India's tryst with parliamentary democracy

At a time when Parliament is about to be relocated to a new building, 'House of the People' offers an insightful look into the evolution of representative bodies in India and their functioning today

House of the People: Parliament and the Making of Indian Democracy 

Author: Ronojoy Sen 

Publisher: Cambridge University Press 

Pages: 320 

Price: Rs 1,095

At a time when India is celebrating 75 years of democracy, the book House of the People: Parliament and the Making of Indian Democracy by Ronojoy Sen is a welcome addition to the corpus of studies on the functioning of Indian democracy. Dr Sen, who did his PhD at the University of Chicago under the supervision of Lloyd and Susanne Rudolph, acknowledged American scholars on India, has been closely following political developments in India including the working of the Indian Parliament. The book seeks to analyse, within 300-odd pages, India’s tryst with democracy starting from the revolt of 1857 that fired the first salvo of India’s yearning for self-rule and freedom till recent times. Dr Sen condenses India’s democratic sojourn removing the chaff from the grain with great dexterity. Divided into five seamless chapters, the book is a continuum of India’s trials and tribulations of democracy. Due to paucity of space, it is not possible to review each chapter that otherwise merits attention.
 

In the first chapter, the author reconstructs landmark events in the evolution and development of representative institutions in British India after the passing of the Indian Councils Act of 1861 in response to the revolt of 1857. The colonial British government in India attempted to co-opt Indian elites such as princes, rich landlords, and other elites in the Legislative Council created under the provisions of the Act. This was essentially a strategy to arrest the rising tide of nationalism and demands for self-rule through the policy of “divide and rule”. Thirty years later, and seven years after the birth of the Indian National Congress, the British Parliament passed the Indian Council Act of 1892 to enlarge the space for representation.
 

The British insisted that like the 1861 Act, the 1892 Act was not a precursor to any sort of parliamentary government. But several nationalist leaders found a place on the enlarged council, including Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Rash Behari Ghosh, and others. Dr Sen writes that they often made forceful interventions, though without much effect on government policy. He also mentions Dadabhai Naoroji, referred to as the “Grand Old Man of India”, who believed in reforming British rule from within Westminster. In 1892, Naoroji contested from Central London and won by a whisker of five votes. Naoroji, who was voted out in 1895, criticised colonial policies on the floor of the House. He articulated his famous “drain theory” and how the “evil of foreign rule involved the triple loss of wealth, wisdom, and work”.
 

A notable aspect of the book is the study by the author of the participation and interventions by the Indian members of the Legislative Council constituted under the Government of India Act, 1919 regarding the welfare and well-being of the Indian people. Prominent Indian members of the council raised a wide range of issues such as sharing expenditure on British troops, the Indianisation of the Indian Civil Service, and recruitment of engineers for the railways and public works department only from India. This chapter sheds light on the nature of British colonialism in India, which is a mix of despotism, atrocities and benevolence. Although Britain never wanted to concede self-rule to India, the democratic and representative institutions, and parliamentary practices and procedures it created led to the unintended consequences of India’s ultimate freedom.
 

At a time when Parliament is about to be relocated to a new building, the author very thoughtfully recapitulates the making of the iconic Parliament House that housed the Central Legislative Assembly, the Constituent Assembly, the Provisional Parliament, and the two Houses of Indian Parliament in post-independent India. The Parliament House including the Central Hall are witnesses and mute testimony to many historic events in the annals of India’s history. A missing link in India’s Parliamentary history in this segment of the chapter is the absence of any reference to the question of where the Legislative Assembly functioned after the capital was shifted from Calcutta (as it was called then) to Delhi in 1911. Did it function from Shimla or from the Delhi Assembly?
 

The second chapter, titled “Protean Institution”, dwells on the changing composition of Parliament in terms of “representativeness”. In this context, he prefaces his exposition with the wisdom of some eminent political thinkers. He recalls John Stuart Mill, who wrote that the basis of representative government was to “permit people to govern themselves, but not to prevent them from being misgoverned”. He also quotes the author of magnum opus Leviathan, who opined, “The English people believes itself to be free, it is gravely mistaken, it is free only during the elections of the Members of Parliament; as soon as the Members are elected, and the people are enslaved”.
 

In the third chapter, “Please take your seats”, the author throws light on the disruptions in Parliament that have sullied the image of the exalted institution. This reviewer, who had served the Lok Sabha secretariat for over three decades, is reminded of a poignant observation by the former Chairman of Rajya Sabha and former President of India, the late K R Narayanan. Speaking at the first-ever Conference of Presiding Officers, on the theme of discipline and decorum on September 23, 1992, he described indiscipline and disorder in the legislative bodies as “Infantile disorders or the measles of the middle-age” which “...are bound to pass, but pass they must, otherwise the system will be in mortal danger”. Regretfully, the situation has deteriorated over the years, which the author has graphically demonstrated in this insightful and analytical book.

The reviewer is a former officer of the Indian Parliament and a writer. The views are personal