British Prime Minister Anthony Eden was surprised that India, within a few years of putting the Constitution in place, could turn the country into a functional democracy. While Mr. Eden warned his Cambridge University mate Jawaharlal Nehru against “giving power to people”, he later congratulated the former Indian Prime Minister for the same, said Pranab Mukherjee, former Indian President.
He inaugurated a first-of-its-kind ‘Centre for Study & Research on Indian Constitution and Democracy’ in east India,’ at a private university in North 24 Parganas district on Wednesday evening.
Twist of history
“Anthony Eden wrote to Nehru that what he [Nehru] is doing is a fatal thing. But it is a twist of history, that after the 1957 election, he [Eden] congratulated Nehru, for giving power to the people,” said Mr. Mukherjee.
“The Constitution, if it is not properly used, can bring calamity,” he said.
“Thanks to the vigilance of the people, whenever there have been aberrations, those were corrected by the people of India. [They have] asserted their rights, when particular aberrations took place in a short period of time [and] brought the perpetrators of the aberration to task,” he said. Moreover, when a political party “failed to give right leadership the Indian electorate took its decision to change.”
