Sixteen Stormy Days

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SIXTEEN STORMY DAYS narrates the riveting story of the First Amendment to the Constitution of India—one of the pivotal events in Indian political and constitutional history, and its first great battle of ideas. Passed in June 1951 in the face of tremendous opposition within and outside Parliament, the subject of some of independent India's fiercest parliamentary debates, the First Amendment drastically curbed freedom of speech; enabled caste-based reservation by restricting freedom against discrimination; circumscribed the right to property and validated abolition of the zamindari system; and fashioned a special schedule of unconstitutional laws immune to judicial challenge.

Enacted months before India's inaugural election, the amendment represents the most profound changes that the Constitution has ever seen. Faced with an expansively liberal Constitution that stood in the way of nearly every major socio-economic plan in the Congress party's manifesto, a judiciary vigorously upholding civil liberties, and a press fiercely resisting his attempt to control public discourse, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru reasserted executive supremacy, creating the constitutional architecture for repression and coercion.

What extraordinary set of events led the prime minister—who had championed the Constitution when it was passed in 1950 after three years of deliberation—to radically amend it after a mere sixteen days of debate in 1951?

Drawing on parliamentary debates, press reports, judicial pronouncements, official correspondence and existing scholarship, SIXTEEN STORMY DAYS challenges conventional wisdom on iconic figures such as Jawaharlal Nehru, B.R. Ambedkar, Rajendra Prasad, Sardar Patel and Shyama Prasad Mookerji, and lays bare the vast gulf between the liberal promise of India's Constitution and the authoritarian impulses of her first government.

TRIPURDAMAN SINGH is a British Academy postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London. Born in 1988 in Agra, Uttar Pradesh, Tripurdaman read politics and international studies at the University of Warwick, and subsequently earned an MPhil in modern South Asian studies and a PhD in history from the University of Cambridge.

Tripurdaman is a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society and has been the recipient of a fellowship award from the Indian Council of Historical Research. His previous book, Imperial Sovereignty and Local Politics, was published by Cambridge University Press.

'Somehow, we have found that this magnificent constitution that we had framed was later kidnapped and purloined by lawyers,' thundered Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru as he moved the Constitution (First Amendment) Bill to be referred to a standing committee in Parliament on 16 May 1951. Fundamental rights, individual liberty and freedom had been the dominating ideas of the nineteenth century, he declared, relics of a static age trying to preserve existing social relationships and social inequalities. These ideas were now passe, overtaken by the bigger and better ideas of the twentieth century, dynamic ideas of social reform and social engineering, enshrined in the Directive Principles of State Policy as guidelines for the newly independent state, and embodied in the grand programmes of the Congress party.

He had every reason to be angry. Land reform, zamindari abolition, nationalization of industry, reservations for 'backward classes' in employment and education, a pliant press—these were the shining new schemes of social engineering that were going to remake the social and political fabric of the new nation. Zamindari abolition and land reform had been a part of the Congress programme for close to twenty years at the time. Nationalization and a planned economy had been the driving force behind the creation of the first National Planning Committee in 1938, presided over by Nehru himself. The social and economic framework of the newly independent society was to be transfigured, with the prime minister himself leading the charge.

And yet, three-and-a-half years since Independence, when the Congress party held unchallenged sway over the state, these flagship schemes had almost ground to a halt. The government's entire social and economic policy was in danger of failing. Armed with Part III of the new constitution—guaranteeing the fundamental rights of citizens—zamindars, businessmen, editors and concerned individuals had repeatedly taken the Central and state governments to court over their attempts to curtail civil liberties, regulate the press, limit upper-caste students in universities and acquire zamindari property. Over the fourteen months the constitution had been in force, the courts had come down heavily on the side of the citizens and struck mighty blows against the government.

In Delhi, the government's attempt to censor The Organiser, an RSS newspaper, had been countermanded. In Bombay, the government's order banning Cross Roads, a left-leaning weekly critical of Nehru and the Congress government, had been quashed. In the resultant case, laws used to censor and punish the press under the tropes of 'public order' and 'public safety'—the relevant sections of the Madras Maintenance of Public Order Act and the East Punjab Public Safety Act—had been declared void by the Supreme Court on account of their violation of the freedom of speech. Zamindari abolition had met a similar fate. In Uttar Pradesh, the Allahabad High Court had passed a series of injunctions restraining the government from taking any action under the newly passed Zamindari Abolition Act while it examined its constitutional validity. In Bihar, the State Management of Estates and Tenures Act had been declared ultra vires of the constitution by the Patna High Court, violating Article 31 (the right to property) and Article 14 (the right to equality).

In Madhya Pradesh, the Central Provinces and Berar Regulation of Manufacture of Bidis Act, that controlled and regulated the production of bidis, was held void and declared inoperative by the Supreme Court because it violated the right to carry on any trade or profession.' Nationalization of road transport in Bombay survived by a whisker after parliamentary intervention. In Madras, the infamous 'Communal Government Order' granting caste-based reservations in educational institutions had been struck down by the Madras High Court which pointedly observed that Article 15(1) preventing discrimination on caste, communal, racial and linguistic grounds would become an 'empty bubble' if such orders were held to be legal and constitutional.' The decision was upheld by the Supreme Court, which then went on to also strike down communal reservations in government jobs). In the courts and in the press, the government had repeatedly come in for withering criticism.

The entire Congress programme to remake India and consolidate its position had encountered formidable roadblocks: fundamental rights guaranteed by the Constitution, tenacious citizens, a belligerent press and a resolute judiciary determined to vigorously uphold fundamental freedoms. By early 1951, with elections looming and major initiatives continuing to run afoul of constitutional provisions, Prime Minister Nehru had grown increasingly exasperated with his plans being thwarted. Impatient and stubborn at the best of times, he chafed at the temerity of those that came in his way. The situation, in his own words, was intolerable. 'It is impossible to hang up urgent social changes because the Constitution comes in the way . . .' he wrote to his chief ministers. 'We shall have to find a remedy, even though this might involve a change in the Constitution.