‘The Triple Stream’

BY K. RAMAKOTISWARA RAU ^l

Welcome to ‘K. C.’

A new Volume of ‘Triveni’ begins with this number. I cannot claim to have made a great success of the Journal, but ‘Triveni’ has played a notable part in the renaissance of Indian culture during the last two decades. Leading litterateurs, art-lovers, and publicists from all parts of India have contributed to its pages and enabled it to maintain a standard of excellence. The present period is a hectic one, in which politics is too much with us and cultural values do not obtain due recognition. But this is a passing phase.

I am grateful to the members of the Advisory Board for their continued interest in the Journal. With the passing away of Justice V. Govindarajachari, there was a gap in its membership which I have not had the heart to fill. But the Publisher–a dear nephew of mine–was so charmed with the personality and the varied gifts of Sri K. Chandrasekharan that, immediately after the first meeting between them he urged that ‘K. C.’ should be invited to occupy a place on the Advisory Board. I could not say ‘No’, though it was not clear to me how Chandrasekharan could thereby be brought closer to ‘Triveni’ than he has always been: he is the one person who has worried him-self about ‘Triveni’ even more than the Editor. Govindarajachari belonged to my generation; his presence on the Board meant a great deal to me. I am feeling old and tired, and this work must pass on to younger men like M. Chalapathi Rau and Manjeri S. Isvaran. And Chandrasekharan must be, to them and to the Publisher, what Govindarajachari was to me. So, this number will mark the beginning of the transition from the old to the new. We offer Chandrasekharan a most affectionate welcome.

Amending the constitution

Within sixteen months of the inauguration of the Indian Constitution, it is undergoing a change, on the initiative of the Party which won Independence for India and was mainly responsible for framing the Constitution. The procedure outlined in Article 368 for the amendment of the Constitution cannot be followed in its entirety, for the Council of States and the House of the People of the Union Parliament are not yet in being. According to clause (1) of Article 379, “the body functioning as the Constituent Assembly of the Dominion of India immediately before the commencement of this Constitution shall be the provisional Parliament and shall exercise all the powers and perform all the duties conferred by the provisions of this Constitution on Parliament.” Doubts have been expressed if the ‘powers’ and ‘duties’ thus conferred extend to the amendment of the Constitution. But it cannot have been the intention of the framers of the Constitution to abridge the competence of the provisional Parliament, and make it impossible for any amendment to be proposed till such time as the new Houses of Parliament start functioning. Every written Constitution carries within itself the power of amendment, though a special procedure is always provided. So as to distinguish constitutional amendments from ordinary enactments of the Legislature. In the present instance, our provisional Parliament is entitled to amend the Constitution subject only to compliance with the rule relating to a special majority.

It is not, however, the purely legal aspect of the Amending Bill that has exercised the minds of publicists and journalists all over India. The General Elections are coming off in November, and it is improper for an ad hoc body like the provisional Parliament to anticipate the decision of the newly elected Legislatures. If certain laws have been declared ultra vires of the Constitution by the Supreme Court and the High Courts, the Party in power ought not to circumvent the decisions of those tribunals by a too hasty recourse to amendments of the Constitution, especially when those amendments are likely to infringe the fundamental rights guaranteed by the Constitution. Public opinion must be allowed to express itself through the ballot box at the coming elections, and it will be time enough next April or May for the newly constituted Government and Parliament to address themselves to the task of amending the Constitution. But the Nehru Government preferred to rush the Bill through the present Legislature; it has thereby enhanced its power but not its prestige.

The provisions of the Bill relating to “freedom of speech and expression” (Art. 19) and “discrimination against any citizen on grounds only of religion, race, caste, etc.” (Art. 15) have roused the most vehement opposition. The Select Committee, no doubt, effected an improvement by adding the word ‘reasonable’ in the amendment to 19 (2), thus making any relevant laws of the Union and State Legislatures justiciable, but the Committee rendered a disservice to the cause of progress by considerably widening the scope of the original Bill. Even ‘public order’ and ‘incitement to offence’ can now be penalised. There is not even the saving grace of reserving such laws for the consideration of the President or vesting the law-making power solely in the Union Parliament.

The Government of Madras have scored a victory, in that they have persuaded the Nehru Government to bring back the obnoxious Communal G. 0 in a new garb. Despite the Prime Minister’s obvious sincerity, the virtual abrogation of Article 29 (2) has a sinister significance. “Socially and educationally backward classes” come within the ambit of Article 340, which empowers the President to appoint a Commission to investigate their conditions and make recommendations. The Government of India could have hastened the appointment of such a Commission and implemented its recommendations. But to rely on the ‘assurances’ of a state Government and arm them with wide powers to discriminate against whole classes of citizens on grounds of caste, is to surrender to the reactionary forces of communalism.

Technically, the Bill is an ‘enabling’ measure, and the Union and State Legislatures can, under normal conditions, be trusted to exercise their powers with moderation and foresight. But, between now and the summoning of the new Legislatures, the position is somewhat abnormal. There is no effective Opposition, and the party machinery at the command of the various Governments offers a great temptation to them to stifle all expression of hostile opinion, and to consolidate their power while professing merelv to maintain ‘public order’. To crown it all, the spokesmen of the Central Government have displayed unedifying tendency to distrust the highest Courts of the land, whose function it is to safeguard the Constitution and the rights conferred by it. This is hardly conducive to the success of democratic institutions in our infant Republic.

The Rift in the Congress

Despite the efforts of top-ranking leaders like Nehru and Azad, the rift in the Congress is now a certainty. The dissidents, led by Acharya Kripalani, are meeting shortly at Patna, and the Acharya will not even hear of any postponement to enable a last-minute unity move to be made through a special session of the A I. C. C. Mr. Kidwai, his ‘second in command’, finds it hard to tear himself away from the great organisation and from the comrades who have grown dear through many decades of the freedom-fight. Between the two main groups of Congressmen, the official and the dissident, there is not that type of ideological difference which marks off the Congress from the Socialists, or the Socialists from the Communists. It is in the manner of implementing the declared objectives of the Congress that differences have arisen. Congres8men in office have been unable to maintain even reasonable standards of integrity and efficiency, and they have signally failed to exercise due control over the permanent services. While the freedom and the territorial and administrative consolidation of India have been achieved, the elementary duties of a welfare State are not being adequately fulfilled. In most of the States of the Union, the main pre-occupation of the ‘Ministerialists’ is the devising of ways anti means to win the next elections and retain themselves and their henchmen in power. This criticism applies, of course, to every political party in democratically governed countries. But the first few years after the emergence of Indian Independence witnessed the spectacle of large bodies of men suddenly placed in positions where their actions could not be scrutinised by leaders of the Opposition parties in a multi-party legislature. The prestige of the Congress stood high, and strong criticism was hushed by a natural unwillingness on the part of critics to blame those who had sacrificed their all in the cause of freedom. The functions of the Opposition gradually passed to individual Congressmen who were ‘private’ members of the Legislature. They formed groups in the various States–U. P., Bengal, Madras–and invited disciplinary action against themselves for criticising the official policy and programme of the Congress organisation and of the Congress Cabinets. The time has now arrived for men of different temperaments, though not of differing ideologies to form themselves into distinct parties and contest the elections on the strength of their short-range programmes for the economic uplift of the people. It is unlikely that the dissident Congressmen and their non-Congress allies will be returned in sufficient strength to form Governments, but, in every legislature, Central or State, a well-knit and disciplined Opposition can offer healthy criticism of Government measures, and provide the chance of an alternative Government. It is the possibility of stepping into power at any moment that will keep an Opposition within the limits of responsible and constructive criticism. There can be no political sanity or ordered progress without the proper organisation of nation-wide political parties, pledged to achieve their ideals through peaceful, parliamentary methods. The ship of State has to be steered clear of the twin-dangers of autocracy and anarchy. If the dissident groups form a great Parliamentary Opposition, and establish healthy democratic conventions, they will have renderd a service to the country. But personal animosities are playing havoc in their ranks and the bid for political power seems to involve them in an alliance with capitalist interests.

The Indian political scene is a shifting one at the moment, but with the approach of the elections, party alignments will take on a more definite shape. The large mass of newly enfranchised citizens must learn to choose men with clear-cut programmes, who will not only make promises on the eve of an election but seek faithfully to implement them. And personal ability and a clean record of public life ought to weigh with the electors, more than the wealth or the social influence of the candidates. If the Party bosses, whether Congress or non-Congress, ignore this personal factor and base their selection of candidates on considerations solely of community or of petty services to the party, they will be soon undeceived. The people are awake, and it is not easy to bamboozle them into voting for someone, just because he has been ‘put up’ by the bosses.

India hopes that the foundations of Parliamentary democracy will be well and truly laid when the present hectic period is over and the new Legislatures settle down to work in an atmosphere of peace and goodwill as between different communities and opposing political parties.

Venkataramani is Sixty

The 9th of June this year is an important date in the cultural history of India, for Sri K. S. Venkataramani, a writer of outstanding eminence in English and Tamil, completes sixty. The formal religious function will be celebrated at Venkataramani’s ancestral home in Kaveripoompattinam, the old capital of the Chola Kings. Some of his admirers, led by Sir C. P. Ramaswami Aiyar, wish to mark the occasion by collecting a purse and presenting it to him in July, in grateful recognition of his services to literature and to constructive thought in many fields of national endeavour. The purse is just a symbol of the love which every literary-minded Indian cherishes for Venkataramani.

Like Ramesh Chandra Dutt and Rabindranath Tagore, he was a pathfinder, and strove from his earliest years to give expression to the dreams of the men of his generation. A Renascent India emerging from the clash of cultures, Eastern and Western, and providing the spiritual nourishment for a New Humanity–that has all along been Venkataramani’s vision. In delicate, intimate sketches like ‘Paper Boats’ and broader imaginative sweeps like ‘Murugan’ and ‘Kandan’, Venkataramani mirrored the life and thought of contemporary India. He evolved an English prose style sensitive, rhythmic and vibrant with life, which earned for him the signal honour of being hailed as ‘the Keats of prose’ by Dr. C. R. Reddy, himself a master of style.

Looking back on it all, and living once again in imagination the old college days of 1913-1917, I am proud, like other friends and companions of the youthful Venkataramani, that Venkataramani has pursued the vision splendid and realised it to the limited extent that any vision can be realised in the light of common day. Latterly, Venkataramani has sounded a note of pessimism. There is just a shade of bitterness in his criticism of men and movements in the post-Independence era. While literary recognition came to him early in life, and discerning critics in India and abroad have valued his contribution to modern Indian thought, there is not enough of that appreciation of spiritual values which, according to Venkataramani, will transmute even common men into seekers of the Divine. A hard, matter of-fact, and ‘efficient’ outlook is becoming widespread. India shares this outlook with the rest of the world, in a war-torn age. But it is up to choice spirits like Venkataramani to shed their pessimism and give us once again their message of hope, and their faith in a life of culture that ennobles and uplifts man. To Venkataramani and to other bringers of light belongs the future. Let us reverence them as the harbingers of the New Age.

Dr. C. R. Reddy

Dr. C. Ramalinga Reddy was a great figure in the political and cultural life of India. His was a career of sustained brilliance, as student in Madras and Cambridge, as Professor in Baroda and Mysore, as a legislator and Vice-Chancellor. While he achieved distinction in so many spheres, posterity will remember him particularly as the maker of the Andhra University. Educational reform, more especially at the University level, was a passion with him. His eloquent speech at the Y. M. C. A, Madras, under the presidentship of the late Dr. Sir S. Subrahmania Aiyar, in 1915, was a landmark. It was the prelude to the formation of the Mysore and Andhra Universities, in which Dr. Reddy played the leading role. For several years, he was chairman of the Inter-University Board of India, and shaped the destinies of our centres of learning.

Early in life, he was closely associated with the group of scholars in Andhra responsible for cultural efforts like the ‘Vijnana Chandrika’. He encouraged the younger poets–Rayaprolu Subba Rao, Abburi Ramakrishna Rao, and D. Rami Reddy–and he wrote a preface the Tholakari of Lakshmikantam and Venkateswara Rao. But his attention was not confined to his mother tongue, Telugu, which he loved dearly. He had always a good word to say of Venkataramani who wrote in English or of Kailasam who wrote in Kannada. And when Prof. Sukthankar, his contemporary at Cambridge, brought out his edition of the Samskrit Mahabharata, Dr. Reddy collected funds to aid its publication.

Many tributes have been paid to Dr. Reddy as an orator and as a conversationalist. Amongst the leading men of that era who imbibed the culture of England, Dr. Reddy was one of the foremost. His speeches were listened to with rapt attention, and young and old hung on his words as on the exquisite nuances of lofty music. And in any gathering of scholars, his scintillating wit was the theme of admiration. Truly could it be said that where Dr. Reddy sat was the head of the table. If Dr. Reddy did not fill high political office, it was mainly because he was not a good ‘party man’. He was far too critical of political programmes and could never discipline himself for steady constructive work. In this he suffered from the defects of his qualities; his brilliance was in itself a handicap. But there is nothing to regret in this. Dr. Reddy was content to be himself and to serve the cause of educational progress, which was his first love.

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