Rajendra Prasad, Zail Singh

New Delhi, May 31: Only three times has a President returned, unsigned or with a message, a bill passed by both Houses of Parliament. Each time, coincidence or not, the Congress has been in power.

The first instance came half a century before President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam sent the office-of-profit bill back to Parliament yesterday without signing it.

Dr Rajendra Prasad, the first President, had refused to ratify the Hindu Code Bill, which codified the principles of right to property (for women), the order of succession to property, maintenance, marriage, divorce, adoption and guardianship. Jawaharlal Nehru was the Prime Minister and B.R. Ambedkar his law minister.

Prasad’s decision had two immediate fallouts. Ambedkar resigned from the cabinet and continued fighting for women’s equality inside and outside Parliament; and Nehru declared he would make the bill his plank in the 1956 elections.

A more objective view in the Congress, however, is that India’s first Prime Minister simply developed cold feet after the conservatives in his party, egged on by Prasad, refused to support the bill if it were re-introduced in Parliament. Nehru didn’t want to lose the upper caste Hindu votes in north India.

The second instance was when President Zail Singh sent back the Indian Post Office (Amendment) Bill, 1986. Nehru’s grandson Rajiv Gandhi was the Prime Minister. Nobody resigned but the much-debated bill died a quiet death, unmourned.

The Hindu Code Bill was drafted by Ambedkar at the request of Nehru. Both men saw it as one of the cornerstones of the modern India they wanted to build.

Historians say that Prasad, who became President on January 26, 1950, had begun opposing the bill soon after it was placed in the constituent assembly on April 11, 1947. In a letter to Vallabhbhai Patel, he wrote: “New concepts and new ideas are not only foreign to the Hindu law but are susceptible of dividing every family.”

Nehru declared he would resign if the bill wasn’t passed. Before placing it for a second time in the constituent assembly on September 17, 1951, he counselled an enthusiastic Ambedkar to be patient.

But four days of debate left few in any doubt about its possible fate. A surcharged Ambedkar questioned the morality of Ram and Sita and the “extra-marital” relationship of Radha and Krishna as proof of how badly Hinduism treated its women.

On September 25, the clauses relating to marriage and divorce were diluted. The President warned he would not promulgate it as law. The Congress’s conservatives were happy when he returned it, unsigned.

In 1956, a portion of the bill was resurrected as the Hindu Succession Bill and passed as law. There was no comprehensive law as envisaged by Ambedkar but, in bits and pieces, Hindu women were given the rights he had dreamt of.

On October 19, 1986, both Houses of Parliament passed the Indian Post Office (Amendment) Bill and submitted it to the President. Zail Singh sat on the bill for over three years.

On January 7, 1990, he returned it to the Rajya Sabha for reconsideration of clause 16 which, among other things, sought to empower the central and state governments or their authorised officers to intercept or detain postal articles on certain grounds.