How the Tamil Nadu legislature, in the late 1940s, viewed the making of the Constitution

About 10 years ago, in the run-up to the making of the Constitutional amendment and the enabling laws regarding the Goods and Services Tax (GST) of 2017, several States, especially Tamil Nadu, which was led by Jayalalithaa till December 2016, had placed various demands in defence of their rights. Some of the demands were conceded and incorporated in the final version of the Constitutional and legislative framework. But, this attitude of States wanting to have their say in matters of constitutional and legal importance is nothing new.

In the Constituent Assembly’s debates (1946-49), K. Santhanam and N.G. Ranga, both from southern States representing the present Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, had strongly argued against any attempt to make the Central government more powerful under the garb of expanding the Concurrent List. The Commission on Centre-State Relations (2010), in volume I of its report, quoted from the proceedings of the Assembly wherein Ambedkar, the Chairman of the Drafting Committee of the Constitution, had stated that “modern conditions” had made the federal government of the United States of America to “outgrow itself” apart from “overshadowing and eclipsing the State governments”. Likewise, “the same conditions are sure to operate on the Government of India and nothing that one can do will help to prevent it from being strong,” Ambedkar had visualised, adding that “we must resist the tendency to make it [the Centre] stronger.”

It was against this context that Santhanam, who had felt that the trend to expand the Concurrent List would blur the distinction between the Union government and the States, said “we will have to see that the Concurrent list is either restricted to the minimum or define the scope of the Central and Provincial jurisdiction in regard to matters mentioned in that List.” Ranga was more direct and critical: “One of the most important consequences of .., the strengthening of the Central Government would be handing over power not to the Central Government, but to the Central Secretariat. From the chaprassi or the duffadar at the Central Secretariat to the Secretary there, each one of them will consider himself to be a much more important person than the Premier of a province and the Prime Ministers of the Provinces would be obliged to go about from office to office at the Centre in order to get any sort of attention at all from the Centre,” the Commission’s report recorded as Ranga having told the Constituent Assembly.

In the State capital, during June 1947, Speaker of the Madras (which was how Tamil Nadu was called then) Legislative Assembly and an ardent follower of Mahatma Gandhi, J. Sivashanmugam Pillai, who was the first Scheduled Caste to hold the office of Speaker in the State, wrote to Secretary of the Constituent Assembly H. V. R. Iyengar, asking for a copy of the draft Constitution. Only three months earlier, in the election to the Legislative Assembly, Pillai’s party, the Congress, had swept back to power by winning 164 seats out of 215 seats that went to polls.

“He [Pillai] believed that this was a routine procedure, since Rule 63 (1) [the entire Rule of which was removed in July 1947 following a motion moved by K.M. Munshi] had provided that the Provinces and the [Princely] States would have the opportunity to formulate their views on the draft before the document was finalised,” according to Assembling India’s Constitution: A New Democratic History, Rohit De and Ornit Shani, Penguin Random House. 2025. Pillai’s request was rejected by the Assembly secretariat on the ground that the rule was no longer in existence.

Only a few months later, it was out in the public that there was an exchange of correspondence between Pillai and the Constituent Assembly secretariat on this matter. While participating in a debate in the Legislative Council, S.B. Adityan, the founder of Daily Thanthi, a leading Tamil daily, disclosed it on September 24, 1947.

He stated that “the draft Constitution Bill would not be transmitted as soon as possible or at any time for consideration by the Provincial Assembly,” reported The Hindu on September 25, 1947.

Adityan’s disclosure came when A. Lakshmanaswami Mudaliar, who was a critic of the Congress and Vice Chancellor of the University of Madras, wanted a resolution to be adopted by the Upper House, calling upon the government to take steps for securing the draft “as soon as possible” for consideration. In fact, the former argued that Mudaliar’s proposed motion should not be taken up, in view of the communication to Pillai. The veteran journalist was not for Mudaliar to press with his resolution, as he contended that any motion adopted by the House would be a “direct challenge” to the powers of the Constituent Assembly. Besides, he said such a resolution, if adopted, would remain only “a dead letter” and it was unwise to pass it. Further, the Assembly was composed of elected representatives of the provincial legislature and the proposed resolution, in the event of adoption, would also give a bad impression to outsiders that the Assembly was trying to “stifle discussion” which the provincial legislature wanted, Adityan observed.

But, Mudaliar countered his argument, by saying that the House was as much a sovereign body as the Constituent Assembly and if discussion was not allowed on the resolution, it would amount to an infringement of the privileges of the House. In this, he received support from other members including B. Narayanaswami Naidu, K.T. M. Ahmed Ibrahim and R. Suryanarayana Rao, who had emphasised that the Legislative Council had not been precluded from debating on any such motion.

P. Subbaroyan, who was Home Minister in the then Congress regime headed by Tanguturi Prakasam, was very brief. Referring to the deletion of the original rule of the Constituent Assembly which required the draft Bill to forward to the provincial legislatures and the exchange of correspondence involving Pillai, the Home Minister pointed out that members of the Assembly were elected by the provincial legislature and the Assembly was also a “sovereign body.”

Mudaliar’s resolution was again discussed in the House three months later - on December 17 that year - and V.K. John, member, strongly opposed the motion, saying that to delay the Constitution-making process would be “dangerous.” This time, Subbaroyan spoke at length, why the resolution should not be carried forward and the Central government required greater powers He also cited the example of America, where, he said, the federal government, in the running of the Constitution, had begun to assume more powers to itself which were not thought of by framers of the US Constitution. The tendency in all federations had been for the Centre to get more and more power because “modern governments must be run by a central authority.” As it had to deal “with other countries, naturally, the Centre must be armed with such power as would make it respected in all other countries,” the Home Minister explained, adding that he did not, for a moment, quarrel with Mudaliar in saying that the Provinces should possess such power as to render the advancement of the Province possible. Eventually, the resolution was put to vote and declared lost.

The deliberations that the Legislative Council had about 78 years ago showed the high level of calibre of law makers that the State had.