Assembly now that he had been anointed as ‘Father of the Nation’, was
not a member of the Assembly or a participant in its debates, although
the occasional remark from him might produce resonances therein. His
assassination on January 30, 1948 added to and amplified the tendency of
debates to claim a Gandhian lineage as legitimating principle.
The question of minority rights loomed large in the discussions – not
only in the context of the movement for and creation of Pakistan,
but possibly more urgently in relation to other and smaller minorities
and the very large numbers of Muslims remaining in India after partition.
The transition from British rule to Indian self-rule had not abolished
the ‘interest groups’ that had been carefully nurtured by the British or had
grown up in the interstices of colonial power and nationalist resistance;
many of these had claims to special representation entrenched in the
existing colonial constitution. ‘Modernists’ had an uncomfortable rela-
tionship with these special interest groups: their attempt to deal with
individuals as individuals seemed to be undermined by collective
bargaining by groups acting as groups. And yet, the question of minori-
ties and their genuine insecurities had to be dealt with. Nehru had
often said that a majority community had special responsibilities to
assuage the insecurities of minorities; therefore the principle of minority
representation and ‘safeguards’ had to be acknowledged. This eventually
involved special representation for ‘backward castes’ and ‘tribes’, recog-
nised (as they had been under the 1935 Government of India Act) under
specific Schedules of the Indian Constitution (giving rise to the awkward
Indian political expression ‘Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes’, or
SC/ST for short). Such provisions were intended to be temporary forms
of social protection and positive discrimination; economic and educa-
tional advancement, as Nehru put it, would quickly end the conditions
in which they were necessary. The special provisions still exist today,
with various accretions over the years – if this seemed dangerously akin
to colonial enumeration policies, it also illustrated that a category
that became the basis of claims to resources was extremely difficult
to abolish later. It might have been different if power had been seized
by a revolutionary nationalist force; but in an orderly transfer of power
designed to protect mutual interests and based on mutual fear of the
‘masses’ among British and Indian elites, such continuities were logical.
These continuities enabled various interpreters to conclude that the newly
independent India was going to be British India with a few adjustments.
INTERLUDE – ENVISIONING THE NEW INDIA 149