The forgotten story of India’s brush with presidential rule

In the mid -1970s, under the imposition of the emergency by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, India entered a period when civil freedoms were suspended and a large part of the political opposition was imprisoned.

Behind this authoritarian curtain, his government of the Congress Party has quietly started to reinvent the country – not as a democracy rooted in checks and balances, but as a centralized state governed by command and control, the historian Srinath Raghavan reveals in his new book.

In Indira Gandhi and the years that transformed India, Professor Raghavan shows how the best bureaucrats and loyalists of the Gandhi party began to put pressure for a presidential system – the one that would centralize the executive power, put the touch of a “obstructionist” judicial system and reduced parliament to a symbolic choir.

Partly inspired by Charles de Gaulle FranceThe pressure for a stronger presidency in India reflects a clear ambition to go beyond the constraints of parliamentary democracy – even if it has never been fully materialized.

It all started, wrote Professor Raghavan, in September 1975, when BK Nehru, a experienced diplomat and a close assistant from Gandhi, wrote a letter greeting the urgency as a “vintage strength and power produced by popular support” and urged Gandhi to grasp the moment.

Parliamentary democracy could not “provide the answer to our needs,” wrote Nehru. In this system, the executive continuously depended on the support of an elected legislature “which seeks popularity and stops any unpleasant measure”.

What India needed, said NEHRU, was a directly elected president – released from parliamentary dependence and capable of making “difficult, unpleasant and unpopular decisions” in the national interest, writes Professor Raghavan.

The model to which he pointed out was from France de Gaulle – the power of concentration in a high presidency. Nehru imagined a single presidential duration of seven years, a representation proportional to the Parliament and the legislatures of the States, a judicial power with limited powers and a press reinstated by laws on strict defamation. He even proposed to strip fundamental rights – right to equality or freedom of expression, for example – of their justiciability.

Nehru has urged Indira Gandhi to “make these fundamental changes in the Constitution now when you have two thirds of the majority”. His ideas were “received with delight” by the secretary of Prime Minister PN Dhar. Gandhi then gave Nehru’s approval to discuss these ideas with his party leaders, but said “very clearly and categorically” that he should not give the impression that they had the cachet of his approval.

Professor Raghavan writes that ideas have met the enthusiastic support of senior Congress leaders like Jagjina Ram and the Minister of Foreign Affairs Swaran Singh. The chief minister of the state of Haryana was frank: “Get rid of this nonsense of the elections. If you ask me, just do our sister [Indira Gandhi] President for life and it is not necessary to do something else “. M Karunanidhi of Tamil Nadu – one of the two non -congress ministers consulted – was not impressed.

When Nehru referred to Gandhi, she remained without obligation, wrote Professor Raghavan. She asked her closest assistance to explore the proposals more.

What emerged was a document entitled “A new look at our Constitution: some suggestions”, written in secret and disseminated among trust advisers. He proposed a president with superior powers than his American counterpart, including control of legal appointments and legislation. A new “Superior Council of the Judicial Power”, chaired by the president, would interpret “the laws and the constitution” – would effectively sterilize the Supreme Court.

Gandhi sent this document to Dhar, who recognized him “twisted the Constitution in an ambiguous authoritarian direction”. The president of Congress, DK Barooah, tested the waters by publicly calling for a “in -depth review” of the Constitution during the annual 1975 party session.

The idea has never completely crystallized in a formal proposition. But his shadow is looming on the Forty-second amendment actAdopted in 1976, which widened the powers of Parliament, a limited judicial examination and another centralized executive authority.

The amendment made the reduction of laws more difficult by requiring supermajeurities of five or seven judges, and aimed to dilute the Constitution “Doctrine of the basic structure” The power of the limited parliament.

He also handed over to the Federal Government the scanning authority to deploy armed forces in the States, declare specific emergencies to the Region and extend the regulation of the president – the direct federal rule – from six months to one year. He also put the electoral disputes outside the reach of the magistracy.

It was not yet a presidential system, but he wore his genetic footprint – a powerful executive, a marginalized judicial system and weakened checks and counterweights. Statesman’s newspaper warned that “by a safe stroke, the amendment describes the constitutional balance in favor of the parliament”.

Meanwhile, the Loyalists of Gandhi were all going. The Minister of Defense, Bansi Lal, urged the “always power” for her as Prime Minister, while the members of the Congress in the northern states of Haryana, the Punjab and the Uttar Pradesh called for unanimously a new constituent assembly in October 1976.

“The Prime Minister was surprised. She decided to snub these movements and hasten the adoption of the amendment bill in Parliament,” wrote Professor Raghavan.

In December 1976, the bill had been adopted by the two chambers of Parliament and ratified by 13 legislatures of the States and signed by the President.

After the defeat of the shock of Gandhi in 1977, the short -term janata party – a patchwork of anti -Gandhi forces – quickly moved to cancel the damage. Through the Forty-first And Forties Changes, he made the key parts back from the forty seconds, removing authoritarian provisions and restoring democratic controls and counterweights.

Gandhi was brought back to power in January 1980, after the government of the Janata party collapsed due to internal divisions and leadership struggles. Curiously, two years later, eminent voices of the party again spoke of the idea of ​​a presidential system.

In 1982, with the end of President Sanjiva Reddy’s mandate, Gandhi seriously planned to recover as Prime Minister to become President of India.

His main secretary later revealed that she was “very serious” about the decision. She was tired of carrying the congress party on her back and saw the presidency as a means of delivering a “shock treatment to her party, giving it a new stimulus”.

In the end, she fell. Instead, she raised Zail Singh, her faithful Minister of the Interior, to the presidency.

Despite a serious flirt, India has never made the jump to a presidential system. Gandhi, a deeply tactical politician, held back? Or was there no national appetite for radical change and the parliamentary system of India proved to be sticky?

There was a suspicion of presidential drift in the early 1970s, because the parliamentary democracy of India – in particular after 1967 – became more competitive and unstable, marked by fragile coalitions, according to Professor Raghavan. At that time, voices began to suggest that a presidential system could be better suited to India. The urgency has become the moment when these ideas crystallized in a serious political thought.

“The objective was to reshape the system in a way that immediately strengthened its grip on power. There was no large long -term design – most of the lasting consequences of it [Gandhi’s] The rule was probably not intentional, “Professor Raghavan told the BBC.

“During the emergency, his main objective was in the short term: protecting his office from any challenge. The forty second amendment was designed to ensure that even the judiciary could not get in his way.”

The itching for a presidential system within the congress have never been completely disappeared. Until the end of April 1984, the main minister Vaseant Sathe launched a debate on a national scale advocating a transition to presidential governance – even in power.

But six months later, Indira Gandhi was murdered by her bodyguards Sikh in Delhi, and with her, the conversation died suddenly. India has remained a parliamentary democracy.