How India Became Democratic

Title: How India Became Democratic – Citizenship and the Making of the Universal Franchise

Author: Ornit Shani

Publisher: Penguin Viking, 2018 (First)

ISBN: 9780670090754

Pages: 284

When Britain finally divested itself from India in 1947, the leaders of the newly independent nation had had no confusion at all on the future political path they would undertake. The colonial political institutions had established the fundamentals of a democratic state, but the installation of a fully responsible and popular government was neither the intention of the British nor in their best interests. Severe eligibility restrictions were in place for a citizen to register as a voter to provincial legislatures which enjoyed very limited powers of its own. Only about 11 per cent of the populace could vote in the election to the Constituent Assembly. This made the law-making machinery elitist and not a representative of the entire country. Once of the very first legislative measures of the body was to establish the concept of universal adult franchise as the solid bulwark of Indian democracy. Such a notion was somewhat novel even in some of the developed states in Europe at that time. French women voted for the first time only in 1945 and in Belgium, it took three more years, finally granting women the vote in 1948. India’s constitution makers decided to package universal franchise from the word go. This required a tremendous bureaucratic effort, first of all for preparing an electoral roll of all eligible voters. Since the Constitution itself was not in place, institutions such as the Election Commission were nonexistent. The task of coordinating the enumeration of eligible voters in the provinces and princely states of India was handled by the Constituent Assembly Secretariat (CAS). This book tells the story of the unsung Herculean effort of the CAS in placing the foundation stone of democracy in India by compiling a list of 170 million voters, almost four-fifths of them voting for the first time. The author, Ornit Shani, is a scholar of the politics of modern history of India. She received her PhD from the University of Cambridge. Her current research focuses on the modern history of democracy and citizenship in India.

This book points to the moment in time when democracy was institutionalized in India. With a painstaking research of the Constituent Assembly’s records to support it, this narrative offers a fresh perspective on the embedding of democracy at the birth of the nation state. Many view India’s democracy as an inheritance of the British Raj, an extension of its bureaucratic structures and legal framework. This is not entirely true. Many other colonies with similar colonial constitutional structures failed to develop. In Pakistan, it took more than two decades to prepare an electoral roll that came about during elections in 1970. In India too, the colonial administrative structure supported only a rudimentary form of democracy. The Government of India Act 1935 envisaged seventeen different types of seats and five distinct categories of women voters. Separate electorates were in place for Sikhs, Muslims, Anglo-Indians, Indian Christians and other categories. This book acknowledges the hard work put in by many, but knowledge of their efforts had never previously reached the public. The roll-making exercise was held under the leadership of Benegal Narsing Rau, who was the Constitutional Advisor. S N Mukerjee, Joint Secretary, K V Padmanabhan, Under Secretary and P S Subramaniam, Under Secretary of the CAS are also acknowledged.

Immediately after independence, the CAS initiated proceedings by requesting the provincial states to imagine the quantum and nature of the work required to enumerate eligible voters. This was in November 1947, and took place even before the draft constitution was adopted by the Assembly in February 1948. Judging by the pace of normal government work, it fills us with wonder to realize that the Secretariat’s actions were in anticipation of the constitutional provisions under the Assembly’s consideration. In March 1948, they formally instructed the states to go ahead with the work and the Assembly approved the proceedings only in January 1949 with retrospective effect. The most amusing part of it all was that even the criteria for citizenship was not finalized when the actual work of enlisting voters started.

Preparation of electoral rolls created peculiar challenges, solving which turned out to be indicators of a healthy democracy in the making. There were some states such as Surguja, in which no elections of any sort had taken place before, while in Travancore, they were planning to conduct elections in February 1948 with universal franchise as part of the legislative reforms in the state. As such, the state had already prepared the list. The Travancore model was thus emulated in other provinces too.

Shani addresses the importance of deference to the constitution as a basic feature of any democracy. She quotes Ambedkar’s speech in the Assembly on the issue of constitutional morality which makes informative reading. Citing George Grote, he defined it as “a paramount reverence for the form of the Constitution, enforcing obedience to authority acting under and within these forms, yet combined with the habit of open speech, of action subject only to definite legal control…with a perfect confidence in the bosom of every citizen amidst the bitterness of party contest that the forms of the Constitution will not be less sacred in the eyes of his opponents than in his own” (p.195).

This book captures a rare instance in which the Secretariat’s experience in dealing with recalcitrant local governments helped fine tune the provisions of the Constitution. There have been frequent complaints from Assam that its bureaucracy was conspiring to exclude the East Pakistan refugees from finding a place in the electoral roll. Thousands of Tamils residing in Devikulam taluk of Travancore raised the issue of reluctance of the local administration in granting voting rights to them. Both governments were not willing to accommodate the Secretariat’s instructions to provide equal rights to any person who satisfied the condition of a certain residency period in the area. Since the draft constitution provided for separate election commissions for the centre and the states, differences in the criteria for franchise was to be expected between states and there was a limit only up to which the federal body could make individual provinces follow suit. The Secretariat very quickly understood the risks involved. The articles related to the founding of a unitary Election Commission at the centre came about in this way. Article 289 of the Constitution was revised, thereby denying the states freedom to make laws regarding voter’s eligibility.

Ornit Shani’s book is the first historical study of the preparation of India’s draft electoral roll on the basis of universal adult franchise. The text is arranged in a structured fashion, but the huge number of often very long footnotes included along with the main narrative is distracting and reduces readability. Readers feel that by omitting these footnotes, they are losing out on the content. The book is written in the style of an academic paper, with separate pieces of introduction and conclusion for each chapter. This sets the stage for unnecessary repetition of important concepts much number of times. Verbatim reproductions of CAS press notes and letters from and to the public also make the going tedious for the ordinary reader.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star