President Pranab Mukherjee on Friday said the country “must always guard against majoritarianism” and India needed a strong Opposition standing guard.
The President cautioned against over-centralisation of power, and said a diverse country like India was best served by a parliamentary, and not a presidential, system of governance where power is delegated. He asked scholars and political scientists to analyse the consequences and long-term implications of moving away from the classic tenets of a parliamentary system.
The President, speaking at an event in Mumbai, left people in little doubt that his comments were in the context of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) winning in Uttar Pradesh and other states, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi emerging as the country’s most popular leader.
Mukherjee said he was “extremely happy” to hear Modi speak about the need for humility in the aftermath of his party’s victory in the recent elections, where the PM said while elections are determined on the basis of “bahumat”, or majority, the states will be governed on the principle of “sarvamat”, or consensus.
Possibly with Modi’s rising popularity in mind, the President cautioned against “hero worship” and spoke about the “misadventure” of Emergency by a “strong” leader like Indira Gandhi. He also spoke at length about the first PM Jawaharlal Nehru’s commitment to civil rights, democracy and his respect for Parliament as a forum for discussions and debates.
“(Jawaharlal) Nehru used to say, ‘I do not want India to be a country in which millions of people say yes to one man, I want a strong opposition’,” the President said. Nehru, Mukherjee said, “strongly discouraged all forms of hero worship” and had said that India was “too large a country with too many legitimate diversities to permit any so-called ‘strong man’ to trample over people and their ideas”.
Mukherjee said former PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee was a leader in the Nehruvian mould, who combined courtesy with political sagacity. “I have also been deeply impressed by the focussed approach, energy and capacity for hard work of Prime Minister Narendra Modi,” he said.
The President said there was none who has wielded power as effectively as Indira Gandhi did over a total period of 16 years as PM. He said “excessive power and popularity led to Mrs Gandhi making mistakes. The misadventure of Emergency is an example of this.”
He said it is also believed that the tendency to over-centralise decision-making, and the evolution of the Prime Minister’s Office into a powerful centre of decision-making, began from the tenure of Gandhi. The President said succeeding generations of leadership in India would be wise to learn from Gandhi’s strengths as well as her mistakes.
The President spoke at length about Nehru’s contribution in nursing democracy in India. Mukherjee said the Congress under Mahatma Gandhi and Nehru nominated 30 people from outside the party for the Constituent Assembly in July-August 1946. They did this to ensure that the Assembly was truly representative. Liberal representation was given to minorities, Scheduled Castes and Tribes and to eminent people, Mukherjee said. The President’s comments come in the context of the victorious BJP not having fielded a single Muslim candidate in the 403 assembly seats in Uttar Pradesh.
The President said Nehru was a firm believer in civil rights and democracy, and in 1948 was unhappy with the banning of the Communist Party in 1948 in West Bengal, even though he was against its policies. Mukherjee said he could often be seen sitting patiently through long and sometimes boring debates in Parliament. The Opposition has long criticised Modi for his long absences from Parliament.
The President said “one of the principal lessons India’s history teaches us is that united we stand, divided we fall.” He said: “Our past is replete with examples of how we have fallen when we failed to act unitedly and how we achieved wonders when we acted in unison.”