India’s present political plight is because the political class, lawyers and judges ignore the British Constitutional ethos on which Ambedkar modelled the Constitution. Three books that help us understand that ethos. By A.G. NOORANI

India’s present political plight is because the political class, lawyers and judges ignore the British Constitutional ethos on which Ambedkar modelled the Constitution. Three books that help us understand that ethos. By A.G. NOORANI

“IT would suit the conditions of this country better to adopt the parliamentary system of Constitution, the British type of Constitution with which we are familiar,” Vallabhbhai Patel said in the Constituent Assembly of India on July 15, 1947 (Constituent Assembly Debates (CAD); Volume 4, page 578). He was reporting on the conclusion arrived on June 7, 1947, at a joint meeting of the Provincial Constitution Committee, of which he was Chairman, and the Union Constitution Committee presided over by Jawaharlal Nehru.

A barrister himself, Patel overrode Gandhi’s objections and got Dr B.R. Ambedkar elected to the Constituent Assembly. This barrister of Gray’s Inn was steeped not only in British Constitutional Law and History, but, unlike other constitutional lawyers, was learned in Political Science as well. He was named Chairman of the Assembly’s Drafting Committee, in which capacity he constantly cited British precedents while explaining the provisions of the draft Constitution.

We have moved a long way since Prof. Myron Weiner wrote an essay on “India’s Two Political Cultures” in mid-1962. In his classification, “the first can be characterised as an emerging mass political culture and the second as an elite political culture” (Political Change in South Asia; Firma K.L. Mukhopadhyay, Calcutta, p. 114). Even 50 years ago, this was a bit of an oversimplification. Now, the two cultures have merged in essentials, while retaining differences in appearances.

The Centre has faithfully copied the States on defections, unprincipled coalitions, misbehaviour in the legislature, securing political support through bribery, coarse rhetoric and much else. Ambedkar’s devotees laud him for his contribution to the uplift of the downtrodden Dalits, the “untouchables” of his time. They are not alone in ignoring his profound insights into constitutionalism and constitutional values. Does Mayawati care for them? Why pick on her alone, when you have the likes of Mulayam Singh Yadav, who praised a person accused of a crime like murder because he had voted for him; the three Lals of Haryana—Bansi, Bhajan and Devi—Mamata Banerjee of West Bengal, and Lalu Prasad and his predecessors in Bihar? What about the regimes of defectors (Charan Singh and Chandra Shekhar), that of the prince of corruption and political dishonesty, P.V. Narasimha Rao, and the ramshackle coalitions of H.D. Deve Gowda, Inder Kumar Gujral, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh?