Political Science · Political Institutions in India
UGC NET Dec 2015 Political Science
In whose description Maulana Azad, Jawaharlal Nehru, Vallabhbhai Patel and Rajendra Prasad formed 'an oligarchy within the Constituent Assembly'?
AGranville Austin ✓ Correct
BMorris Jones
CVP Menon
DRichard Sisson
Correct answer: (A) Granville Austin — The description of Maulana Azad, Jawaharlal Nehru, Vallabhbhai Patel and Rajendra Prasad as an oligarchy within the Constituent Assembly comes from Granville Austin, which is option (1).
Explanation
★The description of Maulana Azad, Jawaharlal Nehru, Vallabhbhai Patel and Rajendra Prasad as an oligarchy within the Constituent Assembly comes from Granville Austin, which is option (1).
★Granville Austin used the term oligarchy to describe how a small group of senior Congress leaders dominated the work of the Assembly.
★These four leaders held enormous influence over the proceedings and key decisions of the Assembly.
★Austin argued that the Congress Party enhanced the standing of the Assembly by including such senior figures.
★The idea appears in his classic study, The Indian Constitution: Cornerstone of a Nation, published in 1966.
★Granville Seward Austin, who lived from 1927 to 2014, was an American historian and a leading scholar of the Indian Constitution.
★His work remains a standard account of how the Constitution was framed and how its institutions were designed.
★Alongside the oligarchy, Austin also identified a wider group of about twenty influential members who shaped debates.
★The option Morris Jones is wrong, since W.H. Morris Jones was a British scholar of Indian politics known for other concepts.
★The option V.P. Menon is wrong, since he was a civil servant famous for his work on the integration of the princely states.
★The option Richard Sisson is wrong, since he was a political scientist who wrote on the Congress and the 1971 crisis, not this description.
★Austin's analysis stressed that the dominance of the Congress gave the Assembly both unity and direction.
★He saw this leadership as central to the Constitution's twin goals of building a nation and bringing social change.
★His second major book, Working a Democratic Constitution, continued the story into the working of the Constitution after 1950.
★For NET, attribute the oligarchy within the Constituent Assembly to Granville Austin and his book Cornerstone of a Nation.
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