Neerja Chowdhury writes: A trip to the Prime Ministers’ Museum helps understand basic structure

The museum offers four technology-driven experiences to the visitors — a selfie and a walk with your favourite PM or a message from him or her; and a virtual helicopter ride into India of the future. It is not really surprising that 90 per cent of those who visit the museum want a selfie — or a walk — with the incumbent PM, Narendra Modi. He is the most popular among many and there are also those who want to go back home and show their friends that they could get a selfie with the PM of India!

Atal Behari Vajpayee and Jawaharlal Nehru vie for the second position in the popularity charts. Vajpayee because, as a college student from Assam put it, he went in for a nuclear test and took India to the global high table. The school girls from Nizamabad in Telangana opted for Nehru as their hero because “he fought for our country and made it great”. The next in line of popularity, according to those who man the museum, are “strong leader” Indira Gandhi and the diminutive Shastri who fought a war with Pakistan in 1965. Then comes Rajiv Gandhi because “he brought computers to the country”.

Many who come to visit the museum — and remember two-thirds of India today is under 35 — have not even heard of coalition-era PMs VP Singh, Chandra Shekhar, HD Deve Gowda, IK Gujral, or even PV Narasimha Rao. Even the PM before Modi, Dr Manmohan Singh, is “naa ke barabar”, almost history.

When I was in Aurangabad in Maharashtra recently sitting with a group of young OBC men and women who had benefitted from the policy of job reservations implemented by VP Singh, I found not one had heard his name.

It is well known that the house Nehru lived in at Teen Murti, which used to be the memorial for him has now become a part of the PM Museum. Curious about the treatment that Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi had been given, I found all major aspects of their premiership had been covered in the museum. There was also extensive coverage of Morarji Desai, even Charan Singh, the only PM who did not prove his majority. But then Charan Singh was a Jat and the Jats are important in the BJP’s scheme of things; Morarji was the first PM from Gujarat, the PM’s home state. The 1965 Indo-Pak war under Shastri, the 1971 creation of Bangladesh under Indira Gandhi and the 1999 Kargil war under Vajpayee get a special play, as they emphasise a muscular, martial India which has an appeal for many today.

Many youngsters pen the message “India is great”, “I love India” on the wall of messages. There is, however, a larger message that comes through the PM Museum: each prime minister stands on the shoulders of his/her predecessor, that gains made by each PM — they were all unique — were incremental, and that the story of India is a continuum.

From the edifice of modern institutions created under Nehru, to the Green Revolution and self-reliance under a strong leader such as Indira Gandhi, to the introduction of computers and connectivity under Rajiv Gandhi carried forward by his successors (today over 800 million have mobile phones, which has revolutionised their lives and occupations). Though the BJP’s PM Vajpayee went in for a nuclear test in 1998, for instance, it was the Congress’s Narasimha Rao who kept everything in readiness and advised him to do it.

The museum is a reminder that the prime ministers, for all their faults, functioned within the democratic structure, sometimes uncomfortably, and from time to time, they tried to push back. But even Indira Gandhi who suspended fundamental rights during the Emergency, restored them herself and called for elections in 1977 — and she lost. VP Singh’s decision to give “satta maen shirkat” to the neglected OBCs and the quarter-century coalition rule under Chandra Shekhar, Deve Gowda, IK Gujral, Vajpayee, and Manmohan Singh, which gave a voice to regional parties in national affairs — it went to deepen both democracy and the federal spirit. The rise of Narendra Modi as PM from the Most Backward Classes (MBCs) represented a further devolution of power, and he is now getting ready to make a bid for a third term in office which would bring him on par with Nehru.

And now, a question has been raised about the basics of the democratic setup we have had — by no less than the Vice President of India, that Parliament should become supreme in our scheme of things. The 1973 Kesavanand Bharati judgement, which Jagdeep Dhankhar has referred to, had represented a maturing of our democracy when it ruled, 7:6, that Parliament could change the Constitution, but not its basic structure. This was subsequently reinforced by the judiciary in several of its judgements (in the Minerva Mills, SR Bommai, and the Indra Sawhney cases).

Parliament is an elected body, accountable to the people, so goes the V-P’s argument; the judges are only appointed, not elected, and cannot dictate. But what about the possibility of “the tyranny of the majority” — left uncircumscribed — which could alter the fundamentals of the democratic structure we have had? As happened during the Emergency.

The Parliament-executive versus judiciary tussle has raged on for some time now. Our constitutional scheme of things has so far rested on a delicate balance between Parliament, which makes laws, the executive which implements them and the judiciary which is supposed to exercise a check on the arbitrary use of power. It is the restraint exercised by our PMs and leaders over the years to respect the “lakshman rekha”, and each other’s domain, despite provocations, which has kept the democratic system ticking, for all its shortcomings.

At the end of the day — and this is something we can never lose sight of — a country as diverse as India, the like of which does not exist anywhere in the world, needs federal functioning and individual freedoms. These freedoms cannot and should never be contingent on electoral victories. Today’s BJP has spent long years in the Opposition, surely it knows that all the attributes which make up the “basic structure” hold the nation together. So, ultimately, it is the Constitution, neither Parliament nor the judiciary, which has to be supreme. And once again, as in the past, it needs wise men and women at the helm to make it work.

Neerja Chowdhury, Contributing Editor, The Indian Express, has covered the last 10 Lok Sabha elections