India has the largest Constitution in the world, primarily because it aims to eradicate the wounds of centuries of oppression and subjugation of its citizens and empower them to become a stakeholder in the progress of the nation. Still, the then leadership at the center lacked the whole-hearted commitment to put these high ideals into action and instead used the constitution as a playground for their political idiosyncrasies. The same leaders who had earlier drafted and adopted the constitution started doubting the constitution and found it cumbersome to follow, and tried to make amendments to the constitution as per their whims and fancies. Today, the leaders of the same party make huge hues and cry over the matters of constitutional amendments, without introspecting their past records. Thus, we must have a look at the genesis of political maneuvering and idiosyncratic behavior of the Congress party, which was visible since 1951, merely fourteen months after the adoption of the Constitution.
The Battle in the Court: Organiser and Cross Roads
In the year 1950, 22 communist prisoners were killed and 107 were injured when they were shot by the Madras (now Chennai) police in Salem Central Jail. Romesh Thapar, a young communist journalist condemned this barbaric act in his magazine Cross Roads. The government of Madras banned the circulation of Cross Roads under the Madras Maintenance of Public Order Act. Jawaharlal Nehru was concerned about his image and wrote a letter to Sardar Patel saying
‘We are losing the support of the public and a feeling is rising against the police such as existed under the British regime.’
Thapar challenged this judgment in the court and filed the petition in the Supreme Court pointing out that
“the ban proves the fact that Congress is afraid of facing the truth”.
At the same time, Organiser, a nationalist magazine supported by RSS and Hindu Mahasabha under the editorship of K R Malkani, wrote a series of articles criticizing the policies of Nehru and Liaqat Ali Khan for their ineffective handling of the refugee crisis in Bengal and their apathy towards the Hindus of the nation. Nehru shifted the blame on the journalists for “running down his reputation with a campaign based on ‘malicious misrepresentation of facts’ and outright fabrications”. He was particularly critical of the Hindu Mahasabha and the RSS, subjecting the editors and printers of Organiser to the ‘pre-censorship’ order under the East Punjab Public Safety Act, to force them to submit all their content for prior approval from the government. The editor of Organiser, K R Malkani, and the printer of Organiser, Brij Bhushan filed a petition in the Supreme Court. Thus, two cases for freedom of the press were being discussed in the court simultaneously, Brij Bhushan vs. The State of Delhi and Romesh Thappar vs. The State of Madras. These cases attracted a lot of public attention, and the government of India received criticism from all quarters. Jay Prakash Narayan criticized the Prime Minister for his dictatorial attitude. Eventually, on 26th May 1950, the verdict for both cases was pronounced, quashing the restrictions as void, and pointing out that the government had misinterpreted and misused the constitutional provision of Article 19(2) providing reasonable restrictions to the right to freedom. This Act will become the source of contestation for the government to bring the first amendment to the Indian constitution.
The Road to the First Amendment
The legal defeat of the Indian government became the starting point for the ruling regime to arm-twist the constitution to suit their agenda. As Nehru said during the Constitutional debates on the First Amendment, 1951 “Indians have this habit of gods out of everything. If you want to kill the constitution, make it sacrosanct, but for a constitution to keep running, it needs to keep changing”. This was the time when the Indian government tried to implement major reforms in the land distribution system by imposing a land ceiling on the big zamindars and redistributing surplus land among landless farmers and sharecroppers. The big zamindars saw this as an encroachment on their life and livelihood, and petitions were filed in different states of India. Patna and Allahabad Court struck down these changes as unlawful, which irked Nehru even more, and he wrote to the Chief Ministers of States that “It is impossible to hang up urgent social changes because the Constitution comes in the way… We shall have to find a remedy, even though this might involve a change in the Constitution”. The constitution that was put into action just fourteen months ago under the same regime, was now being amended because it was seen as an ‘obstacle’.
Under the guise of making reforms feasible, the proposed amendment tried to curb the freedom of the press in India by implementing what Nehru called “reasonable restrictions” on freedom. According to Nehru, “Every freedom in the world is limited,” and debated in favor of restraining the press to provide a balance to their perspective. The proposed amendment introduced new clauses for curbing the freedom of the press including public order, the interests of the security of the state, and the relations with foreign countries under Article 19 (2). The proposed amendment was criticized by leaders of all the factions including Gandhian leaders like Acharya Kriplani, socialists such as Jayprakash Narayan, and Right-leaning leaders such as Syama Prasad Mookerjee. Even many Congress leaders rose against the amendment including H.V. Kamath, Syamnandan Sahay, and K.K. Bhattacharya, etc. Nehru faced a hard time debating with Shyama Prasad Mukherjee and H.V. Kamath. Kamath criticized the amendment for encroaching upon fundamental rights, while Shyama Prasad Mukherjee bashed Nehru for diluting the constitution into a “scrap of paper”. According to Walter Crocker, Mukherjee was a much better orator than Nehru during the discussion, and Nehru couldn’t provide a satisfactory response to the speech of Mukherjee.
But despite the severe criticism from all quarters, and the press coverage of the same, Nehru succeeded in implementing his proposed amendment on June 18 1951, largely because of the dominance of Congress leaders in the parliament. These amendments represent neither the collective aspirations of the nation nor the immediate priorities of the state, but these changes were made because there was a leader in the country “who couldn’t handle criticisms”.
The Present Scenario
This was just the beginning of the curbs on the freedom of expression and media control by the Congress party. These new provisions of 1951 were further amended in 1963 under the 16th amendment of the Indian constitution which imposed further press freedom restrictions, not to forget the encroachment on the basic tenets of the Indian constitution during Indira Gandhi’s leadership, which undermined the basic fundamental rights of the citizens. Attempts were also made to impose new terms in the preamble of the Indian Constitution. And yet, we see, in recent times, the followers of these political factions, use the reports of the prejudiced Western media to claim the loss of Press Freedom in India, and stage protests about the ‘threat to the Constitution’ in India, which shows not only their lack of sensitivity to take responsibility for their own actions, but also their political short-sightedness for indulging in blame game for political gains. The harbingers of the protest to protect the constitution of India, are also the biggest culprits of the constitutional maneuvering and are responsible for diluting the spirit of the Indian constitution on more than one occasion. Despite Congress’ verbal commitment to democratic values, their government was often found to be guilty of imposing unwanted restrictions on the press, publications, and individuals, most often to suppress the voices of dissent against them and to hide their failures.
Today, Congress wants itself to be remembered as a proponent of democratic values and free speech, but in their regime, they not only imposed unreasonable restrictions on the freedom of expression, it also disallowed the scrutiny of their actions under judicial review, hence curbing any scope for criticism. The whimsical use of constitutional amendments was a testament to the autocratic nature of the Congress rule, which changed the very foundations on which their policies could be challenged or changed. This is the legacy, that took many years to be reverted. The current shift in political epistemology is an attempt to do away with the policies of the Congress rule, that undermined the faith of people in their constitution.
