From 50 Years Ago: Faltering Eminence.

If the press reports about President Rajendra Prasad’s letter to the Prime Minister are cor-rect, the President must indeed be a very un-happy man. He finds so much wrong with the policies being followed by the Nehru Govern-ment that he has chosen to intervene in the matter, albeit privately. It is true that he has not issued any press statement or addressed any communication to Parliament. And it may be argued that the letter has gone not from the President of a State to his Prime Minister, but from Shri Rajendra Prasad to Shri Jawaharlal Nehru, from one Congress man to another. But the correct thing in that case would have been to take the utmost p recaution to maintain the secrecy of such a private communication. This has, unfortu-nately, not been done, and we have a very anomalous situation of the constitutional head of the State expressing his disapproval of the actions of the chief executive, namely, the Prime Minister and Cabinet...

Development in the past few months have caused many to wonder what exactly we in India mean by Parliamentary Democracy. The stand taken by the Congress Parliamentary Board in regard to the agitation in Kerala has cast doubts even on Pandit Nehru’s strict ad-herence to the rules of the game. Apparently, the democratic rules ought to be observed only as long as they are convenient to the Congress Party.