The story of the evolution of Parliamentary Democracy in India
Parliamentary Democracy is the bedrock of India’s polity. Representation of people by a vehicle called the ‘political party’ has been adopted in India, which is often referred to as the ‘Westminister system of Parliamentary Democracy’. Why did India adopt such a system? How did it get evolved over the decades? What are the intricate processes and developments which moulded India to adopt such a model? Does the Indian subcontinent in pre-medieval era, possessed traces of such models of governance? These are questions which might be answered in various history books, but not with the specific objective of taking evolution of Parliamentary Democracy as the central theme. Let us attempt to delve into this unique timeline.
The Santiparvan narrates the story of in ancient India, society flourished without a king or law for a long time, but later somehow there was a moral degeneration. The law of the jungle i.e Matsyanyaya (i.e the big fish eating the small fish) began to prevail. Gods became alarmed and when men went out in a deputation to pray for relief, Brahmadeva, the chief of Gods, came to the conclusion that human society can survive only if a code of law was first framed and then enforced upon them. This required the instrumentality of the king. Hence the story of ‘Social Contract’ began in the ancient Indian times. But how did representative Parliament was formed? There is little or no evidence about its formation. Even Kautilya, one of India’s greatest political thinkers propagated the idea of a benevolent monarch in his masterpiece treatise, Arthashastra.
It is a recorded historical fact that even without a nation-state, our experiments with representative governance started from 6th Century BC in the form of ‘Republic’ (i.e Gad Rajya) of the erstwhile kingdoms of Lichhavi, Kapilvastu, Pava, Kushinara, Ramagrama, Sunsamagiri, Piphali, Suputa, Mithila and Kollanga. The modern day Parliament, Cabinet and the Prime Minister were the Sabhas, Samitis and Ganapati of these republics. The emperors did in these so called ‘republics’ were bound by the collective wisdom of their advisors in the form of Council of Ministers. They ruler was a monarch, bound by the Rajdharma. An intrinsically Indian concept akin to today’s Constitutionalism. Rajdharma essentially is the path of political righteousness or ‘political ethics’ or the duties and responsibilities to which the ruler was bound.
It is utterly simplistic to assume that the entire Westminister model was directly transported to India and imposed on us and we did not first experiment on its processes. We did. However, it was an organic process. India’s institutions and deliberative representative bodies evolved decades after decades, especially from 1601 to 1935. All this were also layered with self-governing organs like gram sabhas and panchayats at the micro level.
· The 1601 Charter which authorized the Governor and the East India Company “to make, ordain and constitute such and so many laws, constitutions, orders and ordinances”, as shall seem necessary and convenient for good government laid the initial foundations of the modern day legislative process in India.
· The Governors and the Councils of the three Presidencies were for the first time vested with legislative power by the Charter of 1726.
· The beginning of Parliamentary control over the government of East India Company was marked by the Regulating Act of 1773. The process of territorial integration and administrative centralization in India was said to be started by this Act. It accorded supremacy to the Presidency of Bengal and the Governor of Bengal was appointed as the Governor-General.
· The Charter Act of 1833 terminated the trading rights of the Company and rendered it merely an administrative agency of the Crown in India. The Governor-General of Bengal was, thereafter, designated as the Governor General of India and empowered to administer the whole of British India. For the first time, the Governor General’s Government was known as the Government of India and his Council as the Indian Council. This Act set up one legislative council for all the British territories in India and introduced an element of institutional specialization by differentiating the law-making meetings of the Council from its executive meetings. Legislative functions of the state was thus for the first time separated from its executive functions.
· According to the Charter Act of 1853, Bills passed through the usual three stages and were referred to Select Committees. Discussions in the Council, when acting in its legislative capacity, became oral instead of in writing. The new Council conceived its duties not to be confined only to legislation but also began to assume the character of a microcosm of representative assembly, assembled for the purpose of enquiry into and redress of grievances.
· India’s First Struggle for Independence (The revolt of 1857) accelerated the process to establish a proper representative Government. Through the Government of India Act 1858, the British initiated for the first time non-official participation in the Council. The Governor-General was authorized to nominate to his council ‘not less than six nor more than twelve’ additional members at least one half of whom were to be non-officials. The Viceroy’s started to nominate handpicked Indians in the Council, although most of them were ruling princes or chiefs and rich zamindar families, yet it was the first time, Indians were given some kind of representation, at the behest of their loyalty to the British throne. Although, largely there was widespread opposition to the inclusion of any Indians in many elite circles of Englishmen.
· Surendranath Banerjee and Ananda Mohan Bose organized the first ever National Conference in 1883 after the introduction of the Ilbert Bill which a controversial measure that sought to allow senior Indian magistrates to preside over cases involving British subjects in India. The bill, severely weakened by compromise, was enacted by the Indian Legislative Council. In this conference, The National Conference in Kolkata by Banerjee and Bose sowed the seeds towards the formation of a National Indian Parliament. This watershed event was a prelude to the formation of the Indian National Congress.
· In 1885, the first session of the Indian National Congress took place in Bombay. At its very first session, the Congress passed a resolution asking for constitutional reforms and for the admission of a considerable proportion of elected members to the Legislative Councils and the right to discuss the budget. W.C. Banerjee delivered his first presidential address in the session and passionately described the Indian National Congress as the National Assembly of India.
· The Indian Councils Act of 1892 conceded to both the Central and Provincial Councils the privilege of financial criticism or the right to discuss the budget under certain conditions for the first time. Members of the Council however still had no powers to submit or propose any resolution or to divide the Council in respect of any financial discussion.
Interestingly and importantly enough, the Indian Councils Act of 1892 for the first time granted the privilege of asking questions and interrogating Government Members. The first question was asked on 16 February 1893. This was asked by the Maharaja of Bhinga and the question concerned hardships caused by the system of collecting supplies of provision for government officers on tour.
· Slowly and steadily the Indian representatives started imbibing some life into the Council. Congress veteran Sir Pherozeshah Mehta, the first elected Indian Member was frank, bold and vigorous in his criticism of government policies. Sir Pherozeshah Mehta was known as ‘Lion of Bombay’ for his contributions to the city and at the same time, ‘Ferocious Mehta’ because of his role as a Legislator. In order to stem the growth of the nationalist movement in India, Lord Lytton decided to censor the vernacular press. Pherozeshah Mehta vehemently opposed the move. He believed that the press should be as free as possible, and that it was the fundamental duty of the government to educate the masses. “England must raise India to her own level, or India will drag her down to hers,” he warned.
· The Council was represented by eminent stalwarts like Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Ashutosh Mukherjee, Rash Bihari Ghose, G.M. Chitnavis, P. Ananda Charlu, Bishambarnath, Muhammad Rahimtullah Sayani and Salimulla, between 1890–1909. These representatives made full use of limited opportunities for expressing and publicizing the grievances of the people on political, economic and social issues. Infact, Gokhale was regarded as ‘The Leader of the Opposition’. He exposed the Government on numerous fronts with facts and figures. However, the British inherently remained an official majority in the Councils, as the Government could always pass Bills disregarding opposition by Indian members.
· The Act of 1909 created non-official (non-British) majority in all the Provincial Legislative Councils, but maintained official majority in the Central Legislative Council. The constituencies were small, the largest of them comprising only 650 persons. Out of 27 elected members in the Central Council, only 9 were supposed to represent the people of India as a whole. Regrettably much, this is the Act which introduced for the first time the principle of communal representation in India and created separate electorates.
· The 1909 Act also for the first time gave members of the Council power to move resolutions on any matter of general public interest and to divide the Council upon them. The first resolution under the rules was moved on 25 February 1910 by Gopal Krishna Gokhale recommending prohibition of indentured labour for Natal in South Africa. On the Rowlatt Bill, Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya spoke for two and a half hours. It was very rare that non-official members could have their way. Still, the Indian representatives made their presence felt by asking questions, moving amendments and resolutions
· The system of ‘dyarchy’ was introduced by the Government of India Act 1919. This Act effectively and broadly started the separation of powers between the Centre and the provinces. This system established a dual form of government in each of the eight provinces. Control of some areas of government called the “transferred list”, were given to a Government of Indian ministers answerable to the Provincial Council. At the same time, all other areas of government (the ‘reserved list’) remained under the control of the Viceroy. The ‘reserved list’ included Defence, the Foreign Affairs and Communications. The ‘transferred list’ included agriculture, supervision of local government, Health and Education.
· Under the 1919 Act, the Imperial Legislative Council was enlarged and a bicameral legislature introduced. The lower house was the Legislative Assembly of 144 members, of which 104 were elected and 40 were nominated with tenure of three years. The upper house was the Council of States consisting of 34 elected and 26 nominated members and tenure of five years. The 1919 Act also provided for classification of subjects of administration as central and provincial and for the devolution of authority in respect of provincial subjects to local governments; and for the allocation of revenues and other moneys to those governments.
· Under the Government of India Act, 1935, two chambers of the Bengal Legislature i.e. Legislative Council and Legislative Assembly were created. The Assembly comprised of 250 Members while the total number of Council Members was not less than 63 and not more than 65. Sir Azizul Haque was elected as Speaker of Bengal Legislative Assembly, while Satyendra Chandra Mitra was elected President of the Council on 9th April, 1937.
Post-Independence India therefore evolved as a Parliamentary form of Democracy, with clear separation of powers between the three organs- Legislature, Executive and the Judiciary. There is also separation of powers in the form of ‘lists’ between Centre and States.
The organic institutional evolution of India is also an answer to the critics of Parliamentary, representational system of Democracy, who hold forth that we have practically imported everything from the colonial era, without understanding the intricate developments of how it was actually evolved.
[Portions of the piece are quoted from Former President, Shri Pranab Mukherjee’s speech at the 15th D.T. Lakdawala Memorial Lecture on “Parliamentary Democracy and its challenges today”. The author of the piece had the privilege to provide research for the speech.]
