India after Gandhi : I

After Harry potter books, i never had the mood for reading any book with more 300pages. Recently, there was an exception to this. That too a nonfictional, history book. It was "India after Gandhi : The history of the world's largest democracy".

This is the first history related book i have read. And i am highly interested in reading more books with the next book in search being "The Idea of Pakistan".

I have always wondered what defines India? why are we the way we are? why did we somehow end up surviving the democracy when Pakistan struggles to maintain democracy? how are we progressing despite these corrupted politicians and system? how are we staying together as a country even though we have a strong linguistic and regional bias? (i mean the fervor with which we consider these things. Anyway, in the recent days, these feelings seem to have reached extreme level as well!)

And frankly, all these questions came to my mind not because of any soul searching effort or thought provoking discussions...it came out of the day to day frustrations in living here and seeing the news channels!

Interestingly, eventhough it's frustrating many times, i used to miss India when i went onsite for more than 3 months...i have never been able to explain it to others...here is a post written in April-2005 about this countrysick :)...god, it's been more than 4 years since i started blogging...am becoming old and it's depressing :)

Coming back to the topic, these questions are the main motivational factor behind my reading of this 900page book. And honestly, it was worth the reading. It's a well written book which holds the attention of the reader till the end. The only problem was, there were lot of facts and it's quite difficult to remember everything at the end of the book. So i am contemplating to read it again :)

Also, i want to share a few of my favourite snippets to my blog readers. First i was planning to post it while reading the book itself. Unfortunately, i couldn't.
So, here comes the first installment...

Indian constitution is the longest written constitution of any sovereign nation in the world, containing 395 articles , 12 schedules and 94 amendments, for a total of 117,369 words in the English version. Besides the English version, there is an official Hindi translation. Being the supreme law of the country, every law enacted by the government must conform to the constitution.

On August 29, 1947, the Drafting Committee was appointed, with Dr.Ambedkar as the Chairman along with six other members. A Draft Constitution was prepared by the committee and submitted to the Assembly on November 4, 1947. The Assembly met, in sessions open to public, for 166 days, spread over a period of 2 years, 11 months and 18 days before adopting the Constitution. (Link)

Eventhough, the Assembly had 300 members, 20 members were the most influential lot and among them 12 had law degrees...Now, isn't this an amazing fact looking at the current scenario? :)

Also, the author compares the framing of Indian constitution with that of Japanese one which happened at the same time in 1946-47. While the Indian constitution was solely written by Indians spreading over 2 years with hundreds of discussions, Japanese constitution was written by foreigners (US) in utmost secrecy...

The other interesting thing about the Assembly is the representation of varied cultures and ideas. There were atheists, secularists, RSS and hindumahasabha members, socialists, representatives for dalits, representatives for women. When submissions were asked from public, there were hundreds of responses as varied as from District Teachers Guild of Vizianagaram and the Central Jewish board of Bombay!

I would like to highlight one interesting discussion now.
One is regarding women reservation. The female members of the Assembly were not in favour of any reserved seats, quotas or separate electorates,

Mrs. Hansa Mehta (Bombay : General): we have never asked for privileges. The women's organisation to which I have the honour to belong has never asked for reserved seats, for quotas, or for separate electorates. What we have asked for is social justice, economic justice, and political justice. We have asked for that equality which can alone be the basis of mutual respect and understanding and with-out which real co-operation is not possible between man and woman. (LINK)

The only voice in favour of reservation for women was a man's. And below was the strange reasoning... :)

Shri Rohini Kumar Chaudhari: Sir, from my experience asa parliamentarian and a man of the world I think it would bewise to provide for a women's constituency. When a womanasks for something, as we know, it is easy to get it andgive it to her; but when she does not ask for anything inparticular it becomes very difficult to find out what shewants. If you give them a special constituency they can havetheir scramble and fight there among themselves withoutcoming into the general constituency. Otherwise we may attimes feel weak and yield in their favour and give themseats which they are not entitled to. (Link)

Will post 2 interesting discussions in the next post :)