Wednesday, 31 December 2014

WHEN THE CONSTITUTION OF INDIA WAS AMENDED FOR THE FIRST TIME



65 Years ago on this day, we, the people of India, gave ourselves the Constitution and declared India a sovereign republic. The Constitution of India was a huge document, the largest in the world, and was a symbol of the aspiration of the masses. 65 years down the line it has undergone a number of amendments to keep pace with time and as on date it has been amended more than a hundred times. In this backdrop, when we today celebrate the Republic day, an insight into the political developments that led to an amendment of this document for the first time makes for interesting study. The first amendment was carried out as early as 1951 i.e. only after a year after its adoption, even though the document had taken nearly three years to complete and was drafted by an august assembly of over 480 eminent personalities who had taken due care and diligence in drafting the document taking into account the existing political and social conditions of the nation and its future goals.

The arrival of Lord Louis Mountbatten in India in February 1947 as the last Viceroy of the British monarch set the deck for transfer of power in India. The Constituent Assembly had already come into existence on 6th December 1946 with 482 members of which 389 came from British provinces while the rest 93 were from the Indian princely states. The Assembly had eminent personalities of the day as its member and it included freedom fighters, barristers, educationists, and leading luminaries from all walks of life. The Constituent Assembly embarked on its job in right earnest calling its first meeting as early as on 9th December 1946 and adopted the “Objective Resolution” proposed by Pandit J. L. Nehru on 13th instant. This “Objective Resolution” set the tone and tenor of the task at hand of this august gathering. The arrival of Mountbatten with clear instructions on the transfer of powers expedited this process of the framing of the Constitution. After independence, the truncated Constituent Assembly with 369 members (299 from British Province and 70 from the Princely States) carried on with its work and by February 1948 the first draft of the Indian Constitution was published. The second reading of the Constitution was completed on 17th October 1949. The third and final reading was completed on 26th November 1949 and thus after the passage of two years, eleven months and twenty-one days, the effort of 369 leaders culminated in adoption of Constitution on 26th January 1950. The Constitution of India was unique in the sense that it was the longest written constitution in the world and it borrowed the positive features of a number of Constitutions, thus making it a complete document.

The transfer of powers to the government of the two dominions namely India and Pakistan on 15th August 1947 had led to the formation of Government in States also. The popular government of the States vied with each other in expediting the process of establishing a welfare state. In Bihar, Congress formed the government under the leadership of Sri. Krishna Sinha. Krishna Ballabh Sahay was made the Revenue Minister in Sri Krishna Sinha’s ministry. At the same time, K. B. Sahay along with his mentor Sri Krishna Sinha and 34 other leaders from Bihar were also the members of the Constituent Assembly and had contributed to the process of Constitution writing. K. B. Sahay was keen at changing the land settlement systems established by the British, especially the Permanent Settlement introduced by Lord Cornwallis in 1793 in Bihar, Bengal and Gangetic plains, since these were oppressive to the peasants and was loaded in favour of the Zamindars- a class which was largely loyal to the British. He was of the opinion that in order to develop a welfare State, the Zamindari system, which was a natural by-product of Permanent Settlement, must go. Even during the independence struggle K. B. Sahay had taken up the issue of peasants’ emancipation from the cruel hands of Zamindars. During the twenty-eight months rule of the Congress in 1937-1939, K. B. Sahay, as one of the two Parliament Secretary, under the tutelage of Sri Krishna Sinha was instrumental in the introduction of a number of measures for the welfare of peasants. These measures included a reduction in rent; giving occupancy rights to ryots with absolute right to transfer their holding for a nominal payment to the landlord and ownership rights to under ryots if they had tilled the land for the last twelve years. The landlord’s share in crop production was decreased to 9/20 and all land seized during the period of 1929 to 1937 (bakasht land) were restored to the previous tenant against payment of the nominal amount. More importantly, the landlord’s power to realize rent was greatly reduced and their powers to attach land or charge rent whimsically or to get the tenant imprisoned for their inability to pay rent were taken away. All these measures fell short of the actual abolition of the Zamindari System. However, the Sri Krishna Sinha’s ministry was unable to abolish Zamindari during this period despite all efforts of K. B. Sahayonly because the constitutional structure of the 1935 Act did not extend adequate powers to the provincial Ministries. Moreover, the administrative set-up, of which Zamindars were an integral part, was protected by Viceroy at Centre and by the Governor at State level.

In this background when K. B. Sahay took over as the Revenue Minister of Bihar after independence, he made it his goal to introduce legislation to abolish the Zamindari System. K. B. Sahay regarded Zamindars as petty rulers whose loyalty rested largely with the British. He believed that, while at the macro level merger of princely state was essential for the integration of the nation geographically, abolition of the Zamindari System was essential for social integration of the nation the micro-level.  

With this aim in mind, K. B.Sahay made an in-depth study of the revenue settlement of the British, particularly the Permanent Settlement Act, 1793. He even visited the National Library at Calcutta with his close aid Mr. Bajrang Sahay- a lawyer of eminence of Patna High Court to study the legalities of this Act in order to draft a suitable legislation as its replacement. This apart, K. B. Sahay also made an in-depth study of the rural class composition where the Permanent Settlement was in force. In the 1950s, there were 2, 05,927 regularly revenue-paying, permanently settled, holdings. They accounted for 90% of the land area. Legally the Zamindars were considered to be the owners of the land. But in reality, their role was that of government-appointed middlemen who collected revenue from the title-holders. Revenue used to be paid in cash to the government and it used to be 90% of the revenue paid by the title-holders to the Zamindars. But Zamindars had the right to collect any amount of revenue as they wished from the title-holders. And then there were the title-holders at the second level who had obtained the right from the owners of the land or from other title-holders to collect revenue. At the third level, there were the occupancy ryots who used to pay revenue for the land they had occupied and cultivated the lands by themselves or with the help of the members of their family or by hired labourers or with the help of their partners. They could transfer their rights to someone else. Below them were the non-occupancy ryots who had to pay revenue for occupying the land on a temporary basis. Then there were sub-tenants who had to pay revenue for getting land on a temporary basis from the ryots. At the lowest level of this arrangement were the labourers who in spite of putting in very hard labour did not have any right on the land and who were caught in various exploitative agrarian relations. Thus the Zamindars were nothing more than a middleman, a creeper in the words of Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel. The Zamindari Abolition legislation drafted by K. B. Sahay tended to improve the lot of the downtrodden peasants and landless labourers, relieving them from the cruel clutches of Zamindars.

Ever since the intentions of the Bihar Government to abolish the Zamindari system became clear to the clan of Zamindars, they came to unite under the leadership of Raja Kameshwar Singh of Darbhanga in north Bihar and Raja Kamakhya of the Ramgarh estate in south Bihar to oppose it tooth and nail. The almost abrupt uprising of the Zamindars had an alarming effect, so much so that at one stage even Gandhi came to question the propriety of bringing about social change through legislative measures. The opposition faced by K. B. Sahay during this period (1946 to 1948) was unparalleled. K. B. Sahay found himself almost alone in his crusade for land reforms in these formative years. At a time when politics and to a large extent, society was controlled by the landed gentry, it was no mean achievement for K. B. Sahay to come up with the Bill which was sure to cause convulsions in the tradition-bound, land steeped society. Sure enough, the entire land owning class controlled by the rajas and Zamindars who went about displaying the honours and titles bestowed to them by an alien ruler for the service rendered to the latter, ganged up against him. Apart from legal maneuvers that they resorted to, the Zamindars made direct appeals to the national leaders with a view to stemming the tide against them and arresting the historical process. Dr. Rajendra Prasad, who became the first President of the Indian Republic lent a receptive ear to them and wrote to K. B. Sahay: “Any hope that you may have of giving satisfaction to tenants by simply getting rid of Zamindars is doomed to failure unless it is accomplished by some positive steps for the betterment of the tenants’ lot but I gathered….that you were not thinking of the next step and that for the present you would be satisfied if you can remove the Zamindars…. I have never been able to understand the justice or fairness of depriving a man of the management of his propriety.” In picking holes in the Act, Dr. Prasad had, perhaps, been influenced by the large number of memoranda and telegrams, one of which read: “HON’BLE RAJENDRA PRASAD NEW DELHI IN HONOUR GANDHI-JAYANTI APPEALING PEACE KINDLY DROP ABOLITION ZAMINDARI SAVE COUNTRY CIVIL WAR” sent to him by the Zamindars. Since they had to eat humble pie they sought to undermine K. B. Sahay’s political career.

However, K. B. Sahay could go ahead with the epoch-making legislation despite the bitter opposition it generated among even a section of the ruling party with the support of Sri Krishna Sinha- the then Chief Minister of Bihar. Bihar under K. B. Sahay was the first to introduce legislation to abolish Zamindari. The challenge before K.B. Sahay to present the Bill on the floor of the House was so immense that an attempt was made to even physically eliminate him. K. B. Sahay survived this assault and when he presented the Bill on the floor of Bihar Legislative Assembly in 1947, head bandaged and bleeding profusely, he was the epitome of agrarian reforms in independent India. It was a historic moment. The Bill was passed by the Bihar Government as the Zamindari Abolition Act in 1947. It was further amended in 1948 and published as Bihar Zamindari Abolition Act, 1948. With this Act, the rights of Zamindars and title-holders on land and at the same time trees, forests, fish-breeding ponds, markets, mines and minerals, were legally terminated. And all these rights came to be directly vested with the State Government.

The Zamindars sprung up in quick opposition to this Act and challenged it in the Patna High Court on grounds of violation of their Fundamental Rights. The courts accepted their plea and issued injunctions restraining the State from implementing it. Finally, the Act was set aside by the Patna High Court, as it felt it had contravened some provisions of the Constitution.

This set the stage for the first amendment to the Indian Constitution. The Central Government of Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru stepped in to introduce the first amendment to the Indian Constitution to strike down the Patna High Court verdict. Addressing the Parliament, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru presented the Statement of Objects and Reasons of this Amendment on 10th May 1951. This statement was appended to the Constitution (First Amendment) Bill, 1951 which was enacted as the Constitution (First Amendment) Act, 1951, and read as under:

Another article in regard to which unanticipated difficulties have arisen is Article 31. The validity of agrarian reform measures passed by the State Legislatures in the last three years has, in spite of the provisions of clauses (4) and (6) of Article 31, formed the subject-matter of dilatory litigation, as a result of which the implementation of these important measures, affecting large numbers of people, has been held up.

The main objects of this Bill are, accordingly to amend Article 19 for the purposes indicated above and to insert provisions fully securing the constitutional validity of Zamindari abolition laws in general and certain specified State Acts in particular.

14. Addition of Ninth Schedule.-After the Eighth Schedule to the Constitution, the following Schedule shall be added, namely:-

"NINTH SCHEDULE [Article 31B]
1. The Bihar Land Reforms Act, 1950 (Bihar Act XXX of 1950).”

Article 31B imposes restriction on Article 31 in so far as provisions of Land Reforms Acts are concerned. A new Schedule was added to the Constitution incorporating the Bihar Land Reforms Act (Bihar Act XXX of 1950). Thus the Bill drafted by Sri. K. B. Sahay and passed by the Bihar Legislative Assembly as Bihar Land Reforms Act (Bihar Act XXX of 1950) was the first piece of legislation to get a place in the Ninth Schedule of the Indian Constitution. It is the genius and effort of K. B. Sahay that gets acknowledged as the Ninth Schedule of the Indian Constitution which was incorporated through the first amendment to the document. Henceforth all legislation on land reforms came to be placed under this Schedule making them immune from the Fundamental Rights granted under Article 31.

This Amendment to the Constitution was also challenged by the Zamindars in the Supreme Court which, however, held the amendment valid. The Zamindars could only take solace from the fact that they could earn a respite from the law which promised to “replace the Zamindari system of land tenure by a Ryotbari system under which raiyats will hold their lands directly under the provincial government (Bihar) and to transfer to the Provincial Government all the rights of proprietors and tenure holders in land, including rights in forests, fisheries and minerals” for as long as 5 years.

As an epilogue to this story of the first amendment to the Indian Constitution, it is worth mentioning that K. B. Sahay had staked his political career in ensuring passage of the Zamindari Abolition Bill. His grit and determination can well be judged from the fact that no leader after him ever had the courage to take up these reforms with the same authority and strength. No wonder he is regarded as the “Iron man of Bihar” on the same line as Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel is regarded as the “Iron Man of India”. By eliminating the Zamindars and their fiefdom K. B. Sahay was successful in the integration of the nation at the village level and therefore can well be regarded as the “ChhotaSardar”. His leadership qualities and his contribution were acknowledged by the leading newspaper of Bihar of those days in the following words: “The genius of Mr. K. B. Sahay was not restricted to land reforms only. Bihar has not produced a better administrator than Mr. K. B. Sahay. He was ruthless. All the files of the departments he held charge in various capacities were almost on his fingertips, so prodigious was his memory. No officer could bluff him. During the regime of Dr. Sri Krishna Sinha he was the main spirit behind all the reform measures introduced by the Congress government. And he had the traits of a soldier; he was straight forward in his dealings and quick in decisions-right or wrong. Efficient and smart as he was he could not tolerate slackness and inefficiency. Not a few institutions in this state of Bihar owe their origin to the zeal of Mr. K. B. Sahay-the one time Iron Man of Bihar.”(The Indian Nation, 04.06.1974). It was this administrative skill of politicians like K. B. Sahay that had put Bihar on a high pedestal and had led Appleby Committee to declare Bihar to be India’s best-administered state in those days. It is high time the nation acknowledges the contribution of this son of the soil and the Government of India issues a special commemorative postage stamp in his name in the freedom fighters series. This will be a fitting tribute to this forgotten hero whose single-handed effort led not only to the abolition of Zamindari system in India and paving the way for social justice in the process but also caused to be instrumental in effecting an amendment to the Indian Constitution for the first time.

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