Unlike the Prime Minister, you as the President of India have the arduous task of “preserving, protecting and defending the Constitution of India”. It is a huge responsibility from which you cannot shy away.
By AJ Philip
Respected President Smt. Droupadi Murmu Ji,
I belong to a church whose liturgy has a compulsory prayer for you and your Council of ministers. Sunday after Sunday, we recite the prayer. Yesterday, my grandson, who is a Class X student, led the evening prayer at home. I was happy to hear him mention you by your designation.
We as a nation are proud of you and your achievements. We consider adivasis as the aborigines of the country. It is a measure of the greatness of our democracy that you could reach the highest position in the country and be the resident of the house, meant for the Viceroy, whose territory included Pakistan and Bangladesh.
We want you to remain happy and healthy so that you can discharge your onerous responsibilities as the head of state. And when you leave Rashtrapati Bhavan, we want to remember you as one of the great Presidents, if not the greatest.
As I write this letter, it is nearly two months since violence broke out in Manipur, pushing more than 40,000 people, mostly Adivasis, into relief camps where they possess nothing but the clothes they wear. I do not have to tell you that one of the great characteristics of an Adivasi is his sense of pride. He will starve but will not beg.
Alas, they were rendered destitute because those who were sworn in to uphold the Constitution preferred to look the other way as men and women filled with hatred were allowed to loot police armoury and use the weapons against fellow citizens only because they pray differently and use education to make advances in life.
They have been using practices, tested and tried by the Third Reich in Germany and the Croats and the Serbs in erstwhile Yugoslavia. The only lady minister in Manipur found her house at Imphal, looted and burnt by the mob. I saw a Union minister sobbing at the Aluva palace in Kerala where he was when his house at Imphal was put to the torch. He said he was an honest man who built the house with his hard-earned money.
Nearly 10,000 houses, over 500 churches, schools and other establishments have been burnt during the last two months. It is now one month since Home Minister Amit Shah went to Imphal, stayed there for three days and talked to a cross-section of the political leaders, though without any effect.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi who greeted Amitabh Bachchan, when he turned 80, did not have time to visit Manipur. The Manipuris were so disappointed that they destroyed their own transistor radios to protest against Modi’s failure to mention the attempt of ethnic-cleansing in his last Mann Ki Baath.
Nobody knows the exact death toll in Manipur but it is certainly in the hundreds. It is now two months since the Internet was shut down in the state to prevent the real news from reaching the people across the nation and the world. Whatever little has come out is horrifying, to say the least.
In 1959, when a woman named Glory was killed in police action, it was enough justification for President Rajendra Prasad to dismiss the first-ever elected Communist government in Kerala. If there is a fit case for dismissal of a government, Manipur provides the same.
You may wonder how you can intervene in Manipur, except at the instance of the Modi government. You may be beholden to the PM for your nomination but you were elected by the people of India, though not directly. You are no longer anyone’s subordinate.
I doubt whether you know that you have a greater responsibility to the nation than the Prime Minister. It is obvious in the Presidential oath, as prescribed by Article 60 of the Constitution.
Let me quote the oath you took: “I, Droupadi Murmu, do swear in the name of God that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the Republic of India, and will do to the best of my ability preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of India…”
The oath of the US President is more or less the same. No, I am not suggesting that you have the powers of the American President. Ours is not a Presidential system. The equivalent of the US President is the Prime Minister. In other words, Joe Biden’s counterpart is not you but Narendra Modi.
Yet, allowance has to be made for the fact that the Indian Prime Minister is required only to “bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of India as by law established”. The oath ends with the Prime Minister swearing to act “without fear or favour, affection or ill-will”.
Unlike the Prime Minister, you as the President of India have the arduous task of “preserving, protecting and defending the Constitution of India”. It is a huge responsibility from which you cannot shy away. On the subject, you may like to read The Indian President: An Insider’s Account of the Zail Singh Years by KC Singh (HarperCollins)
What the oath enjoins upon you is the duty to act if the Constitution is subverted in spirit and, sometimes, even in letter by the government. In other words, you are not a rubber stamp or a bird in a gilded cage, as Justice VR Krishna Iyer described the Indian President once. You cannot remain a silent spectator when a whole state has been literally burning.
The Governor of Manipur — whoever that gentleman is — is answerable to you as President. He has a duty to keep you informed about the goings-on in the state. Has he been doing it? He cannot take the stand that he has been keeping the Home Ministry informed.
As President, you have every right to ask for all kinds of information. You can even summon Modi and ask him what precisely he has done to end the killing, looting and burning spree in Manipur. In fact, he has a responsibility to inform you about any foreign visits he makes and their outcome.
Presidents like Rajendra Prasad, Giani Zail Singh and R. Venkataraman have used this right to get information. Getting information alone is not sufficient. You should also be able to advise the government and see to it that your advice is complied with expeditiously. I will give you one example.
The Modi government went out of the way to hastily enact three farm laws. Your predecessor, Ram Nath Kovind, did not even take a minute to put his signature on the Bills. He should have known that the heavens would not have fallen if the government had referred the Bills to a select committee, as demanded by the Opposition, or had allowed a threadbare discussion in Parliament.
Kovind could have studied the Bills and advised the Prime Minister against pressing them. Alternatively, he could have sent them back for reconsideration. Had he done so, the farmers agitation that lasted more than a year in which hundreds of farmers lost their lives could have been averted.
Ultimately, Modi had to withdraw the laws. Did the heavens fall? In fact, Kovind would have served him well by not becoming a rubber stamp. You may not remember that Rajiv Gandhi as Prime Minister introduced what was known as the Postal Bill. It amounted to an invasion of the citizen’s right to privacy.
The Bill empowered the government to read a person’s letter, get information and act accordingly. The Postal employees could have read and enjoyed love letters as part of their duty. President Venkataraman intervened and gave the young Prime Minister a face-saver by referring the Bill to the Attorney General.
I read a report this morning that the Aurangzeb Lane in New Delhi has been renamed APJ Abdul Kalam Lane. You may know that Kalam was not the first choice of the BJP. They wanted PC Alexander, who had a strong backing from the Shiv Sena but the Congress did not support him. Eventually, the Missile Man was chosen.
Kalam became President when the embers of the Gujarat riots were still burning. He wanted to visit Gujarat. The Atal Bihari Vajpayee government did not want him to go. He was even told that Chief Minister Narendra Modi might boycott him. To be fair to Kalam, he went to Gujarat and proved that he had what is called the vertebral column, also called the spinal column, made up of 33 vertebrae.
His predecessor was KR Narayanan, the first from the Scheduled Caste community to reach your position. He was in office when Godhra occurred and the bodies of the karsevaks were taken around to whip up passions that killed “790 Muslims” and “254 Hindus”, the latter mostly at the hands of the military and the police.
Narayanan’s eternal regret was that he could not do anything to stop the violence. True, he sent some letters to the Prime Minister expressing his agony. He could do nothing beyond that. Who knows, he probably expected another term. You are the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces and it vests in you enormous powers. Narayanan could have used it.
I remember Narayanan giving President Bill Clinton a lecture while he was in Delhi. He also scuttled Vajpayee’s move to confer Bharat Ratna on VD Savarkar and rewrite the Constitution. Thanks to him, the Justice Venkatachaliah Commission ended up suggesting measures to strengthen, rather than weaken, the Constitution.
I know that you served as the governor of Jharkhand and as a minister in the Odisha government. The most experienced President was Pranab Mukherjee. Do you know how he sullied his image? I am not referring to his decision to attend an RSS meeting soon after he retired as President.
He was the President when, on the advice of the Modi government, he imposed President’s rule in Uttarakhand. A floor test had already been ordered. There was a conflict of interest between his principal aide and secretary Omita Paul and her husband, Uttarakhand Governor KK Paul.
The decision was patently wrong. A Bench of the Uttarakhand High Court, headed by Chief Justice KM Joseph, quashed the imposition of President’s Rule. It was a body blow for both the government and the President. Of course, Justice Joseph had to pay a price. The government sat on the file recommending his name as a judge of the Supreme Court.
Finally, Justice Joseph was elevated to the Supreme Court but only after ensuring that he would not become the Chief Justice of India. He retired on June 16, 2023. How I wish President Mukherjee had not succumbed to pressure, both from the government and his own secretary. Again, who knows, he perhaps wanted a second term.
As you know, things are hotting up on the Uniform Civil Code issue. Modi has come out in the open suggesting the need for such a code. It has united the Opposition. That is, perhaps, what the Prime Minister wants. People will start discussing the UCC forgetting his failures on the employment and economic fronts.
Most people see it as a Muslim issue. As a tribal person, you know much better than me that the UCC would deprive the Adivasis of many of the rights they have been enjoying for centuries. Already voices of protest have come from tribal areas.
When the Hindu Code Bill was planned by Jawaharlal Nehru, he was at the zenith of his popularity. That did not prevent President Rajendra Prasad from restraining him. No, I am not a supporter of the then President’s stand. What I want to mention is that he had the courage of conviction to oppose the Bill tooth and nail. Finally, Nehru had to go slow on the Bill.
Of course, we no longer live in a country led by democrats like Nehru and Vajpayee. We live in a country where hatred is openly preached and places of worship are bulldozed or burnt. Instead of the law of the land, it is the law of the mob that is upheld.
I agree that you have your limitations. However, your oath necessitates you to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution. Nothing more or nothing less is required. Please be rest assured that we will continue to pray for you, President Droupadi Murmu Ji.
Yours etc
Courtesy: Indian Currents (www.Indiancurrents.org)