Raisina Hill’s New Tenant / President’s Moral Standing

Raisina Hill’s New Tenant

Since President Pranab Mukherjee is laying down office this week, we carry here two pieces by Nikhil Chakravartty, written twenty years ago in July and November 1997, that bring out the importance of one of Mukherjee’s most illustrious predecessors as the country’s head of state, K.R. Narayanan, in our polity and the significant role he played as the President.

By the time these lines reach the reader, India will be having a new President who, according to the Constitution, is due to hold office for five years, that is, beyond the present milennium. That the choice has been widely welcomed is borne out by the fact that all the major national parties supported Narayanan’s candidature, while the rumbustious person who contested him lost his deposit. One has to thank God for that because most of what Seshan has handled so far has ended up in inane controversy, and the country can ill afford to have a Head of State at the moment who specialises in creating controversies rather than smoothening them.

One of the Election Commissioners, perhaps absentmindedly, had suggested free voting—that is, without any party whip—in the presidential election. The question could have been discussed had it been raised in advance. However, the actual results of the election have clearly shown that Narayanan was way ahead of his rival in the fray, and that a ban on party whips in this particular election would have made no difference whatsoever in the ultimate results of the ballot box counting.

If there were good reasons why Seshan scored so poorly, there were equally good reasons why so many of the parliamentarians voted so enthusiastically for Narayanan, irrespective of the badge he was wearing or the colour of his political complexion. In a word, it can be said without any fear of contradiction that Narayanan has been the nation’s choice for the august post cutting across party barriers. This by itself is an important political feature of the present presidential election. At a time when most of the national political parties have been passing through acute strain in retaining their integrity—some even faced with the prospect of losing their identity—it is significant that in choosing the Head of State, the Members of Parliament—who constitute the electoral college for such a poll—have cut across party barriers to choose one who has been widely known for his outlook and views and yet has kept himself out of petty political positions which divide more than unite the country at today’s critical juncture.

From this point of view, Narayanan’s victory is invested with an importance which can hardly be ignored. It means that despite the frightening fragmentation in political parties and the dwindling attachment to principles and values in politics today, there is an over-whelmingly large number of people in the public life of this country who cherish moral values that are emphatically proclaimed by the election of K.R. Narayanan as the President of India. His election is a repudiation of petty politics and seeks out a wider national vista.

By our Constitution, the President does not lead the government, but he does have the right in his personal capacity to express his views to the Prime Minister and hold on to them irres-pective of the stand of the government. This is made clear by the record of the last five decades. Our first President held strong views on social and economic issues which hardly tallied with those of the government of the day. There were frank, and sometimes tense, exchanges on these issues between the President and the Prime Minister. There were items of personal difference between the two in the subsequent years, but as the Constitution enjoined it, the Prime Minister’s views prevailed as those of the government. However, despite this disability, there is no doubt that the President’s personal views on occasions did carry weight. Indira Gandhi, as the leader of the Congress, was found to be short-sighted in choosing yes-men for the office of the President. It is yet to be assessed if she did the right thing in choosing a copycat President in the critical time of the Emergency, or by selecting a thoroughly partisan one which led to the disastrous policy of the Bluestar and ultimately to the tragedy of her own assassination. There were good reasons to speculate that had there been other personalities then occupying the seat of the Head of State, perhaps the Prime Minister at the time might have been personally persuaded to desist from the disasters in which she landed herself and the country at those crucial moments.

It is not that the office of the President does not think or is divested of any authority. An alert and sagacious President can certainly leave an impact on the government of the day. Had there been a different way of thinking in the Rashtrapati Bhavan in 1975, it is doubtful if the Emergency had been imposed at all. The total disarray in government thinking in 1984 led to the Bluestar, a catastrophe from which it would take long to recover. One of the reasons why such speculations are warranted today was that the government over which the Prime Minister presided in 1975 and 1984 could not really be called genuinely Cabinet, but that of an individual ensconced in a ring of unscrupulous coteries. That was precisely why a presidential advice, even if personally conveyed, might have had a really chastening effect.

Leaving aside speculation, one has to take into account the fact that the constitutional vagaries might create a situation when the President has to take his own decision without the benefit of any prime ministerial advice. This happend under President Venkataraman when he had to decide on his own that in the absence of any party getting the majority in the Lok Sabha, the one with the largest strength in the House should be called to form the government and try to prove his majority in the Lok Sabha. President Venkataraman, in fact, added a valuable precedent which his successor, President Shankar Dayal Sharma, could follow without question.

K.R. Narayanan becomes the Rashtrapati at a very critical time for Indian democracy as structured by the Constitution of India. Not only is there the question of any party lacking majority in the Lok Sabha, the prospect of new forms of tension between the Centre and the States, the dissonance over Article 356, the inability to sort out the river water disputes—these and many other issues may find the government of the day in a confused state and the President through his understanding and integrity may help to bring a solution. Even a case as created by Laloo Prasad Yadav could ensure a constitutional crisis in which the President would have to play his part with wisdom and sagacity that may help to bring about a solution which will enrich the very Constitution itself.

As the imposing red-sandstone building on the Raisina Hill welcomes a new occupant, fortified by the Constitution of India, distant drums of discord shall call for all the wisdom and strength to help the elected representatives do their part. In a country as vast and diverse, in which corruption has come like a canker in public life, a country which has to combat poverty for the millions that inhabit its earth—for such a country there should never be a person at the helm who could be just a bystander. The crisis itself demands a new form of moral activism. That is the mandate with which K.R. Narayanan assumes the new office, the most momentous in his active public life.

(Mainstream, July 26, 1997)

President’s Moral Standing

The stature of the President of India in the public eye has undoubtedly gone up with his thoughtful counsel to the Union Cabinet to desist from its adventurist line of dismissing the UP Ministry and to bring the State under President’s Rule. He has questioned the decision of the Cabinet and advised them to think over, which they have done and acceded to desist from defying the President’s wise advice.

Overnight there has been a definite wave of support for President Narayanan’s wisdom. Not that the President was partial to the party assailed in UP but he went strictly by law and the Constitution to decide on advising the Cabinet to reconsider its decision—the first ever that has come from the head of the state to the Council of Ministers at the Centre. The historic importance which lies in President K.R. Nara-yanan’s advice touched most of the members of the Cabinet and hence their decision to yield to the wisdom that has come from the Rashtrapati Bhavan.

Almost in a flash a new situation could be discernible. For long, there was a slump in the public morale as political leaders were being regarded as mostly unworthy to lead this great nation. They might have been endowed with all the trappings of high office, but they have failed to command confidence of the public that they would on their own be able to lift the system.

It is precisely at that very crucial moment has come President Narayanan’s call which at once has lifted up a sordid situation into something noble and dispassionate. Not that he has given vent to his emotions alone, but has demonstrated from the past archives the shortcomings in the stand of the Union Cabinet. It is precisely on this point that he has echoed the mood and sentiments of the common people that constitutional decisions of the past need not be flouted but honoured. By this, he has not only demonstrated his personal fidelity to uprightness but could advise with moral authority the Ministers at the Centre and persuade them from taking a wrong decision on a very crucial issue.

The touch of moral authority in public life that the President of India has shown has earned him the encomium of millions. Thereby shall be silenced the cacophony of those who have taken politics as the battle-ground for settling scores without bothering about its moral repercussions in the wider national field. What President K.R. Narayanan has demonstrated is that even one voice in defence of morality can overcome the mean calculations of those many who may be entrenched today in the circle of power. His unostentatious apearance while at the same time upholding moral strength has won the respect and admiration of millions.

Here lies the hope for tomorrow. This may show the way for a unifying presence to solve the problems that beset this nation. What President K.R. Narayanan has done is to rekindle the hope that everything is not lost with the ugly cesspool all around.

 (Mainstream, November 1, 1997)