DRAFTING THE CONSTITUTION OF INDIA—WAS IT DONE SOLELY BY DR.B.R.AMBEDKAR?

It is generally believed by many people that the constitution of India was drafted by Dr B.R.Ambedkar alone. Although Dr Ambedkar was the chairman of the drafting committee, and was a very highly educated and erudite person, it was just not he alone who drafted the constitution.

In August 1947, the Drafting Committee was appointed, with Dr B. R. Ambedkar as the Chairman along with six other members assisted by a constitutional advisor. These members were:

1. Kanaiyalal Maneklal Munshi (K M Munshi, Advocate and Ex- Home Minister, Bombay).

2. Alladi Krishnaswamy Iyer (Ex- Advocate General, Madras State).

3. N Gopalaswami Ayengar (Advocate-Civil Servant of the Madras State--Ex-Prime Minister, J&K and later member of Nehru Cabinet).

4. B L Mitter (Ex-Advocate General, India)---Replaced by Madhav Rao (Legal advisor to the Maharaja of Baroda)

5. Md. Saadullah (Ex- Chief Minister of Assam, Muslim League member)

6. D P Khaitan (Scion of Khaitan Business family and a renowned lawyer)—Replaced by T.T.Krishnamachari..

It can be seen from the committee that all its members were eminent jurists except for Md Saadullah.

The constitutional advisor was Sir Benegal Narsing Rau. A very eminent jurist of his time, Rau not only played a key role in drafting the Constitution of India but also that of Burma. Though he was not part of the Committee itself, he was next to Amedkar in his role. Rau, who was knighted in 1938 for revising the entire Indian statutory code, was responsible for the democratic structure of the Constitution and prepared the final draft. He went on to represent India at the UN Security Council and was a judge at the International Court of Justice in The Hague.

A Draft Constitution was prepared by the committee and submitted to the Assembly on 4 November 1947. Draft constitution was debated and over 2000 amendments were moved over a period of two years. Finally the process was completed IN Nov 1949 and Constituent assembly adopted the constitution.

FOREIGN CONSTITUTIONS THAT INFLUENCED THE INDIAN CONSTITUTION:

1. The architects of Indian constitution were most heavily influenced by the British model of parliamentary democracy.

2. A number of principles were adopted from the Constitution of the United States of America, including the separation of powers among the major branches of government, and the establishment of a supreme court.

3. The principles adopted from Canada were Unitary government with strong centre and also distribution of powers between central government and provinces along with placing residuary powers with central government.

4. From Ireland, directive principle of state policy was adopted.

5. From Germany the principle of suspension of fundamental rights during emergency was adopted.

6. From Australia the principle of Concurrent list and Language of preamble was adopted.

At various stages all the committee members were involved in the making of the draft constitution, but there is no doubt that Dr B.R.Ambedkar along with Benegal Narsing Rau has been the guiding force behind it.

WHY THE PRESENT VIOLENCE IN ASSAM?

The root cause of the problem in Assam is the illegal emigration from Bangladesh that is taking place. It has given rise to continuing violence in Assam. The present clashes taking part in the BTAD(Bodoland Territorial Autonomus District) of Assam is but an offshoot of the same.

One shudders to think about the Nellie massacre in which 1800 men, women and children who were immigrant Muslims from Bangladesh were killed in 1983 by Assamese tribals.

After some failed accords, the Assam Accord was concluded by Rajiv Gandhi in 1985. This accord fixed the cut-off date to determine illegal migrants in Assam as March 25, 1971, the day Bangladesh was born.

The Accord classified the migrants from Bangladesh as follows:

1. Those who had come and settled in the state on or before this date shall be regarded as citizens of India.

2. Those migrants who have arrived in the state after this date are to be detected and expelled in accordance with the law.

But after signing of the Assam Accord, the Assamese rebel groups launched a militant struggle against the government and asked them to expel all illegal immigrants irrespective of their time of migration to India.

The overall Muslim population of the area has grown from 18 per cent in the 1960s to over 40 per cent now which indicates the scale of migration that is taking place. If one compares the decadal growth if population of India vis a vis the state of Assam, it is clear that large scale immigration is taking place continuously thanks to the Congress party treating them as vote banks.

Since Independence, except for the periods 1985-90 and 1996-2001 when the Assam Gana Parishad ruled, it is the Congress government that is holding power in the state.

The biggest problem is that the Bangladeshi government denies that there is a single illegal Bangladeshi immigrant in India. With the stand of the Bangladeshi government being thus, they would not even accept a single person deported from India. So, there is nothing India could do on this account.

The only solution appears to be to immediately compile a directory of all the citizens of Assam and issue identification to them without touching the citizenship issue. If Indian citizenship is linked to the identification card, then all Assamese militant groups would be up in arms, therefore the card has to be an instrument for simply enumerating the present population of Assam.

This would put a check on the illegal migration that is taking place continuously. But of course, why would governments who thrive on vote bank politics do such a thing?

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BIG BANG THEORY--FORMATION OF STARS

I wanted to post something today and felt the most appropriate would be the theory of the formation of the stars. I had a great fascination for astronomy as a boy and retain it even today.

The most accepted theory for the formation of the Universe is the Big Bang theory. This theory was propounded by Georges Lemaitre, a Belgian scientist in 1927. As per this theory, as the Universe is expanding today, it must have been constricted once upon a time. This theory has been modified a number of times by various other scientists, but the core philosophy of the theory remains.

As per this, probably between 4000-6000 crores years ago all the mass in the Universe is concentrated as a single whole, a primeval atom. Matter is extremely concentrated in this whole and perhaps all the matter of the Universe only occupied as much space as our present day Solar System.

The statistics of this Primeval atom are mind boggling. A cubic centimeter of matter from it would have weighed some 100 million tons. Matter becomes hotter as it constricts and colder when it expands and in this concentrated primeval atom the temperatures would have been so enormous that even atoms did not exists and neither did protons and electrons. The temperature would have been 100 billion degrees Kelvin one hundredth of a second after the Big Bang.

Only the neutrons remained in this primeval state and scientists have named this primeval matter as Neutronium. It would not have been possible for the matter to be in this intensely hot state for long and it would have exploded only in a fraction of time. The massive explosion threw matter in all directions and with the expansion they have cooled slowly to form atoms and later coalesce into stars and solar systems and planets.

CREDITABLE PERFORMANCE BY THE ATHLETICS TEAM AT THE OLYMPICS.

Okay, we may miss the Gold but India has come a long way in the Olympics. I have followed Olympics since 1968. Mostly Indian athletes with very few exceptions stood just nowhere. If we leave Hockey, wrestling was our only hope earlier.

We then slowly gained a footing in Shooting, Boxing and later in Archery. This time it is heartening to see the level of our athletics team increase. Krishna Punia and Vikas Gowda have done very well in the Discus throw. Krishna Punia stood 7th in her event and Vikas Gowda qualified for the final with 5th position. This is a record as no two members of our athletics team have ever qualified for the finals in the same Olympics. Add to this the wonderful performance of K.T.Irfan in the 20 KM walk who stood 10th. He did his best and broke the national record by a whole 2 minutes. 

I am giving below the Olympic finalists India had over the years:

1. Milkha Singh—400 meters—1960 Rome ---Stood only 4th after breaking the world record as all the first 4 competitors have broken the world record then. I have seen the film clippings of this guy running in the documentaries shown before the start of movies then. In all the races in India, the guy who came 2nd after him was always some 25 meters behind him.

2. Gurbachan Singh Ranadhava—110 meters hurdles----1964 Tokyo ----Stood 5th.

3. Sriram Singh---800 meters---1976 Montreal ---Stood 7th.

4. P.T.Usha----400 meters hurdles---1984 Los Angeles ----Stood 4th.

5. Anju Bobby George---Long Jump---2004 Athens----Stood 5th.

The increase in standards of our athletics team augurs well for our country and I am sure that a at least a few youngsters would get inspired and bring in better performances that would yield some medals in the next Olympics at Rio.