Why India’s Constitution Remains A Guiding Light For The Liberal World
A decade of nation-building under Jawaharlal Nehru provided an industrial base, a pool of scientific talent, and a legal frame for a wide swathe of reforms
The first two decades after Independence belonged to Jawaharlal Nehru. He epitomised India’s gigantic effort to become modern, self-reliant and remain together.
There were many detractors of these efforts for they were sure that a country so divided by language and religion, racked by ancient prejudices and as poor as some of the poorest in the world, had no chance to survive.
Yet, miraculously, India survived and slowly fears of its disintegration receded. It is not as if there were no anxious moments. Maharashtra wanted a state of its own and, before it, so did the Telugu speaking people of the erstwhile state of Madras.
The government dithered on this in the fear that this was the beginning of the dreaded Balkanisation threat that they were warned against.
However, as the States Reorganisation Commission finally resolved these demands it became clear that neither the newly-formed Andhra Pradesh, nor Maharashtra had any intention of separating from India.
The ethos of the National Movement was stronger than what some of their leaders gave it credit for. What is more, it established the legitimacy of a state being governed in its own language — a provision that Sri Lanka, for example, failed to provide and suffered as a consequence.
What helped resolve many of these early difficulties was the fact that India had crafted a Constitution which became effective in 1950 and is regarded, even today, as one of the leading liberal documents of the democratic world.
It established basic rights and liberties and also de-legitimised some of the ancient practices among Hindus which were unfair to women and debased many on the basis of caste.
This was a social revolution at one stroke. Doubtless, there were many leading figures who were by Nehru’s side in this endeavour, Dr Ambedkar, principally, but it was Nehru’s political acumen and legislative skills that eventually saw these provisions as law. He simultaneously moved against landlordism and this invited a strong backlash from entrenched quarters, but Nehru won the day.
There were other irons in the fire as well. Nehru initiated an entirely innovative economic policy that was clearly not communist or blatantly capitalist. He believed that a mixed economy was the best way for India to overcome the initial difficulties of becoming a modern industrial state.
He pushed for a strong public sector which would provide steel, energy and heavy equipment and establish the basis for sustained economic entrepreneurship in the years to come.
Though the public sector is in much disrepute today, it can hardly be doubted that the infrastructural impetus that Nehru started allowed for a modern economy to develop. All economies need knowledge, highly skilled and technical at that, to keep them humming.
There is little doubt that if India can boast of being a hub in today’s information technology sector, or of producing world-class engineers and of a high-powered scientific body, it is Nehru who deserves the credit.
He had the wisdom and foresight to set up the Indian Institute of Science, the IITs, the AIIMS and the IIMs, to name a few.
Alongside, in the field of culture, the Lalit Kala Akademi and Sangeet Kala Akademi and the Film and Television Institute of India were also established at his insistence. It was an all-out, four square thrust to bring India into the modern world of knowledge, sciences and the arts.
Such was the vision of the man.
In foreign policy, Nehru’s contribution was not nearly as singular and suffered several setbacks, some of them during his lifetime. Both the USSR and the US were suspicious of the Non-Aligned Movement.
The former thought we were being manipulated by the communists and Stalin believed that this was just a thinly disguised US plot. The India-China War of 1962 robbed all of the starch in the Non-Aligned Movement and the India-China 1952 Panchsheel Policy. When Nehru died, he was a vastly disappointed man not just because his personal charisma had suffered a massive erosion with the 1962 China War, but also because his hopes that the public sector would man the commanding heights of the economy was not getting anywhere fast.
But, by then India was a stable, democratic republic and the fear that it would collapse was belied. Nehru showed his critics that those who ran the government were not people of straw, as often accused.
Truly, this was nation building as good as one can get, for which reason that period can justifiably be called the Nehruvian years.
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