manner that we may evolve, as early as possible, a strong and consolidated nation. (Kashyap 1998; pp.106–8)
Reference may be made to the repeated pronouncements of the Supreme Court that early steps may be taken to formulate a uniform civil code. In S.R. Bommai v. Union of India (AIR 1994 SC 1918), the court upheld the legislative power of Parliament to reform personal laws and urged the government to enact a uniform civil code to promote national integration. The court regretted that Article 44 had remained a dead letter. In a case where a marriage solemnized under one personal law was sought to be dissolved under another personal law after conversion of one partner, the court dissolved the
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‘We must have it clearly in our minds and in the mind of the country’, he warned, ‘that the alliance of religion and politics in the shape of communalism is a most dangerous alliance, and it yields the most abnormal kind of illegitimate brood.’
It was as early as 1926 that Nehru felt that India would be dragged down into the abyss unless this so called religion was scotched and the intelligentsia at least was secularised. Nehru used this word in 1926 not in the accepted sense of separation of church and state…but to mean the toleration of all faiths and beliefs and permissible religious practices… Nehru looked to both industrialisation and mass education of the type that would dissolve dogma and the dogmatic mentality… To Nehru now religion was the fountain-head of authoritarianism and the method used at all times to secure the
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Nehru also argued that ‘honest communalism is fear; false communalism is political reaction.’
Religion can be separated from politics more easily if it is also separated from the law. There is no room in a secular society for differences in personal law which claim religious sanction. To deny rights to Muslim women which are available to women of other faiths is a violation of the provision in the Constitution that the state shall not discriminate against any citizen on grounds of religion. (Gopal in Grover 1990; p.217)
In another article ‘The Muslim Dilemma’ (IE, 19 October 1992), Engineer had stated: ‘By adopting an aggressive posture on the Shah Banu judgement the Muslim leadership alienated even the progressive, secular Hindus who are quite sympathetic to the Muslim cause… One can say that the Ramjanmabhoomi-Babri Masjid controversy is a fall-out of the Shah Banu agitation.’ (Kashyap 1993; p.23)
in the Bommai case. Justices Jeevan Reddy and Agrawal noted, ‘If a political party espousing a particular religion comes to power, that religion tends to become, in practice, the official religion. All other religions come to acquire a secondary status, at any rate, a less favourable position… Under our Constitution, no party or organisation can simultaneously be a political and a religious party. It has to be either.’
The Sunday Standard (Delhi) reported on 13 May 1962 that there were 551 cases of corruption detected in 1956, which increased to 1,127 in 1961. The news item stated: ‘If the welfare state is not to be equated with “licence and permit raj” (as Mr Rajgopalachari does), stringent steps must be taken to root out corruption and to restore the probity of administration… Everybody is agreed that the present legal provisions leave too many loopholes to the corrupt officials to defeat the hands of justice.’ (Parthasarathi 1989; p.503)
According to the committee: ‘In its widest connotation, corruption includes improper or selfish exercise of power and influence, attached to a public office, or to the special position one occupies in public life. In this sense, the problem would have to be viewed in relation to the entire system of moral values and socio-economic structure of society.’ The interim reports of the Santhanam Committee were received in 1963, while the final report was received in April 1964.
Nehru used the IB to get secret enquiries done in matters of corruption. B.N. Mullik, the then director of the IB, has written about how Nehru persuaded him to make enquiries into corruption charges against a central minister. (Mullik 1972; pp.19–20) Another more noteworthy case, discussed earlier, was when Nehru asked the IB to make inquiries into allegations of corruption against the former finance minister, T.T. Krishnamachari, in the notorious Mundhra Deal, even after the Chagla Commission had reported in the matter. Nehru wanted the IB to make a fresh inquiry with a view to rehabilitate
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In his speech at the AICC introducing the draft manifesto, Nehru himself had admitted: One thing, it [sic] is not found in the manifesto, but it is mentioned in the Planning Commission report and it is also in my report, which you considered earlier today. It is the question of population in India and the necessity for trying to prevent its rapid increase by methods, what are called family planning or more correctly, birth control. Some people are rather frightened of those words but the fact is, the people will have to think about it… The whole thing is, more we improve our public health,
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a special convention of legislators and AICC members in Delhi on 19 and 20 March 1937. Doubts having been raised regarding the propriety of legislators taking an oath of allegiance to the British sovereign, the first thing that the convention did was to administer to them an oath of loyalty to the nation, this being prior to the oath they would take in the legislatures.
According to Mountbatten, Gandhi had admitted to Viceroy Wavell, after his release from prison in about 1944 that he got time to read the act carefully only when he was in prison. ‘Had he had time to study it earlier…he would have recommended acceptance.’ Mountbatten has called the GOI Act, 1935 ‘perhaps the greatest single legislative achievement of the British in India.’ (Carter 2003; p.287)
The first elections under this act were in 1937 in which only thirty-five million people or 11.5 per cent of the total population were eligible to vote.
There was a massive increase in the Congress membership from about 6,50,000 in 1936 to over 3 million in 1937 and to 4.5 million in 1938. (Vohra 1997; p.166)
S.S. Gill has noted: ‘The Constitution of India cannibalized the much maligned GOI Act of 1935 to the extent of incorporating 235 of its sections. The entire judicial and administrative framework of old rules, regulations and procedures was also adopted wholesale.’ (Gill 1996; p.30)
Arun Shourie has emphasized; Of the seven members who were selected for the Drafting Committee, only one was a Congressman. Ambedkar, who had all along opposed the Congress and denounced the leaders who were now in control, was elected chairman of the committee. A scholar records that of the original text, 220 articles had been completely replaced and the wording of another 120 had been materially altered… Many provisions were altered in the most basic ways by the interventions of persons whose names few of us would even have heard of since. (Shourie 1997; pp. 448, 449)
Power and knowledge do not go together. Oftentimes they are dissociated, and I am quite frank enough to say that this House, such as it is, has probably a greater modicum and quantum of knowledge and information than the future Parliament is likely to have. (Palkhivala 1974; p.4)
the condemnation of the Constitution largely came from two quarters, the Communist Party and the Socialist Party. The Communist Party wanted a Constitution based upon the principle of the dictatorship of the proletariat. They condemned the Constitution because it was based upon parliamentary democracy. The socialists, inter alia, wanted freedom to nationalize or socialize all private property without payment of compensation. Nehru, as head of the government, had to contend with such preposterous demands.
in regard to the role of the judiciary. Ambedkar had appreciatively quoted the principle that: Courts may modify, they cannot replace. They can revise earlier interpretations as new arguments, new points of view are presented, they can shift the dividing line in marginal cases, but there are barriers they cannot pass, definite assignments of power they cannot reallocate. They can give a broadening construction of existing powers, but they cannot assign to one authority powers explicitly granted to another. (Mukherjee 2007; p.214)
Ambedkar was prescient in some of his observations. On the future of the country, he said: In addition to our old enemies in the form of castes and creeds, we are going to have many political parties with diverse and opposing political creeds. Will Indians place the country above their creed or will they place creed above country? I do not know. But this much is certain that if the parties place creed above country, our independence will be put in jeopardy a second time and probably be lost for ever. This eventuality we must all resolutely guard against… We must not be content with mere
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The first general election was conducted in three stages and was spread over six months. It began on 25 October 1951 in the distant villages in Himachal Pradesh.
More than 17,000 candidates contested on behalf of nearly seventy-five political parties to fill 489 seats in the Lok Sabha and 3,283 seats in the state assemblies. The Congress won an absolute majority at the centre and in eighteen out of the twenty-two states; in the remaining four states (Madras, Travancore-Cochin, PEPSU and Orissa) it was the largest single party. (Akbar 1988; p.464)
In the early years, Nehru’s Cabinet consisted of the stalwarts of the independence movement who had their own ideas on how the country should move towards its agreed goals and did not hesitate to disagree with him. Once they were gone, he tended to appoint quiet and rather colourless men of uncertain ability and distinction whose merit had been to avoid giving or taking offence. Increasingly, Cabinet meetings became like tutorials with Nehru doing most of the talking. The Cabinet soon ceased to be a centre of creative and independent thought and played little role in the regeneration of India.
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Among the fourteen members who spoke on the bill, thirteen were against it. They argued that other communities also suffered from the evils which the bill sought to remove, but they were left out of it. Declaring the bill as discriminatory, Naziruddin Ahmed, a member from West Bengal, wanted the bill to be extended to the Muslim community also.
Nehru’s article written in the Hindustan Times on 20 October 1940 on the subject of ‘the content of social welfare’. Nehru had, inter alia, stated therein: ‘It seems to me that a uniform civil code for the whole of India is essential. Yet I realise that this cannot be imposed on unwilling people. It should, therefore, be made optional to begin with, and individuals and groups may voluntarily accept it and come within its scope. The state should meanwhile carry on propaganda in its favour.’
Speaking in the Lok Sabha on the Special Marriage Bill on 14 September 1954, Nehru had bluntly stated: ‘This extreme reverence shown to what is called personal new law seems to me completely misplaced, whether it is the Hindu personal law or the Muslim personal law or any other.
Menon has emphasized: ‘By the partition, India had lost an area of 364,737 square miles and a population of 81.5 million. By the integration of the states, we brought in an area of nearly 5,00,000 square miles with a population of 86.5 million (not including J&K).’ (Menon 1956; pp.487–90)
the Hyderabad question had started causing serious anxiety. On 31 March 1948, Kasim Razvi of Ittehad-ul-Muslemeen declared that Hyderabad was an Islamic state and the Razakars were fully armed to defend their freedom and fight the ‘Hindu Kafirs’. On 10 April, he said that ‘Hyderabad would recover the ceded districts and the day is not far off when the waves of the Bay of Bengal will be washing the feet of our sovereign.’
Patel decided to handle the affair on his own. It was arranged that the Indian army should march into Hyderabad state in the early hours of 13th September 1950. But just at this crucial moment Jinnah died on 12 September. Patel was advised by the British Commander-in-Chief, General Bucher, to postpone the operation lest India’s enemies linked the operation with Jinnah’s death. Patel did not agree and ‘Operation Polo’, as it was called, started as scheduled on the 13th.
Nehru had stated: It is important that justice should be done; it is even more important that the people concerned should believe that justice has been done…
By the end of 1951–52, the Central Government will have spent about ₹140 crore on relief and rehabilitation of displaced persons. In addition, about 56 lakhs of acres of evacuee and other land have been given to them and about 3,56,000 urban houses, shops and industrial premises have been provided. Of these 86,000 were new houses constructed by government. The question of properties left by displaced persons in Pakistan has remained unsettled, in spite of repeated efforts of government.
in his letter dated 17 April 1950 to the premier of the United Provinces, G.B.Pant: These recent occurrences in the UP have greatly distressed me. Or perhaps this was a culmination of what I had been feeling for a long time…I have felt for a long time that the whole atmosphere of the UP has been changing for the worse from the communal point of view. Indeed the UP is becoming almost a foreign land for me. I do not fit in there…I have not been to the UP for a long time. That is partly due to the lack of time, but the real reason is that I hesitate to go there. I do not wish to come into
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