The dust had barely begun to settle over the contestable remarks made by prime minister Narendra Modi during the parliamentary debate on India’s constitution, when Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge intervened to fact-check many of his assertions against India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru and the Congress. In a pointed rebuttal on December 16, the leader of opposition in the Rajya Sabha put forward facts that may become unpalatable historical truths for the prime minister to face in the future.
Modi has been looking to rescue his party from widespread impressions of being anti-constitutional ever since the Lok Sabha polls. Such a perception was credited as the primary reason for the BJP’s relatively poor performance in the general elections. It finished as the single-largest party but ended up falling short of a majority by 32 seats – an unexpected twist after BJP had claimed it would cross 400 seats in the Lok Sabha.
In building such a political narrative, Modi used his time in the Lok Sabha to list a number of instances where he believed the Congress violated the constitution, even when his underlying motto was to prove his commitment to constitutional values. Through his fact-check, Kharge alleged that the prime minister used the Lok Sabha to mislead the nation by advancing historical falsehoods and spinning facts out of context for political gains.
As he took on Modi and his cabinet over their proclivity to peddle lies about constitutional history in the parliament, Kharge invoked Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Germany propaganda minister who established the idea – ‘repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth.’
A closer look at how Kharge contested Modi’s claims may be illustrative.
A timeline
First, Modi claimed that the Jawaharlal Nehru-led Congress autocratically introduced the first amendment to attack ‘constitutionally-mandated’ freedom of expression. Kharge contested the claim by saying that the first amendment was introduced in 1951 by the provisional parliament made up of the constituent assembly members. Elected representatives came into the Lok Sabha only after the first general elections in 1951 by which time the first amendment was already passed.
The Congress leader said that the first amendment introduced a new clause to impose “reasonable restriction” on Article 19 as the constituent assembly members deemed it appropriate to contain communal conflagrations. He said that the provisional parliament also included members like Hindutva leader Syama Prasad Mookerjee. He went on to say that the first amendment also included land reforms, made reservations constitutionally-mandated after a court judgement scrapped the quota system, and asked whether the BJP did not support those amendments.
Also read: Modi’s Lies and the Indian Media’s Dying Declaration
Sardar Patel
Secondly, Modi’s claimed that Nehru denied the more worthy Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel the position of prime minister despite the fact that 12 state committees of the Congress supported the latter’s leadership. Countering it, Kharge said that by the time India’s first general elections were conducted in 1951-52, Patel had already died. (Patel died on December 15, 1950).
Addressing Modi’s contention that Patel was wrongfully forced to play second fiddle to Nehru in the interim government between 1947-50 when he served as the deputy prime minister, Kharge said that Nehru became the prime minister of the interim government after the Congress’s executive council chose him as the leader in the 1946 Cabinet Mission Plan that was appointed to ensure a peaceful transfer of power.
‘Proving Churchill wrong’
Thirdly, Modi’s allegation that the Nehru-Gandhi family hijacked the Congress in what he thought was akin to its inherent anti-constitutional spirit was also contested by Kharge. The Rajya Sabha’s leader of opposition and Congress president asserted that it was Nehru who dedicatedly held the constitutional light high even amidst the turbulence of nationalist movement. He said that as early as 1931, Nehru initiated party resolutions on fundamental rights in the Karachi session of the Congress, then under the presidency of Sardar Patel. He added that fundamental rights of Indians went on to become the core campaign of the Congress during the 1937 provincial elections.
Kharge also said that the Congress’s commitment to constitutional values reflected in independent India’s decision to grant universal adult franchise, even when many powerful countries had denied women and vulnerable sections of population the right to vote. It was Nehru who took India on a democratic path and proved leaders like Winston Churchill, who believed that an independent India would slip into chaos, wrong, the Congress president said.
Later improvements
He spoke about how the 73rd and 74th amendments legislating local governments, steps like bank nationalisation during Indira Gandhi’s government, introduction of socialist and secular in the preamble that was approved by the Supreme Court as part of the basic structure of the constitution emboldened India’s constitutional values.
He then highlighted about Congress government’s legislations like the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, the Food Security Act, and Right to Education as significant steps to empower the poor, contrasting these with Modi’s allegation that the Congress governments in the past were only used as vehicles to make the Nehru-Gandhi family stronger than before and to crush the fundamental values of the constitution. He drew parallels with these significant moments with “false” promises of the Modi government like generating two crore jobs every year and transferring Rs 15 lakhs to every Indian bank account.
Flag and other inaccuracies
The Congress leader also contested Modi’s claims by quoting from letters written to Nehru by Mahatma Gandhi in 1948, where he spoke about Nehru’s stubbornness to first institutionalise a liberal constitution. He quoted a letter by Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, where he credited the Congress and its leaders for giving a sense of order to the constituent assembly. He also cited Sardar Patel’s letter to Nehru where he effusively praised the friendship between the two and urged him not to get affected by the allegations of their rivalry by some political groups.
As Kharge elaborated on Modi’s alleged “falsehoods”, he also cited the RSS’s mouthpiece Organiser to show how BJP’s previous avatar Jan Sangh and other Hindutva organisations did not approve of the national flag. “It was only after a court order that the RSS hoisted the national flag in 2002,” he said, while also mentioning Dr. Ambedkar’s opposition to the Sangh parivar’s insistence on having a saffron flag as the national symbol at a 1948 event in Mumbai railway station.
Kharge agreed that the Emergency during Indira Gandhi’s government was a mistake but added that the Congress realised its mistake soon and came into power with a whopping majority in the 1980 general elections under Indira’s leadership. In contrast, he said, the Modi government has refused to learn from its mistakes and continues to violate the Constitution by imposing autocratic measures and creating an environment of fear among people.
‘Breach of privilege due’
The two speeches have triggered a sharp debate among observers on how parliament should respond if a prime minister has misled or advanced falsehoods on record.
Former secretary-general of the Lok Sabha secretariat P.D.T. Achary told The Wire that the Congress could move a Breach of Privilege motion in the parliament to decide whether the prime minister can be punished or not. Whether the Congress takes such a step remains to be seen.
“Article 19 until the first amendment allowed concerns around national security and a possible overthrow of the government as reasons to impose restrictions of freedom of expression. The first amendment introduced “public order” also as a ground for “reasonable restrictions” in Article 19, after the Supreme Court in a case said that “public order” was inherent in issues of security and overthrow of the government,” he said.
“Prime minister Modi, while decrying the first amendment, should clarify if he also opposes “public order” as a ground for restricting Article 19. He may think so, but then he has to take a stand, and Kharge should also pose this question to him. After all, BJP governments have a long record of using ‘public order’ as a reasonable restriction to bring draconian laws and arrest protestors and dissenters,” he said.
A version of this piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire & Galileo Ideas – and has been updated and republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.
