From a principle to a right

How India Became Democratic

Citizenship and the Making of the Universal Franchise

Ornit Shani

Viking

256 pages; Rs 499

In the almost 70 years since India’s Constitutional framework came into effect, we have come to take its most radical and influential departure from the past, the universal franchise, for granted. It was far from certain in the years leading up to 1950 that Indians — largely illiterate and crushingly poor — would all be given equal access to the ballot box. That, eventually, India’s founding generation managed to ensure that all Indian citizens had equal political rights in law and in practice was hugely consequential: Not just for India, but for the image and appeal of representative democracy in a de-colonising, Cold War world. 

Note that I argue that these equal rights were provided both in law, and in practice. The success of the 1951 general election in terms of providing representation to India in all its complexity was crucial to the stability of the then-young constitutional framework. It is the thesis of Ornit Shani’s How India Became Democratic that much of this achievement is due to the efforts that went into framing electoral rolls in the first years after Independence in 1947. This work was carried out largely under the supervision of the Constitutional Assembly Secretariat (CAS) in New Delhi, although the last-mile implementation was conducted by the various provinces. Ms Shani has trawled through thousands of letters, memoranda and notes — many of them in the archives of the Election Commission of India — in order to underline her contestation with the broad idea that, in Sunil Khilnani’s words, the Constitution was “a gift of India’s elites”. She argues that “as a result of these interactions between people and the CAS, the abstract language, forms and principles of the democratic constitution that were produced in the process of constitution-making from above, obtained a practical basis and became a convention while the constitution was still in the making”. In other words, it was the central bureaucracy and its interaction with its provincial peers, the media, and letter-writers that turned the principles of constitutionalism into reality. 

I remain unconvinced about this broad thesis, though others reading this book — with its mass of primary material and unusual grasp of detail — might come to a different conclusion. For one, the distance in the Indian state, whether colonial or republican, between what is rendered on paper by an official and what is constructed, created, implemented or propagated on the ground is great. The success of the 1951 election speaks clearly about Indians’ willingness to embrace the franchise; but we cannot argue with great assurance that the attempts made in New Delhi to ensure inclusion and the broadest possible definition of citizenship were in fact “practical”. Our observation of the actual experience of those on the margins in this vast country is severely occluded even today. Such was even more distant then; and infinitely more distant at this vast remove of time. The function of an effective bureaucracy is, certainly, to transform a broad principle provided by its political masters — “universal franchise”, in this case — into legality, process and precedent, in this case, enrolment form, voter rolls, and so on. (The Indian bureaucrat can always be usefully imagined as a machine converting an instruction from above into a form for below.) I would certainly agree that the role of the CAS was instrumental in providing a unified sense, across previously disparate state and provincial bureaucracies, of what voting and elections would require. But it is dangerous to extrapolate from that to the broader public. That caution should also be exhibited even in interpreting the remarkable responsiveness of the CAS to civil society organisations, which inevitably represent elite issues. The fundamental claim, that the Indian constitution was “a gift from above”, remains unanswered. 

That said, How India Became Democratic has many rewarding sections and nuggets, some of which have deep current resonance. Most interesting was the constant obstructionism – or so it appeared to me – of the Assam authorities, who sought to constantly block the creation of inclusive voting rolls even in 1948. (Ms Shani effectively contrasts the Assam authorities’ attitude with that of their counterparts in West Bengal.) One Sub-Deputy Collector was quoted as saying that “the Hindus from Eastern Pakistan have come here to convert Assam into BANGAKISTAN”, with the emphasis in the original. Ethno-nationalism, as Ms Shani points out, was not congruent with religious differences even at the moment of Partition. Though those mattered too; complaints were registered from Punjab that Sikhs were being forcibly registered as Hindus and Scheduled Castes were being registered as Sikhs. 

Asking how India became democratic is important. It is, in some ways, not just among the most important of questions for India, but also for the world: How can democratic traditions sink into the soil of a country? Ms Shani’s book only imperfectly answers the very broad question its title claims as its subject. But it does provide a clear glimpse into the integrity, passion and commitment with which the republic’s first generation went about creating its institutions.