Chapter 147: Democracy

Aurangzeb Road

12 October 1950

The monsoon had gone, and the Delhi evening had turned cool and clear. Patel’s verandah smelled of woodsmoke and jasmine. A servant had set out a small table with four chairs and a tray of tea. Nobody had asked for it; it was simply what was done when the three of them met after dark.

Nehru arrived first, with a folder under his arm. Ram came ten minutes later, in a plain kurta, and sat on the low wall of the verandah without asking where to sit. Patel was in his high-backed chair with a rug across his knees, and the physician had been dismissed to the next room.

"I have a matter to raise," Nehru said. He set the folder on the table and did not open it. "I have been thinking about it since July. I think it cannot wait."

"Elections," Patel said, his eyes skimming over the title pasted on the folder.

"Elections. We are in the third year of independence. The Constituent Assembly has been sitting as an interim parliament since 1946, and its members were chosen by provincial legislatures on a narrow franchise. We have a Constitution that promises universal adult suffrage and no election to give it substance. A Parliament which no one has voted for cannot say it speaks for anyone." Nehru took a breath. "I do not wish it said, ten years from now, that we kept power without asking for it."

"Nobody has said it," Ram said gently.

"Nobody has dared. But it is said in the cafés and in the English papers. And it will be said louder if we wait."

"When do you propose?"

"Spring of 1952. Eighteen months. That is the earliest I think it can be done properly."

"Properly," Patel repeated. He turned his head. "Jawaharlal, we have more than three hundred and fifty million people. Eighty per cent cannot read. A third have never seen a ballot. We have just absorbed Burma, Ceylon, Tibet, and half of Pakistan. Our electoral rolls do not exist. Half the villages have no addresses. We cannot even agree how to count."

"That is why I say eighteen months. Not twelve."

"I did not say no. I said we cannot do it carelessly." Patel closed his eyes briefly. "I have been thinking about it too. I have lain awake over it. Ram, what do you say?"

Ram did not answer at once. He was watching a bat flit across the garden in the last light, and when he spoke, he spoke slowly.

"I say Jawaharlal is right, and that it must be done, and that it will be the hardest thing we have attempted. A war is easy by comparison. In war, the enemy is visible and the objective is simple. In an election, three hundred and fifty million people are asked to make a decision, most of them for the first time, and a great many of them have been told, for the first time in their lives, that their opinion matters. If we do it badly, they will conclude that it does not. If we do it well, they will conclude that they are citizens, and it will change this country more than any dam."

"Then you agree."

"I agree on the principle. I should like to discuss the method and the date." Ram turned. "May I?"

"Please," Nehru said.

"The date, first, I would propose the elections be held in 1953, in the months of April to June, when the farmers have relatively more free time. The delay should allow a majority of our public works projects to move towards completion without facing disruption from the whole process, and would allow the election body to design and implement a proper plan," Ram said, tapping the table with his finger to organise his thoughts.

"I agree, more time should translate to a better implementation," Patel said, sipping his tea.

"To move the discussion along, I agree as well, provisionally," Nehru sighed. "What about the method, Ram?"

"The method then, first, an election body. Not a ministry, not a committee of the Cabinet. An Election Commission, with a Chief Commissioner appointed for a fixed term and removable only by impeachment, with its own staff, its own budget, and its own power to summon any official in the Republic, including the Prime Minister, to explain a failure. It must be independent, or it will be worthless. If a Prime Minister can dismiss the man who counts his votes, the votes mean nothing."

"A fixed term and impeachment," Patel said. "That is the Supreme Court’s protection."

"It is, and I want it for the Commission. I do not think I will enjoy being on the receiving end, but I would rather be inconvenienced than distrusted."

Nehru smiled, a little wryly. "You have changed your mind about independent institutions."

"I have changed my mind about this one, Jawaharlal. A court tells the Government what the law is. A Commission tells the people whether the Government is legitimate. They are different instruments. I should like one of them to work."

"Who would you appoint?"

"Someone who has never been in politics. A civil servant of long standing, a man everyone will trust, preferably someone who has been inconvenient to a minister at least once." Ram thought. "Sukumar Sen, of the Bengal Civil Service. He has run elections at the provincial level. He is an honest, tedious man, with a memory for detail. He will drive us all to distraction."

"I do not know him," Patel said.

"You will. He has been sending proposals, detailed proposals almost weekly to the office."

"Second?"

"A plan. The Commission must draw up, within six months, a complete scheme for the polling: how the rolls are prepared, how the constituencies are drawn, how the ballot boxes are transported, how the polling stations are staffed, how the count is conducted. It must provide for illiterate voters. That means symbols: a plough, a lamp, a bullock, a wheel. A man who cannot read must be able to find his party on the paper. It must provide for women, who in many districts have never been permitted to leave their houses. And it must provide for ink."

"Ink?"

"Indelible ink. A mark on the finger that lasts a week, so that no man may vote twice. We have chemists in Bangalore who will make it." Ram’s eyes had a distant, amused light. "It is the cheapest device in the world and the most effective. Hundreds of millions of people, and no one has to be asked to prove a thing."

"It will be a logistics operation without equal," Patel said. "The Army will have to carry the boxes."

"The Army, the Railways, the Post Office, and the Seva Vahini. Every one of them. And the Commission will give a day to each region, so that the whole country does not vote at once. A poll that lasts three or four months, with a few constituencies each day, so that every polling officer can be properly supervised." Ram paused. "That is the plan. But a plan is not enough."

"No?"

"No, the most important thing is the people." He looked at Nehru. "You said it, Jawaharlal, in the first sentence. They must understand what a vote is. A great many have been told by the village headman how to vote, and have obeyed. A great many have been told that a vote is a favour to be sold. A great many do not know that it is secret. If they do not know that, we shall have an election in which the landlord’s man stands behind the voter at the box, and the whole thing will be a farce."

"Your proposal being?" Nehru said.

"A broadcast, every evening, after the money programme. For six months before the first polling day. Fifteen minutes, in every language, on what a vote is. That it is yours. That it is secret. That no one has the right to ask how you cast it, and that anyone who tries commits a crime. That it is not a favour; that it does not belong to the headman, the landlord, the moneylender, or the Government. And that a single vote, counted with three hundred and fifty million others, decides who governs." Ram’s voice was very quiet. "We shall say it in plain words, over and over, until even the children can understand it."

"It will be the biggest education programme in history," Nehru murmured.

"It will have to be."

"Who is to speak it?"

"Not a politician. A schoolteacher. A postman. A woman from the Seva Vahini. Ordinary people who tell it plainly. Radhakrishnan will find them."

Patel opened his eyes. He had listened to all of it with his hands folded, and when he spoke, it was to a different question.

"Who may stand?"

There was a short silence.

"That is the part I have been thinking about longest," Ram said. "May I give my view?"

"Please."

"First, a man convicted of a crime involving moral turpitude, murder, rape, dacoity, abduction, corruption, communal violence, should be barred from standing for any public office, permanently. Not for five years, not for ten. For life. If he has served his sentence, he may live freely and vote. He may not govern. A man who has abducted a woman is not fit to make laws about women."

"A pardon?" Nehru said.

"A pardon wipes out the penalty. It does not wipe out the fact. The bar should hold even after a pardon."

"That will be controversial."

"It will. I do not mind. It is a question on which I do not think there are two sides." Ram turned a hand. "Second, a declaration of assets. Every candidate files, at the time of nomination, a sworn statement of everything he owns: land, houses, gold, shares, loans. His wife’s and children’s, too. The Commission audits a random sample.

"If a statement is found false, the candidate is disqualified, and criminal proceedings follow. If a man declares a hundred thousand and the Commission finds a million, he has told the voters a lie before he has asked for their trust."

"And after election?" Patel asked.

"He files again every year while in office. If his wealth grows out of proportion to his salary, he must explain it. If he cannot, he is removed." Ram’s voice was even. "It will not stop corruption. Nothing does. But it will make it dangerous. A man will think twice before taking a bribe if he knows the Commission can ask where it went."

"I like it," Patel said.

"Third, no reserved seats. No separate electorates. A candidate stands for a constituency, and every voter in it, regardless of birth, community, or religion, may vote for him. The British gave us separate electorates, and it led to Partition. I will not have it in this Republic. If a member from a particular community is wanted, he must win the votes of all the communities."

"Ambedkar will object," Nehru said.

"He will object again, loudly, and I shall listen." Ram’s face did not change. "I do not say this lightly. I know what the reserved seats mean to him. But I have spent three years watching what happens when a man’s birth is the first thing anyone asks. I should rather give every voter a reason to ask what the candidate has done."

Patel nodded slowly. "And the last?"

"The last is the one I am least sure about." Ram looked at the bat, now a dark flicker over the dark lawn. "An educational qualification. A candidate must have completed the secondary school course, ten years, the same ten years we have made compulsory. It would not apply to voters, only to those who stand. A man who cannot read cannot read a bill, a budget, a treaty, or a letter from his constituents. He is dependent on the clerk who reads it to him. I do not like the thought of a legislature that must be briefed on every page."

"It will exclude a great many," Nehru said.

"For the first election, yes. It would exclude a majority. By the third, nearly none, if the schools do their work." Ram’s voice was low. "I am inclined to it. I am not certain. It may be that a farmer who cannot read has more judgement than a lawyer who can. I know that Gandhiji would have asked what kind of a Republic excludes a man because he could not afford the schooling. And I should have had no answer."

"There is an answer," Patel said. "But it is a hard one." He shifted the rug. "I should apply it in stages. The first election, eighth class. The second, tenth. The third, the twelfth. A candidate who has not finished the course has seven years, a Parliament’s worth, to finish it, with the State providing the evening classes. That is fair."

"It is," Ram said, after a pause. "It is more than fair. Vallabhbhai, you are right."

"Don’t sound so surprised about it."

"I withdraw my hesitation. Eighth class in 1953, tenth in 1958, twelfth in 1963."

"And no one under twenty-five may stand," Nehru said, with a smile. "To save us from the young."

"The young will inherit the country; they should have a say in its building," Ram said.

"Twenty-five." Patel put his own weight behind the limit.

"Very well."

Patel gave a short laugh and reached for a glass of water. "We have drafted a Constitution in the dark, and we are drafting the election in a garden. It is how all great things are done, I think."

"It is how the worst things are done as well."

"That is true. We shall be careful." Patel put down the glass. "Jawaharlal, you have the Commission to organise. Ram, you have the broadcast. I have the police, who will have to keep order on a hundred polling days. We shall each be miserable, and the country will be better for it."

"I should like it written down that I proposed it," Nehru said.

"It will be."

The lamp on the table guttered. A servant came out, trimmed it, and went away again. Far off, in the cantonment, a bugler was sounding the last post. The three men sat on in silence for a while, and none of them looked at the others.

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