5. Briefly outline the disagreement between
Rajendra Prasad and Jawaharlal Nehru regarding
the powers of the president. What was the final
decision?
Answers
Answer:
Rajendra Prasad, first President of India, who believed religion in the society is equally important as anything else wanted to have an uniform civil code whereas Nehru believed minorities should be given additional safeguards against Hindu majority.
Explanation:
One of the major reasons for the political differences between Dr Rajendra Prasad and Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was the attitude of both of them towards the significance of religion in the society.
Nehru favoured modern socialism, he believed that attitude towards religion was the main reason for India's situation. According to him, after Independence, India had to move forward with scientific consciousness. For that country needed large industries, planned cities, hospitals, schools and laboratories over temples for God's idols and worshipers.
Rajendra Prasad also favored progress, but not at the cost of core Indian culture and people beliefs. He was very religious. Vallabhbhai Patel's thoughts were somewhere between these two approaches.
The major public confrontations between Nehru and Prasad started with the Hindu code bills. Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar presented the draft in October 1947 in the Constituent Assembly and Nehru supported him. Under this, a rule code for all Hindus was to be created.
As the President of the Constituent Assembly, Dr. Rajendra Prasad intervened. He suggested that such rules should only be created after taking in account the opinion of masses. He argued that the traditions are prevalent in many forms, hence, to make the code bills successful people must approve it.The debate on the code bill spread to outside religious leaders and conservative social workers who opposed it vigorously. Nehru noticed the controversy surrounding the bill but at the time when constitution was to be filled with the Hindu code bill, Nehru took a tough stand on it. He was firm on getting the bill passed even if he had to take all the blame on him and tackle the objections surrounding it.