TNPSC Free Notes Polity In English

இந்தக் கட்டுரையில், TNPSC குரூப் 1, குரூப் 2, குரூப் 2A, குரூப் 4 மாநிலப் போட்டித் தேர்வுகளான TNUSRB, TRB, TET, TNEB போன்றவற்றுக்கான முறைகள் இலவசக் குறிப்புகளைப் பெறுவீர்கள்.தேர்வுக்கு தயாராவோர் இங்குள்ள பாடக்குறிப்புகளை படித்து பயன்பெற வாழ்த்துகிறோம்.

Cabinet Mission

 The changed global scenario in the post World War II context led to the setting up of the
Cabinet Mission. Headed by Secretary of State for India, Sir Stafford Cripps, and A.V.
Alexander, the mission landed in India in March 1946 and began work on its brief: to set
up a national government before the final transfer of power.
 The mission proposed to constitute a ‘representative’ body by way of elections across
the provinces and the princely states and entrust this body with the task of making a
constitution for free India.
 The idea of partition did not figure at this stage. Instead, the mission’s proposal was for
a loose-knit confederation in which the Muslim League could dominate the
administration in the North-East and North- West provinces while the Congress would
administer rest of the provinces.
 Jinnah sounded out his acceptance of the idea on June 6, 1946. The Congress,
meanwhile, perceived the Cabinet Mission’s plan as a clear sanction for the setting up of
a Constituent Assembly.
 Nehru conveyed through his speech at the AICC, on July 7, 1946, that the Indian
National Congress accepted the proposal. Subsequently, Jinnah on July 29, 1946,
reacted to this and announced that the League stood opposed to the plan.
 After elaborate consultations, the viceroy issued invitations on 15 June 1946 to the 14
men to join the interim government.
The invitees were:
1. Jawaharlal Nehru
2. Vallabhai Patel,
3. Rajendra Prasad
4. C. Rajagopalachari
5. Hari Krishna Mahtab (on behalf of the INC)
6. Mohammed Ali Jinnah
7. Liaquat Ali Khan
8. Mohammed Ismail Khan
9. Khwaja Sir Nazimuddin
10. Abdul Rab Nishtar (from the Muslim League)
11. Sardar Baldev Singh (on behalf of the Sikh community)
12. Sir N.P. Engineer (to represent the Parsis)
13. Jagjivan Ram (representing the scheduled castes) and
14. John Mathai (as representative of the Indian Christians)
 Meanwhile, the Congress proposed Zakir Hussain from its quota of five nominees to the
interim council.

 The Muslim League objected to this and, on 29 July 1946, Jinnah announced that the
League would not participate in the process to form the Constituent Assembly.
 This invited a sharp reaction from the British administration. On 12 August 1946, the
viceroy announced that he was inviting Nehru (Congress president) to form the
provisional government. After consultation with Nehru, 12 members of the National
Interim Government were announced on 25 August 1946.
 Apart from Nehru, the other members were: Vallabhai Patel, Rajendra Prasad, Asaf Ali,
C. Rajagopalachari, Sarat Chandra Bose, John Mathai, Sardar Baldev Singh, Sir Shafaat
Ahmed Khan, Jagjivan Ram, Syed Ali Zaheer and Cooverji Hormusji Bhabha. It was stated
that two more Muslims will be nominated in due course.
 Five Hindus, three Muslims and one representative each from the scheduled castes,
Indian Christians, Sikhs and Parsis formed the basis of this list.
 Later Hare Krishna Mahtab was replaced by Sarat Chandra Bose. The Parsi nominee, N.P.
Engineer was replaced by Cooverji Hormusji Bhabha. In place of the League’s nominees,
the Congress put in the names of three of its own men: Asaf Ali, Shafaat Ahmed Khan
and Syed Ali Zaheer.
 The League, meanwhile, gave a call for ‘Direct Action’ on 16 August 1946. There was
bloodshed in Calcutta and several other places, including in Delhi.
 This was when Gandhi set out on his own course to arrive in Calcutta and decided to
stay on at a deserted house in Beliaghatta, a locality that was worst affected,
accompanied only by a handful of followers. Muslims who were hounded out of their
homes in Delhi were held in transit camps (in Purana Quila and other places).
 It was only after Gandhi arrived there (on 9 September 1946) and conveyed that the
Muslims were Indian nationals and hence must be protected by the Indian state (Nehru
by then was the head of the interim government) that the Delhi authorities began
organising rations and building latrines.
 It was in this context that the Congress agreed to the constitution of the interim
government. Nehru assumed office on 2 September 1946. Yet another round of
communal violence broke out across the country and more prominently in Bombay and
Ahmedabad.
 Lord Wavell set out on another round of discussion and after sounding out Nehru, he
proposed, once again, to Jinnah that the League participate in the interim government.
The Muslim League accepted the proposal but Jinnah refused to join the cabinet.
 The interim cabinet was reconstituted on October 26, 1946. Those who joined on behalf
of the League were Liaquat Ali Khan, I.I. Chundrigar, A. R. Nishtar, Ghazanfar Ali Khan
and Jogendra Nath Mandal.

 But there was no let-up in the animosity between the Congress and the League and this
was reflected in the functioning (rather non-functioning) of the interim council of
ministers.
 The League, meanwhile, was determined against cooperating in the making of the
constituent assembly. At another level, the nation was in the grip of communal violence
of unprecedented magnitude.
 Naokhali in East Bengal was ravaged by communal violence. The members of the League
who were part of the interim government refused to participate in the ‘informal’
consultations that Nehru held before the formal meeting of the cabinet in the viceroy’s
presence.
 The Muslim League, it seemed, were determined to wreck the interim government from
within.
 While the Congress scored impressive victories in the July–August 1946 elections and
secured 199 from out of the 210 general seats, the Muslim League did equally well in
seats reserved for the Muslims. The League’s tally was 76. All but one of the 76 seats
came from the Muslim-reserved constituencies.
 The League, however, decided against participating in the Constituent Assembly. Hence,
only 207 members attended the first session of the Constituent Assembly on 9
December 1946.
 Meanwhile the functioning of the interim government was far from smooth with
animosity between the Congress and the League growing by the day.
 The ‘informal’ meetings of the cabinet intended to settle differences before any
proposal was taken to the formal meeting that the Viceroy presided over, could not be
held from the very beginning.
 The proverbial last straw was the budget proposals presented by Liaquat Ali Khan in
March 1947.
 The finance minister proposed a variety of taxes on industry and trade and proposed a
commission to go into the affairs of about 150 big business houses and inquire into the
allegations of tax evasion against them.
 Khan called this a ‘socialistic budget’. This, indeed, was a calculated bid to hit the Indian
industrialists who had, by this time, emerged as the most powerful supporters of the
Congress. The intention was clear: to hasten the partition and prove that there was no
way that the League and the Congress could work together towards independence.
 British Prime Minister Atlee’s statement in Parliament on February 20, 1947, that the
British were firm on their intention to leave India by June 1948 set the pace for another
stage.
 Lord Wavell was replaced as Viceroy by Lord Mountbatten on March 22, 1947.

The Constituent Assembly
Introduction
It was a demand from the Indian National Congress, voiced formally in 1934, that the Indian
people shall draft their constitution rather than the British Parliament.
 The Congress thus rejected the White Paper circulated by the colonial government. The
founding principle that Indians shall make their own constitution was laid down by
Gandhi as early as in 1922.
 Gandhi had held that rather than a gift of the British Parliament, swaraj must spring
from ‘the wishes of the people of India as expressed through their freely chosen
representatives’.
 Elections were held, based on the 1935 Act, to the Provincial Assemblies in August 1946.
These elected assemblies in turn were to elect the Central Assembly, which would also
become the Constituent Assembly.
 The voters in the July 1946 elections to the provinces were those who owned property –
the principle of universal adult franchise was still a far cry.
 The results revealed the Muslim League’s command in Muslim majority constituencies
while the Indian National Congress swept the elections elsewhere.
 The League decided to stay away from the Constitution making process and pressed
hard for a separate nation. The Congress went for the Constituent assembly.
 The elected members of the various Provincial assemblies voted nominees of the
Congress to the Constituent Assembly. The Constituent Assembly (224 seats) that came
into being, though dominated by the Congress, also included smaller outfits such as the
communists, socialists and others.
 The Congress ensured the election of Dr B.R. Ambedkar from a seat in Bombay and
subsequently elected him chairman of the drafting committee. Apart from electing its
own stalwarts to the Assembly, the Congress leadership made it a point to send leading
constitutional lawyers.
 This was to make a constitution that contained the idealism that marked the freedom
struggle and the meaning of swaraj, as specified in the Fundamental Rights Resolution
passed by the Indian National Congress at its Karachi session (March 1931).
 This, indeed, laid the basis for the making of our constitution a document conveying an
article of faith guaranteeing to the citizens a set of fundamental rights as much as a set
of directive principles of state policy.
 The constitution also committed the nation to the principle of universal adult franchise,
and an autonomous election commission. The constitution also underscored the

independence of the judiciary as much as it laid down sovereign law-making powers
with the representatives of the people.
 The members of the constituent assembly were not averse to learn and pick up features
from the constitutions from all over the world; and at the same time they were clear
that the exercise was not about copying provisions from the various constitutions from
across the world.
 Jawaharlal Nehru set the ball rolling, on December 13, 1946, by placing the Objectives
Resolution before the Constituent Assembly. The assembly was convened for the first
time, on December 9, 1946. Rajendra Prasad was elected chairman of the House.
 The Objectives Resolution is indeed the most concise introduction to the spirit and the
contents of the Constitution of India.
 The importance of this resolution can be understood if we see the Preamble to the
Constitution and the Fundamental Rights and Directive Principles of State Policy
enshrined in it and as adopted on November 26, 1949.
 The Constitution of India, thus, marked a new beginning and yet established continuity
with India’s past. The Fundamental Rights drew everything from clause 5 of the
Objectives Resolution as much as from the rights enlisted by the Indian National
Congress at its Karachi session.
 The spirit of the Constitution was drawn from the experience of the struggle for
freedom and the legal language from the Objectives Resolution and most importantly
from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), promulgated by the United
Nations on December 10, 1948.