-Amit

Pray why wouldn’t the middle class of India be suspicious of its rulers- especially when the rulers are oprressive, come from faraway lands, follow religions which can thrive only at the destruction of all other religions and take pleasure in defiling local monuments?

It is the middle class which in the face of thousand adversities carried on with it’s religion and language, preserved it’s ancient literature and books of knowledge and did not surrender meekly like everyone else.

It is history which will ultimately judge Nirad Chaudhury’s predictions. He threatned wild calamity and political uncertainity after the British had left. None of it has come true. Hopefully his slur that Indian are incapable of governing themselves will also come untrue.

Cheaper printed copies for Rs 400 were available in Delhi 2 years ago.

Also do study 44th amendment and its taking away right to property.

2) I am not trashing India. Moreover, contrary to popular opinion, the motivation driving Niradbabu to write his essays and autobiographies in Bengali — yes, his Bengali prose is equally penetrating and uncompromising — and English was not India-bashing.

3) I quoted him because I thought the quotes are relevant to Atanu’s point about our indifference.

4) I am not even sure if I completely agree with everything he said there, but the quotes are insightful nevertheless.

5) The point about deep historical distrust and suspicion of our rulers is often overlooked. I grew up in a small town in West Bengal which was considered as “Lal Durga” — red fort, red stands for CPI(M). Around the time of each election, I used to hear people wondering “oder jetai bhalo, power-e thakle taao shanti, na thakle je ki korbe, bhabai jaay na” (In a way, it’s better that they keep winning. Being in power makes them somewhat responsible, we can’t even begin to imagine what would happen if they lose). This is what Niradbabu was referring to, presciently in 1949.

6) The other point about the nature of our interest in politics is worth pondering, too. We revel in the cult of personalities, not so much in the boring details of rules, processes and rights. Goes back to Atanu’s point again.

7) Niradbabu’s municipal government reference is historically significant because even in British India, the municipalities were run by Indians and he had a ringside view and of how incompetently those responsibilites were used to be handled. That first-hand experience is behind his conclusions.

Finally, I thought it was obvious from the quote that it was written in 1949. Therefore, in 2007, if you are saying that the oligarchical dictatorship which incidentally was a specific characterization of Nehru government, not the vision of Indian democray, in general, he referred to in 1949 will “soon vanish”, don’t you think he was on to something more significant than mere trashing?

Does anybody know where one can get a copy of the Indian Constitution?

On a different note, your comparison between US & India:
Politically, contemporary India is probably a better democracy than contemporary US, in true sense of the word. In fact, I would say US is now a fascist state that merely wears the trappings of a democracy, and yet it has a very sharp constitution, and 99% literacy rate. Successes of the US are more to do with the quality of leadership until the end of ww2. Further, in the past 60 yrs, literacy in the US has increased, and yet quality of governance has deteriorated considerably.

Comparison between US & India can be useful but a blind (or instinctual) attempt at doing so doesn’t do much merit.

Perhaps, there is a need to look at the evolution of Indian politics within country’s socio, cultural, and historical context.

Also talking of Indian constitution, there seems to be some thing to Kumar’s comment – purely based on how EU’s constitution turned out last year. And India was (and still largely is), by and large, continuation of the British Imperial laws and frame of mind.

I am positive if US wrote it’s constitution today, it’ll be longer than India’s – just look at it’s code of federal regulations and tax laws. 200 years ago were simpler times and so American Constitution (and I think at least some founding members were lawyers). And obviously it served very well for US.

The differences are not so unlike India’s varying ethnic, religious, and linguistic identities. The difference is in how they chose to combat these things. The US Constitution chose to take a hands off approach. The framers decided that the best way to keep the Republic functioning was to simply constrain the scope of what constituted a “political issue.”
Is religion divisive? Hell yes it is. So why bother trying to get the government involved in such a messy business? The reason the fusion of religion and politics gets messy is because nobody likes to feel imposed upon. So if you protect everyone’s freedom of conscience, nobody has grounds to claim favoritism. Once issues like religion cease being a motivation and/or a source of political power, the government will no longer have a vested interest in trampling on people’s religious beliefs.
The entire idea is that every single group within the Republic will be ignored or interfered with equally so at the end of the day, the government is more about doing what is in the national interest and leaving petty regional or communal squabbles alone.

India went a different route. Rather that leaving issues like religion and caste alone, India’s politicians decided to address each and every social issue India had within the Constitution itself. Thus we end up with quotas, inane laws regarding religious expression, and a defined expectation of government entitlement programs. Having taken this route, suddenly everything and everything is “up for grabs” politically. Because the government has gotten itself involved in the mundane affairs of so many various and sundry social groups, each and every group is clamoring for their piece of the pie. Thus, you have a government more focused around appeasing individual interest groups rather than synthesizing all their needs into what can be considered a cohesive “national interest.”

I could go on and on about this for days and I have actually thought about several structural changes to the Indian government that could fix this. But I don’t much see the point in that.

(I will have to admit a disclaimer. I have never read the Indian Constitution myself, although I could probably cite the American one line for line.)

Mr. Dipanjan. It’s very easy to quote Nirad Chaudhury, VS Naipaul and ilk and trash India. Whatever may be the drawbacks the truth is that Indian middle class and especially the poor have always been loyal to democracy. Only for this reason Indian democracy is a success. Recent elections in UP confirm this. As literacy levels rise “an oligarchical one-party dictatorship which respects political freedom and personal liberty even less than the regime which it has replaced” will vanish sooner rather than later.

Sometimes I think Indian democracy is a peudo-democracy and instead an oligarchy/just dictator would be a better alternative! How worthy are our ministers to be proud of our democratic setup?! (

It amazes me that Father of the Nation and his majority of his kins [Our Neta's] are lawyers.

They are groomed to “Argue till-death”. Anything we do in India [Consituition to simple Law] is very verbose and time-consuming.
Is this because of Lawyer-giri?………..

“Political consciousness has to be considered next:the older form of nationalism had none, if by political consciousness is understood he capacity to make a distinction between various types of political institutions and governments, and the added capacity to make a deliberate choice among these forms. The only kind of internal government the older nationalism was familiar with and could understand was absolute personal rule, and the only kind of political change it could conceive was limited to the possibility of changing the autocrat’s personality.” …

“For all his preoccupation with politics, the middle-class Indian never developed any real political aptitude. He never showed any understanding of representative government, nor any capacity to work it, as he certainly would and could have done, had he possessed either, in the sphere of municipal administration. His interest in democratic government, where it was not an indulgence in his favourite intellectual pastime of logic-chopping and equally favorite practical pastime of bossing cliques, sprang only from his eagerness to find the most effective dissolvent of British power in India, and he soon discovered that the slogan of democracy was such a dissolvent as his rulers could least counteract. Our political consciousness never penetrated deeper than this and was never able to create among the general mass of the people any stronger or widespread desire for internal political freedom and democratic freedom. Accordingly, there is hardly any occasion for surprise if today an overwhelming majority of the people of India are perfectly content with an oligarchical one-party dictatorship which respects political freedom and personal liberty even less than the regime which it has replaced.”

[The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian]

http://indiacode.nic.in/coiweb/welcome.html

It is available in English and Hindi.

Another thing to note is that even in US the political literacy is on decline. Check this InfoPorn at wired

“More than a decade after the Internet went mainstream, the world’s richest information source hasn’t necessarily made its users any more informed. A new study from the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press shows that Americans, on average, are less able to correctly answer questions about current events than they were in 1989. Citizens who call the Internet their primary news source know slightly less than fans of TV and radio news.”

You can find detailed stats at

http://www.wired.com/culture/culturereviews/magazine/15-07/st_infoporn

- Pankaj

When I read it several years back, I found it to be quite readable, as it gave the reasons and history behind some of the amendments.

The Indian Constitution has been drafted with the best of intentions, and by looking at best practices from US, UK, Ireland etc. We all agree that where we have failed is its implementation.

The reasons for the Indian Constitution being long, the American one being short, and the UK one being ‘unwritten’ or ‘uncodified’, are historical.The UK constitution evolved over the years, so, it can stay ‘uncodified’. The American one was probably one of the first written constitutions.So, they just put down some very high level stuff about how they wish to be governed. The Indian Constitution was written in an age when the discussions about self-governance, the separation of powers between Judiciary, Executive and Legislature, and so on, were in quite a matured stage.

Yes, there is a need for our citizens to read and understand the Constitution. The Social Sciences text books in India do give a good overview of the major features of the Constitution to students. But with the focus being on Sciences and Maths, ‘civics’ and ‘history’ are treated indifferently by schools, students, and parents alike.

One need not read the whole Constitution actually. One could actually print the Civics portions of the textbooks from 8th class to 10th class.The fineprint will be missed, but at least people can then say they have read the ‘abridged’ or simplified version of the Constitution.

Unfortunately, “if Justice, Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. . . the golden rules set out in the Preamble to the Constitution, are to be achieved, the Indian polity has to be educated and educated with excellence” – P A Inamdar vs State of Maharashtra (2005) 6 SCC 537

Secondly, the provisions in the Constitution have been amended on occasions when the Courts overturned the authority of the Government of India, to subsequently accomodate policy decisions of the ruling party.

When originally drafted, our Constitution took into account provisons from the best practicing democracies of world – UK, USA, Sweden, Norway, etc. Unfortunately, the original draftsmen did not envision the moral bankruptcy of the latter day Indian politican or the manner in which they would corrupt all strata of society, courts included. As is often the case, idealistic draftsmanship failed the test of bleak reality.

Cheers
S