Kaun Banayega Rashtrapati

The “futile attempts” referred to were in the context of the debates over the Hindu Code Bill. Nehru and his law minister, B.R. Ambedkar, were determined to reform the personal laws of Hindus and bring them in line with modern notions of gender justice. Rajendra Prasad, on the other hand, felt that the elders of the Hindu community had not been consulted about the impending changes in the law. This difference of views led to a minor constitutional crisis, documented by Granville Austin in his magnificent book on the Indian Constitution. After Prasad suggested that he could withhold assent from bills that did not meet with his approval, Nehru consulted the legal experts Alladi Krishnaswamy Ayyar and M.C. Setalvad. Setalvad, who was then attorney general, wrote that “by Article 74(1) the president is required to act in all matters with the aid and advice of his Council of Ministers”. Ayyar, who had played a crucial role in drafting the Constitution, said that the president’s role was analogous to that of the British monarch, and “there is no sphere of his functions in respect of which he can act without reference to the advice of his ministers”. He ominously added that if Prasad’s interpretation of his own role was allowed to pass uncontested, it “would upset the whole constitutional structure… (and) make the president a kind of dictator”.

Nehru passed on the correspondence to Prasad, who now backed off. For the rest of his term (which extended, with a re-election, until 1962) he was content simply to sign on the dotted line. That the Ayyar-Setalvad interpretation of the president’s role was the correct one is confirmed by two remarks of Ambedkar quoted by A.G. Noorani in an essay published in the Indian Express forty years ago. Speaking in the Constituent Assembly on November 4, 1948, Ambedkar said that under the draft of the Constitution being prepared, the president “is the head of the state but not of the executive… (He) will be generally bound by the advice of his ministers. He can do nothing contrary to their advice nor can he do anything without their advice.” Seven weeks later, Ambedkar said that “there is no case which can arise where the president would be called upon to discharge his functions without the advice of the prime minister or his cabinet”. “Under a parliamentary system of government,” remarked the law minister, “there are only two prerogatives which the king or the head of the state may exercise. One is the appointment of the prime minister and the other is the dissolution of Parliament.”

So long as the Government of India was run by majority governments even these two decisions were not really prerogatives. The president merely had to invite the leader of the party with a majority to become prime minister; and, roughly five years later, to dissolve Parliament and call fresh elections when asked to do so by the prime minister. However, in this age of governments run by coalitions of a dozen and more parties, governments that can be made and unmade by the desertion of a few MPs, the president can sometimes play a more proactive role. This explains the professed concern of the Left parties to appoint a “political” person as our next head of state, as well as the unspoken desire of the Congress president to have a loyalist elected to the post.

Parties seem to think of the role of the president as something between a figurehead and a rubber stamp. Sections of the public and the media, however, wish for a president who shall be something between an elder statesman and a national conscience. Hence the rash of stories that have appeared recently about how the next president should be a non-political Indian of distinction such as Amartya Sen or N.R. Narayana Murthy.

In this case, precedent and constitutional authority appear to be on the side of the politicians. Whatever the wishes and desires of the English-speaking middle class, the president was not intended to be an omniscient oracle correcting and chastising greedy and corrupt netas. We can, however, still wish for a president who will more gracefully fill the ornamental role of the office. We cannot, in the present system, get a president who will over-rule his ministers; but give us at least a president who can dress well and have an elegantly worded speech for every occasion.

The writer, a historian, recently published ‘India after Gandhi: The History of the World’s Largest Democracy’