UPSC History India after Freedom NCERT Extracts - Framing the Constitution

 Constituent Assembly

• The Constitution of India was framed between December, 1946 and December, 1949. During this time its drafts were discussed clause by clause in the Constituent Assembly of India.
• In all, the Assembly held eleven sessions, with sittings spread over 165 days.
• The Constituent Assembly that came into being was dominated by one party: the Congress. In effect, therefore, 82 per cent of the members of the Constituent Assembly were also members of the Congress.
• It was Nehru who moved the crucial "Objectives Resolution”, as well as the resolution proposing that the National Flag of India be a "horizontal tricolour of saffron, white and dark green in equal roportion", with a wheel in navy blue at the centre.
• Besides this Congress trio, a very important member of the Assembly was the lawyer and economist B.R. Ambedkar.
• Serving with him were two other lawyers, K.M. Munshi from Gujarat and Alladi Krishnaswamy Aiyar from Madras, both of whom gave crucial inputs in the drafting of the Constitution.
• These six members were given vital assistance by two civil servants.
• One was B, N. Rau, Constitutional Advisor to the Government of India, who prepared a series of background papers based on a close study of the political systems obtaining in other countries. The other was the Chief Draughtsman, N. Mukherjee, who had the ability to put complex proposals in clear legal language.
• On 13 December, 1946, Jawaharlal Nehru introduced the "Objectives Resolution" in the Constituent Assembly.
• In returning to the past and referring to the American and French Revolutions, Nehru was locating the history of constitution-making in India within a longer history of struggle for liberty and freedom.
• A Communist member, Somnath Lahiri saw the dark hand of British imperialism hanging over the deliberations of the Constituent Assembly.
• An interim administration headed by Jawaharlal Nehru was in place, but it could only operate under the directions of the Viceroy and the British Government in London.
• Nehru admitted that most nationalist leaders had wanted a different kind of Constituent Assembly. It was also true, in a sense, that the British Government had a "hand in its birth”, and it had attached certain conditions within which the Assembly had to function.
• The legislatures elected under the 1935 Act operated within the framework of colonial rule, and were responsible to the Governor appointed by the British.
• In his inaugural speech, Nehru had invoked the "will of the people” and declared that the makers of the Constitution had to fulfil "the passions that lie in the hearts of the masses".
• On 27 August, 1947, Pocker Bahadur from Madras made a powerful plea for continuing separate electorates. Minorities exist in all lands, argued Bahadur; they could not be wished away, they could not be "erased out of existence".
• Separate electorates was a "poison that has entered the body politic of our country", declared Sardar Patel. It was a demand that had turned one community against another, divided the nation, caused bloodshed, and led to the tragic partition of the country.
• Countering the demand for separate electorates, Govind Ballabh Pant declared that it was not only harmful for the nation but also for the minorities.
• Politically, however, members of all communities had to act as equal members of one State, or else there would be divided loyalties. "There is the unwholesome and to some extent degrading habit of thinking always in terms of communities and never in terms of citizens," said Pant.
• Not all Muslims supported the demand for separate electorates. Begum Aizaas Rasul, for instance, felt that separate electorates were self-destructive since they isolated the minorities from the majority.
• While welcoming the Objectives Resolution, N.G. Ranga, a socialist who had been a leader of the peasant movement, urged that the term minorities be interpreted in economic terms.
• During the national movement Ambedkar had demanded separate electorates for the Depressed Castes, and Mahatma Gandhi had opposed it, arguing that this would permanently segregate them from the rest of society.

National Language

• Ambedkar had declared that he wanted "a strong and united Centre much stronger than the Centre we had created under the Government of India Act of 1935”.
• By the 1930s, the Congress had accepted that Hindustani ought to be the national language.
• Mahatma Gandhi felt that everyone should speak in a language that common people could easily understand.
• In one of the earliest sessions of the Constituent Assembly, R.V. Dhulekar, a Congressman from the United Provinces, made an aggressive plea that Hindi be used as the language of constitution-making.
• Durgabai informed the House that the opposition in the south against Hindi was very strong. The Constitution of India thus emerged through a process of intense debate and discussion.