India after Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy

by Ramachandra Guha

Prasad wrote ominously that ‘he proposed to watch the progress of the measure in Parliament from day to day’. If the bill was still passed, he would insist on his ‘right to examine it on its merits . . . before giving assent to it’.14 Nehru wrote back saying that in his view there was ‘a very widespread expression of opinion in the country in favour of the Bill’. But the president’s opposition had him worried, for it presaged a possible stand-off between the government and the head of state. He showed Prasad’s letter to several experts on the constitution. They assured him that the president was bound to act with ‘the aid and advice of the Council of Ministers and cannot act independently of that advice’. As they saw it, the position of the president of India was even weaker than that of the British monarch.