How we regressed from inclusive to exclusive
Relevance: GS Paper II
Why in News?
We became ‘citizens’ of a ‘Sovereign Democratic Republic’ only when the Constitution came into effect on January 26, 1950. However, the preparation of the electoral rolls for the first general election started well before the Constituent Assembly drafted the chapter on citizenship. This made it particularly important to determine who was counted as a "citizen" and a "refugee," especially with millions of people flooding Punjab, Delhi, Bengal, and Assam.
“How India Became Democratic”:
- Democracy is government by consent, and the citizens express their consent through the vote. This is a well-known principle that needs no reiteration, but how that ‘consent’ is to be obtained and who all are ‘citizens’ was not at all clear when India became independent in 1947.
- Israeli scholar Ornit Shani's study ‘How India Became Democratic’ narrates how Indians became voters before they became citizens.
- By the time the Constitution came into force in 1950, the notion of universal suffrage and electoral democracy was already grounded.
- Free India’s founding leaders were determined to create a democratic state against the gravest of odds, such as the partition of the country that resulted in the killing of one million people and the displacement of 18 million across the borders.
- Secondly, the new republic had to dismantle and then re-integrate 552 Princely States, and their populations had to be registered as citizens of a unified India.
- Thirdly, democracy had to be grafted onto a society with myriad social divisions, an extremely unjust and unequal social hierarchy, widespread poverty, and illiteracy.
Preparation for Elections:
- The national movement was committed to the principle of ‘universal adult franchise’ since the Motilal Nehru Report of 1928. However, the overwhelming and complex preparatory work for the elections, particularly the preparation of the draft electoral rolls based on adult franchises, began only in September 1947.
- Before that stupendous administrative task of electoral rolls was handed over in March 1950 to the first Chief Election Commissioner, Sukumar Sen, it was designed and managed by a small, newly-formed body of the State in the making: the Constituent Assembly Secretariat (CAS).
- The electoral roll was the foundation of Indian democracy, but its implementation was uncertain due to the violent upheaval of partition and the undecided nature of the question ‘Who is an Indian?’ – the basic criterion for being a voter. This left the electoral roll as the primary platform for establishing Indian democracy.
- Refugees were on the fault line of ‘who is an Indian’ -- both in the preparation of the electoral roll as well as in the drafting of the chapter on Citizenship.
Refugees in Electoral rolls:
- The CAS decided in July 1948 and issued instructions to the affected states to register all refugees in the electoral rolls at this stage “on a mere declaration by them of their intention to reside permanently in the town or village concerned, irrespective of their actual period of residence”.
- The Government of West Bengal wrote to the CAS asking for a definition of ‘who is a refugee?’ and whether the declaration to be made should be oral or in writing.
- The CAS replied that “a refugee… means any person who has migrated into the Province or State on account of disturbances in his usual place of residence.”
- Still, the governments of West Bengal and Assam continued to harass the refugees, either by asking them to declare their intent to permanently reside in India on stamp paper or by fixing their residence period to 180 days.
- Both these measures were frowned upon by the CAS, which made it clear that there should be no declaration on any stamp paper, nor should there be any questions on the duration of their stay.
- In East Punjab, the refugees refused to declare their intention to permanently reside in their electoral unit, stating that they “were constantly on the move.”
- Some refugee organisations demanded that they “should be enrolled as voters wherever they are now settled.” Indeed, the problem that the Punjab authorities faced was more due to the constant shifting of camps of refugees for their rehabilitation rather than any attempts to disenfranchise them.
- This was the sharp difference in the policies of the Punjab and Bengal governments.
Negotiating citizenship:
- As Ornit Shani writes, “In the contestation over the refugees’ place in the electoral rolls, rivalling conceptions of the nation's membership surfaced.
- In Assam, for example, ethno-nationalist attitudes manifested particularly towards the non-Assamese ‘floating population’, many of whom were Bengali-speaking Hindus from East Pakistan. Local authorities preferred to delimit it to ‘the children of the soil’.
- Thus, ethno-nationalism was not necessarily based on religion”.
- By contrast, in West Bengal, “any person who would state that he has a domicile in India was to be straightaway included in the rolls”.
- In these struggles, citizen organisations passionately fought for democratic rights and citizenship, scrutinising government instructions, comparing them with those issued by the CAS, and consciously aiming to foster a positive sentiment among all citizens.
Erosion of democratic values in contemporary India:
- The humane and compassionate vision of democracy during the partition, which was inclusive of all the people living in one electoral unit called India, has now disappeared.
- Despite the fight for democratic equality and fraternity during the Partition era, the democratic spirit of equality and fraternity, irrespective of caste, creed or religion, has been lost in ‘Amrit Kaal’ - the supposed age of peace and prosperity.
- Millions of citizens of a particular faith have been alienated and disenfranchised, and their citizenship is contested. All this has led to questions about who is a citizen and who is a refugee.
Conclusion:
India's democratic journey from independence to contemporary challenges underscores the resilience of democratic ideals amid historical turmoil. However, these values are eroding in the face of present-day socio-political complexities, emphasising the urgent need for collective efforts to safeguard India's inclusive democratic ethos. It remains imperative to uphold the foundational principles of democracy to ensure a vibrant and inclusive future for all citizens.
