By – Amar Yumnam
From about the turn of the century, two things have characterized the Social Sciences. First, the traditional boundaries are almost disappeared. Second, the consequential impact has been a rethinking and relook at the familiar explanations in all the disciplines of the Social Science. In my own subject, Economics, my understanding of a social issue (it is no longer economic alone), I must have some knowledge of contextual Sociology, Culture, Philosophy, Psychology, Political Thoughts and evolution of ideas over the centuries. So when we see a book-shop looking like selling recent books, we cannot resist. A few days back, while coming back to India, my wife and I landed at the Cochin Airport. While she was relaxing awaiting the connecting flight, I just got into a nearest bookshop. I did buy some very recently published books.
One of the books I purchased is a presently widely discussed one and titled as Assembling India’s Constitution: A New Democratic History. It is written by Rohit De of Yale University and Ornit Shani of Haifa University. It is the subtitle which attracted me and the book live up to it. Challenging the history written so far of some elites writing the Constitution to “simply render half the country’s territory and about a third of its population invisible”, the book argues: “The constitution-making processes in the princely states and in the tribal areas…were key to the making of an Indian constitution.” In the book of 374 pages, Manipur and other princely states are mentioned in five places collectively, but the book devotes specified pages only on Manipur (150-161). This specific reference and discussion is on the rationale that “Manipur’s constitution stood out among the states’ constitutions for its democratic orientation, which provided for a universal adult franchise more than three years before India did so.” Authors admire how the Maharaja Bodhchandra must have felt the pride on 18 October 1948 while inaugurating “the pinnacle of a long process of democratization and transfer of power from the ruler to the people of the state.” The book laments with surprise: “Despite occupying such a strategic position on the forming map of the new country, and being a pioneer in the direction of democratic government, none of the main Indian English newspapers covered the inauguration of Manipur’s first Legislative Assembly, or the constitutional developments in the state over the preceding two years.” The book beautifully records the process of Manipur: “After elections were held in phases over a series of two weeks in June 1948, the inauguration of the State Legislative Assembly was set for 18 October 1948 (to allow time for many pending election petitions of the Hill people to be resolved). The Manipur Legislative Assembly immediately got to work, holding regular sessions, passing numerous laws and ordinances, and publishing its proceedings in the Manipur State Gazette.”
The book records that all the praiseworthy constitutional processes of Manipur “came to naught when, on 21 September 1949, the Maharaja was detained and pressed into signing the Merger Agreement …while in his Shillong Residence.” The value of democracy held by the Maharajah is well reflected when he wrote on 18 September 1949 to the governor of Assam that “the sovereignty of the state has been vested in the people, [therefore] it would be in the fitness of things to hear the people’s voice and learn the sentiment so that the line of action may not in any case be unconstitutional.” The Chief Minister of Manipur also conveyed the invalidity of the Agreement without consulting the people.
Butt all these were of “no avail” as the “governor of Assam ….posted a battalion of Assam Rifles in Manipur.” But annexing Manipur just like that was not possible. “Finding no legal way to bypassing Manipur’s constitution, the Ministry of States resorted to an unconstitutional path. Under Delhi’s persistent pressure, Dewan, Maj. General Rawal Amar Singh, was appointed, or rather imposed, on Manipur in April 1949.” Manipur had no representation to the Constituent Assembly but was turned on 23 January 1950 to a “province to be administered by a bureaucrat, a chief commissioner. It was denied a legislative assembly for the next twenty-three years only finally becoming a state within the Indian Union in 1972.”. The authors emphasize: “In Manipur, the Indian government did not ‘foster the growth of democratic institutions’, as it claimed to do in the princely states. The Indian Constituent Assembly did not give the people of Manipur rights or democracy. Manipur’s people gave those rights to themselves through a constitution that was, according to the Gauhati High Court, ‘sufficiently democratic’. …. The Indian government took away from the people of Manipur the rights they gave themselves.”
With the issues and rethinking of the acts committed on Manipur becoming a globally discussed issue, we need to reexamine the characters of Indian Federalism and the Assam Rifles.