In December last year, the Bharatiya Janata Party-led (BJP-led) National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government in the Centre introduced The Constitution (One Hundred and Twenty-Ninth Amendment) Bill, 2024 and The Union Territories Laws (Amendment Bill) 2024 in the Lok Sabha.
The two Bills aim to implement the “One Nation, One Election” proposal that recommends simultaneous polls in the country to the Lok Sabha, state assemblies as well as local bodies (including panchayats and municipalities).
The Bills resulted in massive criticism from Opposition parties, who saw the system of holding simultaneous elections as a direct assault on the principle of federalism. Amid the opposition furore, the Bills were referred to a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) for detailed scrutiny.
The statement of objects and reasons mentioned in The Constitution (One Hundred and Twenty-Ninth Amendment) Bill, 2024 cites reasons such as expenses in conducting elections, the time-consuming process and imposition of Model Code of Conduct (MCC) in several parts of the country hindering development programmes to argue in favour of holding simultaneous elections.
While Opposition parties have repeatedly pointed out that the proposed legislations attack the “basic roots of federalism,” a fact that stands out is that the idea of “One Nation, One Election” closely resembles the vision of Madhav Sadashiv Rao Golwalkar, the second chief of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Golwalkar was a strong advocate for a country with a unitary form of government.
In his famous 1966 book Bunch of Thoughts – which is considered as the bible of the RSS – Golwalkar, who at the time was the sarsanghchalak of the RSS, had lambasted the federal structure of India, with the word “One Nation” figuring multiple times in the book.
Bunch of Thoughts, M.S Golwalkar, Rashtrotthana Sahitya, 2000.
As recorded in Bunch of Thoughts, Golwalkar’s idea of an ideal nation was a country that is homogenous in every aspect, governed by a single legislature. The staunch advocate of Hindutva viewed the present federal structure of a country with many linguistic states as to be one with “seeds of disruption.”
More than 70 years back, this ideology was also reflected in the 1951 manifesto of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS), the predecessor of the BJP.
“The Bharatiya culture is thus one and indivisible. Any talk of composite culture, therefore, is unrealistic, illogical and dangerous for it tends to weaken national unity and encourage fissiparous tendencies,” says the 1951 BJS manifesto.
In recent years, the BJP’s policies – be it the reading down of Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir without the consent of the erstwhile state’s government, increasing instances of lieutenant governors or governors interfering in the decisions of elected state and Union Territory legislatures and the conflicts with Opposition-ruled states – have signified a conscious shift of the saffron party towards a unitary and more centralised form of government.
In fact, even as the BJP has been vociferously talking about the benefits of a “double engine” government wherein state governments are ruled by the same party that is in power at the Centre, senior state leaders of the saffron party have been sidelined and replaced with handpicked faces – mostly with leaders with little mass support of their own – with the party’s central leadership calling the shots in the states as well.
The BJP’s consistent efforts to undermine federalism rings in perfect harmony with Golwalkar’s words.
The following extracts from Bunch of Thoughts demonstrate Golwalkar’s disdain for the federal structure of the country –
‘Framers of Constitution not rooted in the conviction of single homogenous nationhood’ (under subhead titled ‘The poisonous seed’)
“That the framers of our present Constitution also were not firmly rooted in the conviction of our single homogeneous nationhood is evident from the federal structure of our Constitution. Our country is now described as a Union of States. Those that were merely provinces in the former set-up are now given the status of States, with many exclusive powers.”
‘Federal structure has seeds of disruption’
“In fact, it was the fragmentation of our single national life in the past into so many exclusive political units that sowed the seeds of national disintegration and defeat. The present federal structure has in it the same seeds of disruption, which are already sprouting in the form of conflicts between States on boundary issues, allocation of river waters etc.”
‘Bury deep for good all talk of a federal structure of our country’s Constitution’
“Towards this end the most important and effective step will be to bury deep for good all talk of a federal structure of our country’s Constitution, to sweep away the existence of all ‘autonomous’ or semi-autonomous ‘states’ within the one State viz., Bharat and proclaim ‘One Country, One State, One Legislature, One Executive’ with no trace of fragmentational, regional, sectarian, linguistic or other types of pride being given a scope for playing havoc with our integrated harmony.”
‘Let the Constitution be re-examined and re-drafted to establish this Unitary form of Government’
“Let the Constitution be re-examined and re-drafted, so as to establish this Unitary form of Government and thus effectively disprove the mischievous propaganda indulged in by the British and so unwittingly imbibed by the present leaders, about our being just a juxtaposition of so many distinct ‘ethnic groups’ or ‘nationalities’ happening to live side by side and grouped together by the accident of geographical contiguity and one uniform supreme foreign domination.”
‘With a firm hand, change the present ill-conceived federal structure’
“Let our present leaders of the affairs of the state take courage in both hands, take a realistic view of things, envisage the dangers of disruption staring us in the face, face the misguided opposition of such ill-informed people as may happen to stoop to such opposition and, with a firm hand, change the present ill-conceived federal structure to the only correct form of government, the unitary one.”
‘One Homogeneous People, One Nation, will have been established’
“With one sweep all talk of fragmenting the country will have been silenced, the rising tide of disunity, distrust and hostility put down, and conditions for a harmonious evolution of One Homogeneous People, One Nation, will have been established. There is no doubt that barring some vociferous elements the mass of the people will stand solidly behind such a scheme and our present leaders shall go down into futurity as the successful builders of Bharatiya national solidarity, will be worshipped by posterity as modern manifestation of a Shankaracharya, as Bharatiya parallels of an Abraham Lincoln.”
‘One Country, One Legislature, One Executive Centre running the administration throughout the country’
“When one pauses to think of the conditions in which makers of this Constitution lived when they framed this Constitution one sees that the atmosphere then was extremely congenial to the formation and evolution of a Unitary State – One Country, One Legislature, One Executive Centre running the administration throughout the country- an expression of one homogeneous solid nation in Bharat or what remained of it then. But mind and reason of the leaders were conditioned by the obsession of ‘federation of states’ where each linguistic group enjoyed a ‘wide autonomy’ as ‘one people’ with its own separate language and culture.”