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Ashok Mitra

'The fight against the RSS is an ethical confrontation; to invoke Article 356 for the purpose would have been scandalous and depressing'

To Marxist-Leninists, the expression "the policy of the principle" has a familiar, almost religious, ring. They have been brought up to revere the essence of the policy of the principle, their ideology embodies, whatever the circumstances. Life is not worth living, the zealots have been admonished, if this code is breached. How come then that, at least, in some circles in this country, there is temptation to abandon the principle?

Article 356 has been a bete noire to non-Congress groups from the day the Constitution became operational. The democratically elected Communist regime in Kerala was blatantly dismissed in 1959 through recourse to Article 356. Since then it has been a particular anathema to Leftist groups and a prime example of the class character of the Constitution. Its pretence of upholding democratic notions was hollow to the core.

Article 356 takes away the right of a state government to continue in its own manner when such conduct is in conflict with the views and attitudes of the government at the Centre. This is negation of democracy and cuts athwart the notion of India being a union of states.

The Left kept protesting against Article 356. The Indian National Congress, which had a stranglehold on the administration in New Delhi, could not care less. Indira Gandhi in particular could not care less. Application of Article 356 became habit-forming with her. She used it to get rid of parties opposed to her from holding charge of state governments even when they continued to enjoy an indisputable majority in the state assemblies; even Congress chief ministers whose faces or manners were not to her liking received the treatment under Article 356, and found themselves without any occupation. No prior notice was served in any of the instances.

All of which infuriated the Left beyond measure. While you wait and prepare for the Revolution, it is the policy of the principle to attempt to mobilise the masses against the more repulsive features of the current regime. So there was no question of not manning the barricades when the issue was Article 356. And when the Left Front emerged triumphant in West Bengal, soon to be followed by similar triumphs in Kerala and Tripura, the abrogation of Article 356 became one of the issues pitchforked into prominence.

The din reached a crescendo. Centre-state relations must, of course, be drastically realigned, with more power and resources transferred to the states, and that abomination, Article 356, must be thrown out of the window once and for ever. Two national conferences, one at Calcutta and the other at Srinagar, were organised in close succession during the first half of the 1980s to fortify the demand for altering Centre-state relations and eliminating the provision of Article 356.

Led by the Leftists, the entire Opposition vociferously asserted their positions. Most of the present characters dancing on the national political stage were there at the conferences. The Karunanidhis and the NTRs played stellar roles. Mr Laloo Prasad Yadav was still not in the picture. It was Karpoori Thakur who led the radical elements from Bihar. Similarly, Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav was yet only a middle-level leader in the JD, it was still the pre-VP Singh era and the OBCs were yet to bare their fangs. The BSP was still out of the reckoning. Never mind there was fire and brimstone at the two conferences; Article 356 was flayed, such was also the fate of the other considered-to-be-reactionary and moribund parts of the Constitution.

Soon, in the wake of the mean games Indira Gandhi played in Andhra Pradesh, a situation of near-uprising emerged in that state. The Centre was forced to constitute the Sarkaria Commission on Centre-state relations. The political parties and the state administrations which had mobilised public opinion against Article 356 had another opportunity to place on record their distaste for the infamous Article; most of them called for the removal of this article from the corpus of the Constitution.

Apart from the presiding judge, the Sarkaria Commission consisted of two seasoned civil servants and they would not go quite all the way with the proposal to scrap the Article. But the Commission did not fail to make it explicit in its report the near-universal misgiving over the presence of this patently anti-democratic provision in the Constitution.

It referred to the several instances of its gross misuse and expressed concern at the implications of the arbitrary powers acquired by the governor on account of the Article. The governor's discretion must not be the criterion for judging whether a chief minister or one aspiring to be a chief minister has the necessary majority in the state assembly. That matter has to be decided on the floor of the assembly and any attempt on the part of the governor to destabilise, or install a chief minister by invoking his discretionary powers under Article 356 are to be strongly disapproved of.

The parties who now comprise the UF had been, over the past decades, the strongest defenders of the point of view adumbrated by the Sarkaria Commission. Some of them have even expressed opinions which would suggest that they would like the Article to be removed from the body of the Constitution. That they have not taken any concrete move toward that direction was, it was thought, because they were not sure, given the lie of the land, whether they would have a parliamentary majority in support of the amendment they might move for the purpose.

In the context of such history -- history which is hardly ancient. The enthusiasm demonstrated during the confusing days of October to avail of the golden mechanism of Article 356 to prevent the installation of the BJP regime in UP was an extraordinary piece of not just compromising, but compulsively ditching the policy of the principle.

A thousand reasons can be advanced to establish the point that it would, in the long run, be disastrous for the nation to permit the BJP a free run either in UP or anywhere else. But if the objective is to stop the BJP in its track, the means to be adopted ought to be democratic to the core. The fight against the RSS and its cohorts is an ethical confrontation; it has to be fought on moral grounds and with clean and honest weaponary. To invoke Article 356 for the purpose would have been, to say the least, as much scandalous as depressing.

That the constituents of the United Front, at the brink, were saved from the stigma of the calumny which the act would have brought on them, is not because of any last-minute reconsideration on their part. They were saved only by the intervention of the otherwise mild-mannered President. One shudders to think what the upshot would have been if these mild manners had prevailed over the President's uneasy conscience.

It would, nonetheless, be a sad occurrence if, faced with a situation where the Republic's largest constituent state is in danger of being gobbled up by the BJP, the Left could think of no other programme or stratagem than the snap invocation of Article 356. Nothing could be more foolish, and it is a pity that, even if for a bare 24 hours, the Left fell a victim to the temptation to ditch moral principles for the sake of expediency.

But taking the stance the Left had taken, even if it be temporarily, it was on the point of perpetrating another outrageous historical blunder. The emerging trends are obvious: The Centre in the Union of India is in progressive decline, and the states are gradually emerging to the fore.

Those who had once propounded the view that the diversity that is India can survive as a political entity only if the states are allowed to expand the range of their sovereignty must not be caught on the wrong foot. In case they are, it would be no sin to hurl at them the invective of two-timers devoid of basic morality.

Ashok Mitra