A Civilisational Triumph

 

The Constitution Day

A Civilisational Triumph

The Constitution Day- Samvidhan Divas- is celebrated on 26 November to commemorate the adoption of the Constitution of India on that day in 1949 by the Constituent Assembly. It was on that day, 26 January,1930, the Indian National Congress administered the Independence Day pledge across India, following the adoption of a Resolution for Purna Swaraj, moved by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, at its Lahore Session on 31 December,1929. Since then, 26 January was celebrated as the Independence Day every year till India gained independence from the Imperial British Empire. And the Constitution of India came into effect from 26 January,1950.

 

The First General Election, running into as many as 68 phases, was held for four months between 25 October 1951 and 21 February 1952, simultaneously for the Lok Sabha and the State Assemblies, under the provisions of the Constitution. More than 173 million people constituted the electorate, out of an overall population of 360 million, with nearly 47% eligible voters turning out to vote, in 224,000 polling booths, manned by more than a million government servants, to elect 489 members to the Lok Sabha and 3283 to the State Assemblies, making the election the largest democratic exercise, unknown in history, the stunned world watching in disbelief.    

 

The mammoth election was held on the basis of universal adult franchise, with common electorate; all those 21 years of age were given the right to vote, something that the US took 144 years and the UK 100 to do, with no qualifications as to education, income, property and gender. In advanced democracies of the West, elections are held with two or three competing political parties. In India, the very first general election had 53 registered political parties. It was a political revolution- a big gamble, a leap in the dark. The earlier election held in 1945-46 was based on a limited franchise, the right to vote being confined to just 13% of the population.

 

Pandit Nehru’s stamp on the election is unmistakable. He believed that illiterate masses had the political maturity to choose their representatives, wisely and consciously, due to his deep commitment to the democratic ideal. He travelled some 25,000 miles by air, train, car, horse-ride, boat and by every mode of transport; addressed some 35 million people; crisscrossed the country many times over, educating and explaining to the multitudes who flocked to hear him the significance of the events unfolding before them. There was no other leader, matching his energy, popularity and mass appeal. It was a matter of courage to hold such elections in adversarial circumstances, and the millions of unlettered poor masses deciding the fate of the country.

 

The legacy of Sukumar Sen, the first Election Commissioner of India- the architect of the modern Indian election- goes far beyond party symbols, indelible ink, and ballot boxes. It was the biggest challenge to him to conduct the elections, on a scale unheard of before, in a country, that just gained independence after hundreds of years of subjugation, riven by the horrors of partition and overwhelmed by the bursts of refuges, and with 84% illiterate population and confronted with serious problems of communication and road links and inaccessible terrains. His innovations- using symbols for political parties instead of names, indelible ink, and meticulous planning of the polling schedule- are marvelous. He squarely met the insurmountable task of delimitation- the process of creating poll constituencies; the preparation, updation and publication of electoral rolls; and putting together and managing the massive electoral machinery, and ensured free and fair elections, with a conscious and sensitive first Prime Minister of independent India not allowing his government to interfere ,in  any manner, in the conduct of the elections. It was a grand carnival of democracy, with the people in their best colorful dresses lining up to vote. 

 

Here is a highly intoxicating episode of that historic election. Shyam Saran Negi, a school teacher from Kalpa village in the upper reaches of Himachal Pradesh’s Kinnaur district, was the first Indian citizen to cast the ballot. The Election Commissioner had decided to have the voting first in the remote areas that were cut -off by inclement winters. Kinnaur was cut- off due to snowfall. Buses would stop at Rampur,100 KM from the village, and parties would have to trek up mountain trails. Negi was put on election duty in another village, 20 km away.  He walked to the polling booth at 6.00 am and pleaded with the polling officials to allow him to vote as he “understood the value of a vote” and “didn’t want to waste it.” The considerate poll officials gave him the ballot paper and he cast his vote and thus became the first voter. He then ran to the polling booth where he was on election duty to reach on time.  He is still alive at the age of 105, and never missed the voting. He is a local hero in the picturesque mountain village ringed by apple orchards, with tourists crowding his house and touts proudly boasting the village is a home to India’s first voter.

 

The first general election was unique in many ways. As Gopalkrishna Gandhi says, “it vindicated India’s rejection of the Two Nation Theory by showing that Hindus and Muslims voted together, as one electoral college, as one political entity, as one republican persona, to choose their legislators without religious fault lines.” It was a watershed moment, political and administrative victory for a new independent nation. For a traditional and ancient India, making the most sophisticated electoral process successful, it is nothing short of a miracle. A vast majority of the people had never voted before, and were completely unfamiliar with the process and the importance of voting, and the erstwhile subjects of princely states not even understanding the meaning of voting. The conservative character of Indian society had posed a serious problem. Most of the women were still under purdah; and many either not permitted or refused to give their own names for registration., making the registration of potential voters extremely difficult. 

 

It was a civilizational triumph for a large multi religious and multi-cultural society, laying the foundation of a strong democracy, and Nehru’s India emerging as a model of governance to the rest of the world, particularly to the Afro-Asian countries that gained independence from the colonial rule after the World War II, avoiding the trappings of a dictatorship of one kind or another, showing Mao’s totalitarian China in a bad light.

 

And since then, the Indian people had voted in 17 general elections to choose their national government. However, with the loss of moral political leadership, the decline of Parliament and independent institutions, the emerging sectarianism and authoritarianism, and the erosion of constitutional morality, the first general election, held 70 years ago, that made us so proud, remains an unforgettable epic exercise in the democratic history of India. The rising illiberalism is the biggest threat to Constitutional Democracy, enshrined in the Constitution.

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