On 15 August 1947, India gained freedom from the oppressive British colonial rule after a long, arduous, and heroic struggle, full of suffering and sacrifices. India declared itself a Republic nearly two and a half years later, on 26 January 1950. It was when the Constitution of India came into effect. As India celebrates its 75th Republic Day today, it is necessary to rededicate ourselves to the noble goals and ideals of the Freedom Movement, which found resounding expression in the Constitution.
The Constitution of India is a living document, and not just ink on paper. Therefore, all citizens should know about the core Constitutional values, many of which are under severe stress today ─ democracy, liberty, equality, fraternity, freedom of thought and expression, fundamental rights and responsibilities, respect for all faiths, social harmony, and national unity and integration.
Educated Indians, especially those who shape the affairs of the nation, should also know how the Constitution came into being, what kind of debates took place in the Constituent Assembly, who were the main participants in these debates, and, most importantly, who contributed the most to its guiding vision, philosophy and defining contents.
In the course of this learning process, it is also imperative for us to remain true to the facts of history. If we indeed show respect to these facts, we are bound to come face to face with the biggest falsification of history in modern India ─ namely, that Dr B.R. Ambedkar is both the brain behind the Indian Constitution also its author.
Dr Babasaheb ka diya hua Samvidhan ─ "Dr Ambedkar is the Maker and Giver of the Constitution" ─ has now gained in the national consciousness of Indians the same degree of verité as ‘The sun rises in the east’. Why? Because every leader of every political party says so. Prime Minister Narendra Modi says so. Rahul Gandhi, Mayawati, Nitish Kumar, M K Stalin, Arvind Kejriwal…all of them say so. It is taught in school and college textbooks. Mass media outlets also mention it whenever there is a reference to the Constitution. So how can common citizens, who are not ─ and who cannot be expected to be ─ students of history, think otherwise?
However, facts of history tell a different story. Most of the facts presented below are taken from the books by two of the foremost experts on the subject ─ ‘The Indian Constitution: Cornerstone of a Nation’ (1966), a masterly work by Granville Austin, an American historian; and ‘Indian Constitution: Conflicts and Controversies’ (2010) by Subhash Kashyap, former secretary general of the Lok Sabha. Some facts are referenced from Dr Ambedkar’s own writings.
When any unbiased person examines these facts, they will find that (a) Dr Ambedkar’s contribution to the content of the Constitution was secondary, even though he made a seminal contribution to its final drafting; (b) the greatest contribution to the content and making of the Indian Constitution came from the Indian National Congress (of which Dr Ambedkar was a bitter opponent throughout his life) and, especially, its tallest leader after Mahatma Gandhi ─ Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru.
It is sad to see Rahul Gandhi and other ‘politically correct’ Congress leaders themselves wrongly eulogising Dr Ambedkar as the sole architect of the Constitution, thereby suppressing and denying Nehru's central role in its evolution. Every other political party, again out of ignorance and/or ‘political correctness’, has strengthened this narrative. Amplification of this narrative of course suits today's BJP because its leaders have an un-hidden agenda to portray Nehru as a villain responsible for almost every problem facing the nation. Constant maligning of Nehru has become an essential part of the propaganda toolkit of the ruling party because that is the only way they can project Modi as the greatest among all the prime ministers of India.
Why is the Congress Suppressing Facts About the Genesis of the Preamble?
Let’s begin with facts about the most enlightened Preamble of the Indian Constitution, which is its heart and soul. It is the 'pran’ (life-sustaining spirit) of the Constitution. How did it originate? It evolved as the crystallised expression of the Objectives Resolution, a discussion on which was the very first task of the Constituent Assembly after its establishment on 9 December 1946.
The Objectives Resolution laid down the guiding aims and principles, broad vision, and the philosophical foundation upon which the edifice of the future Constitution was to be constructed. Metaphorically, one can say that the ‘Pran Pratishtha’ (consecration) of the Constituent Assembly took place when it unanimously adopted the Objectives Resolution on 22 January 1947.
Who moved the Objectives Resolution in the Constituent Assembly and elucidated its underlying principles on 13 December 1946? It was Nehru, a hero of the Freedom Struggle and one who spent more than nine years in jail. Whom did the President of the Constituent Assembly, Dr Rajendra Prasad, ask to respond to the debates and complete the discussion before its adoption? Nehru. His two speeches on the Objectives Resolution are among the greatest speeches by any Indian leader, ranking next only to his 'Tryst with Destiny' oration.
The Congress Working Committee (CWC) had set up the Congress Experts Committee (CEC) in July 1946, with Nehru as its chairman. And it was CEC “that set India on the road to her present Constitution”. (Austin) Indeed, his association with the Congress's efforts to prepare a constitution for free India had begun at least two decades earlier. He had assisted his father Motilal Nehru in preparing (in 1928) what came to be known as the ‘Nehru Report’. It enunciated Fundamental Rights and other provisions in the future constitution.
Facts about Nehru’s Contribution
“Nehru was the Assembly’s philosopher and its prime constitution thinker,” Kashyap writes. “He paid the most meticulous attention to the fundamentals. He laid down these fundamentals through the Objectives Resolution and as the chairman of the most important committees like the States Committee, the Union Powers Committee, and the Union Constitution Committee. Also, he played a crucial role in settling many controversial issues in the Constituent Assembly, in its committees, and in the informal, behind-the-scene discussions.”
Kashyap adds: “While others fashioned its structure and shape, most significantly Nehru provided to the Constitution philosophy and vision. In fact, he envisioned a total system for national regeneration standing on the value pillars of secularism, socialism, parliamentary democracy, and integrity and unity of the nation. It is a pity that not enough has been done in the academia and elsewhere in the direction of assessing the unique contribution of Nehru to the making and working of the Constitution.”
This is precisely what Austin had affirmed earlier. He writes that Congress leaders and members discussed each and every subject threadbare within a separate party forum before the issues were placed for further debate in the Constituent Assembly. This forum was called the ‘Congress Assembly Forum’, to which Dr Ambedkar too was invited.
After all, it was the Congress party that had helped Dr Ambedkar (who had lost his membership of the Constituent Assembly after the Partition) to get re-entered as a member from Bombay Province. Among the invitees were several other non-Congressmen including Dr S.P.Mookerjee, who was a member of the Hindu Mahasabha and later became the founder of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, the previous avatar of the BJP. Non-Congress participants spoke their minds freely in this forum. This shows the democratic manner in which the Congress conducted the discussions within and without the Constituent Assembly.
“[Jawaharlal] Nehru, [Vallabhbhai] Patel, [Dr Rajendra] Prasad, and [Maulana Abul Kalam] Azad, in fact, constituted an Oligarchy within the [Constituent] Assembly,” writes Austin. But they were not dictators. “Their honour was unquestioned, their wisdom hardly less so. In their god-like status, they may have been feared; certainly, they were loved. An Assembly member was not greatly exaggerating the esteem in which his colleagues held these men when he said that the government rested ‘in the hands of those who (were) utterly incapable of doing any wrong to the people’. The Oligrachy’s influence was nearly irresistible, yet the Assembly decided issues democratically after genuine debate, for it was made up of strong-minded men and the leaders themselves were peculiarly responsive.”
Revealingly, Austin writes: “Ambedkar’s advice – on legal matters and drafting rather than on policy – was frequently sought.” (Emphasis added) “Every amendment and every provision suggested … was put before the Congress Party and then it was finally debated upon and passed with or without amendment by the [Constituent] Assembly, which alone had the final say in the matter.”
The Congress of those days, unlike today’s BJP, scrupulously followed the method of consensus-building. “The Oligarchy certainly used its almost irresistible influence to promote consensus. By replying to questions about, and opposition to, various provisions with full explanations, and by relying on persuasion rather than force, the members of the Oligarchy reinforced the effect of their power and prestige, usually winning over their opponents, even high-ranking ones. There were times, however, when the shoe was on the other foot, when, in search of a workable, lasting agreement, the Oligarchy retreated from its position to meet the mood of the [Constituent] Assembly.”
Prime Minister Nehru’s democratic approach of accommodating diverse points of view made the entire nation welcome the final Constitution. As Austin points out, “Democratic decision-making by the members of the Congress Assembly Party and the Oligrachy’s refusal to arrogate to itself all wisdom and authority helped to make possible a generally acceptable Constitution. Had the Constitution come from the Constituent Assembly sanctioned by a meagre majority, opposed by many, it would have been attacked as unworthy of general support and unrepresentative of India’s best interests. But the [Constituent] Assembly adopted the Constitution, despite some of the members’ misgivings, by acclamation. It could be presented to the nation as the realization of Nehru’s original aim: it had been drafted with the welfare of four hundred million Indians in mind.” (Emphasis added)
Thus, Austin provides persuasive evidence that the Indian Constitution was “the realisation of Nehru’s original aim” (as articulated in the Objectives Resolution).
Facts about Ambedkar’s Contribution
There is a wholly erroneous belief that the contents of the Constitution were conceived, and then authored, by Dr Ambedkar. He was only the chairman of the drafting committee, which was one of the eight committees set up by the Constituent Assembly. (Let’s remember: It’s Mahatma Gandhi who asked Nehru and Patel to appoint Dr Ambedkar as the head of the drafting committee, in recognition of the latter’s outstanding knowledge of legal and constitutional matters.) And the drafting committee itself was established on 29 August 1947, fully seven months after the broad framework of the Preamble had already been adopted.
Here are some moot facts.
1: Dr Ambedkar did participate in the discussion on the Objectives Resolution, but as an ordinary member, along with others, in the 308-member Constituent Assembly. But he was not its architect, nor did he make any material contribution to its contents. Indeed, he called it “very disappointing and replete with pedantry.”
Furthermore, one key thought he suggested for inclusion in the Objectives Resolution was not only rejected, but it did not find a place even in the final text of the Constitution. What was that thought? Dr Ambedkar wanted the Objectives Resolution "to state in most explicit terms" that India would implement "nationalisation of industry and nationalisation of land" in order that "there may be social and economic justice in the country". (Read Dr Ambedkar's speech in the debate on the Objectives Resolution on 17 December 1946.)
2: Dr Ambedkar was opposed to the setting up of the Constituent Assembly itself! In his presidential address at a meeting of the All India Scheduled Castes Federation on 6 May 1945, he said: “I must state that I am wholly opposed to the proposal of a Constituent Assembly. It is absolutely superfluous. I regard it as a most dangerous project, which may involve this country in a civil war.” (Emphasis added)
To buttress his contention that a Constituent Assembly was “superfluous”, Dr Ambedkar further said, “I cannot see why Constituent Assembly is necessary to incubate a Constitution. So much of the Constitution of India has already been written out in the Government of India Act 1935, that it seems to be an act of supererogation to appoint a Constituent Assembly to do the same ever again. All that is necessary is to delete those sections of the Government of India Act 1935, which are inconsistent with Dominion Status.”
Dr Ambedkar had said something even more outrageous while speaking at a function held in Bombay on 26 April 1942 to mark the golden jubilee of his birthday: “You may be forced with Constituent Assembly again. Your place then will not be inside the Constituent Assembly. You will not find any place there. Your legitimate place then will be in your own headquarters manufacturing bombs, make no mistake about it. We can handle hand grenades better than many other people. (Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar: Writings and Speeches: Vol. 17, Part III, pp 234-35) (Emphasis added)
Had any other leader advocated violence of this kind to oppose the formation of the Constituent Assembly, he would have been castigated in the harshest possible words as a foe of freedom and democracy. But because it was Dr Ambedkar who said, the current discourse on him does not even mention that he said it.
3: Kashyap writes: “Dr Ambedkar did not always have his way in the Constituent Assembly or even in the Drafting Committee.” Austin has documented several instances to buttress this.
This is corroborated by none other than Syed Mohammed Saadulla, a member of the Drafting Committee. In his speech in the Constituent Assembly on 21 November 1949, he was at his candid best. “The Drafting Committee was not a free agency. They were handicapped by various methods and circumstances from the very start. We were only asked to dress the baby and the baby was nothing but the Objectives Resolution which this Constituent Assembly passed. We were told that the Constitution must conform and remain within the four corners of that Objectives Resolution. Moreover, Sir, whatever we did had to be considered and accepted by this House. How dare any member of the Drafting Committee be so arrogant as to thrust the opinion of seven members against a total number of 308 in this House?” (Emphasis added) (Source: The Constitution and The Constituent Assembly ─ Some Select Speeches; Lok Sabha Secretariat, 1990)
4: What Saadulla said was later endorsed by none other than Dr Ambedkar himself. While speaking in the Rajya Sabha on 2 September 1953, he too was at his candid best. ”People always keep on saying to me. Oh! You are the maker of the Constitution. My answer is I was a hack. What I was asked to do, I did much against my will.”
What Dr. Ambedkar further said was even more iconoclastic: “Sir, my friends tell me that I have made the Constitution. But I am quite prepared to say that I shall be the first person to burn it out. I do not want it. It does not suit anybody.” (Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar: Writings and Speeches, Vol. 15, pp, 860, 862)
Here is another telling reference: “In his speech delivered before members of the Poona District Law Library on 22 December 1952, Dr. Ambedkar said: “I am quite prepared to join that body of people who want to abolish the Constitution, at any rate, to re-draft it.” (Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar: Writings and Speeches, Vol. 17, p. 480)
5: Dr Ambedkar had good reason to admit that “I was a hack, what I was asked to do, I did much against my will. To understand this, we should read his famous book ‘States and Minorities: What are Their Rights and How to Secure Them in the Constitution of Free India’. It was published in March 1947, three months after the Constituent Assembly had already been established. He called it the ‘Constitution of the United States of India’, and submitted it to the Sub-Committee on Fundamental Rights of the Constituent Assembly on behalf of the Scheduled Caste Federation, an organisation that he himself had founded in the early 1940s. He was a member of the Sub-Committee.
Anyone who reads the contents of this memorandum, which Dr Ambedkar wanted to be accepted as the Constitution of India, would ask one question: how could he have expected the Constituent Assembly to accept his patently impractical and basically divisive ideas? As a matter of fact, none of the provisions suggested by him were incorporated into the Constitution by the Constituent Assembly on 26 November 1949.
Let us briefly look at some of Dr Ambedkar’s ‘demands’:
a) “The Prime Minister shall be elected by the whole House by single transferable vote.” This runs contrary to what the Constitution of India stipulates: The Prime Minister is elected by a majority of MPs belonging to the largest party or coalition in the Lok Sabha.
b) “The representatives of the different minorities in the Cabinet shall be elected by members of each minority community in the Legislature by single transferable vote.” In other words, Dr Ambedkar did not want the Prime Minister to have the authority to choose his/her ministers in the Cabinet, irrespective of their caste or creed, as is the case now. Rather, he wanted ministers belonging to minority communities — not only Muslims, Christians, and other non-Hindu faiths but also the Scheduled Castes, because he repeatedly insisted that SCs too were a minority — to be elected exclusively by MPs belonging to the respective minority communities!
c) “The representatives of the majority community (Hindus) in the Executive shall be elected by the whole House by single transferable vote.” That is, contrary to the criterion he advocated for ministers from minority communities and the Scheduled Castes, Dr Ambedkar wanted Hindu ministers in the Cabinet to be elected jointly by Hindu and non-Hindu MPs. Once again, he did not want the Prime Minister to have any say in this matter, as is the case now!
d) “A member of the Cabinet may resign his post on a censure motion or otherwise but shall not be liable to be removed except on impeachment by the House on the ground of corruption or treason.” If this ‘demand’ of Dr Ambedkar had been incorporated in the Constitution, the Prime Minister would have had no powers to remove a minister for reasons of incompetence or any political reason. He/she would have had no powers to reshuffle the Cabinet either.
e) Ambedkar had placed another crucial ‘demand’ before the Constituent Assembly. “The system of election introduced by the Poona Pact shall be abolished. In its place, the system of Separate Electorates shall be substituted.”
Under the scheme of ‘separate electorates’, members of the legislature (in the central or provincial assemblies) belonging to the Scheduled Castes, who were then called ‘Depressed Classes’, would be elected only by SC voters and not by the general electorate.
In 1932, Mahatma Gandhi went on an indefinite fast to protest against the British government’s move to extend the provision of ‘separate electorates’ (which had been granted to Muslims and other religious minorities) to the Depressed Classes. He contended that the Depressed Classes (who are commonly known as Dalits now) were an integral part of the Hindu society, and hence the British move was a ploy to divide the Hindu society. The fast-unto-death undertaken by Gandhiji, who was then locked up in Yerawada Jail in Poona, triggered nationwide concern as well as support, which forced Dr Ambedkar to give up his demand. Consequently, an agreement known as the ‘Poona Pact’ was reached between Gandhiji’s supporters and Dr Ambedkar. As a result of this pact, the move to grant ‘separate electorates’ to the Depressed Classes was dropped and, instead, at Gandhiji’s suggestion, a much larger number of reserved seats were created for them within the general category.
Even though Dr Ambedkar was a signatory to this agreement in 1932, he backtracked on it in 1947 and again raised the demand for ‘separate electorates’ for SCs in the memorandum he submitted to the Constituent Assembly. The Constituent Assembly flatly rejected this demand. Indeed, it ended ‘separate electorates’ for Muslims as well. Instead, as stipulated by Mahatma Gandhi in the Poona Pact, seats were reserved for SCs and STs in Parliament and in state legislatures.
Even today many Ambedkarites accuse Gandhiji of having inflicted grave injustice on Dalits by forcing the ‘Poona Pact’ on them. Some demand the restoration of ‘separate electorates’ for them. India would have faced disastrous consequences if the Constituent Assembly had bowed to Dr Ambedkar’s demand to incorporate ‘separate electorates’ in the Indian Constitution. For in the course of time many OBC castes — followed by Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, and other minority faiths — would also have agitated for ‘separate electorates’ for them. The result would have been social fragmentation, political chaos, and national disintegration.
f) In his ‘States and Minorities’, Dr Ambedkar presented another absurd demand. He wanted people belonging to the Depressed Classes to be taken out of their traditional villages and resettled into separate “new villages” created exclusively for them! Why? Because, according to him, “A perpetual war is going on every day in every village between the Hindus and the Untouchables.” This was a highly exaggerated assertion.
Furthermore, Dr. Ambedkar told Bevarali Nikolas in an interview in 1944: “In every village, there is a tiny minority of Untouchables. I want to gather those minorities together and make them into majorities. This means a tremendous work of organisation — transferring populations, building new villages. But we can do it, if only we are allowed.” (Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar: Writings and Speeches, Vol. 17, Part I, p, 441, 350) It is hardly surprising that the Constituent Assembly did not even entertain this impossible demand.
g) The Constituent Assembly also rebuffed another key demand raised by Dr Ambedkar. This concerned his economic policies, which he called “State Socialism”. He wanted all key and basic industries to be owned and run by the State. He wanted insurance to be a monopoly of the State. Similarly, he wanted agriculture to be a “State industry” run on the basis of “collective farms”. “The State shall divide the land acquired into farms of standard size and let out the farms for cultivation to residents of the village as tenants (made up of group of families).”
These ideas of “Nationalisation of Land” were implemented by Stalin in the Soviet Union and Mao Zedong in China. The consequences were disastrous for both countries. Nationalisation of agriculture and industry in India, as advocated by Dr Ambedkar, would have led to economic ruin and social chaos.
Final words. It's of course irrefutable that Dr Ambedkar has made a huge contribution to creating mass awareness about equality and fraternity in Indian society. By giving a shock treatment to Hindu society, he has accelerated the process of eliminating injustice and discrimination against the Scheduled Castes and other marginalised communities. It’s also incontrovertible that, as the Chairman of the Drafting Committee, he made a praiseworthy contribution to the final drafting of the Constitution -- and all members of the Constituent Assembly wholeheartedly praised him for his weighty contribution. However, the essence of the Preamble and most other defining features of the rest of the Constitution came from the Congress – mainly from Nehru, but also from Patel, Prasad, Azad, and other leaders.
Now ask yourselves: Kya yah Dr Babasaheb ka diya hua Samvidhan hai? Is Dr Ambedkar the Father of the Indian Constitution?
(The writer, who served as an aide to India’s former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, is the founder of the ‘Forum for a New South Asia – Powered by India-Pakistan-China Cooperation’. He tweets @SudheenKulkarni and welcomes comments at sudheenkulkarni@gmail.com. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)
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