CDS (II) 2021 General Knowledge · Question 31 of 120

Correct — B, U.S.A. The phrase is a quotation with an address. It comes from Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase's opinion for the United States Supreme Court in Texas v. White (1869), decided while the country was working out what the Civil War had settled: “The Constitution, in all its provisions, looks to an indestructible Union, composed of indestructible States.” Texas had purported to secede in 1861 and then sued to recover United States bonds sold by its Confederate government; the Court held that the ordinance of secession was legally void, that Texas had never ceased to be a State, and that the Union it belonged to could not be broken by any State acting alone. The two halves of the phrase are doing different work. The Union is indestructible because no State may leave it unilaterally. The States are indestructible because the federal government cannot abolish or reshape them at will — the American Constitution requires the consent of the legislatures concerned before a new State is carved out of an existing one or two States are joined, and no State can be deprived of its equal representation in the Senate without its own consent. India is built the other way round on the second half, which is exactly why this item is set.

• (a)India — The half-true trap, and the reason the item works. India's Union is indeed indestructible — no State has a right to secede — but its States are not. Article 3 lets Parliament form a new State, alter the area, boundaries or name of any State by an ordinary majority; the President only has to refer the Bill to the affected State Legislature for its views, and Parliament is not bound by them. Andhra Pradesh lost Telangana in 2014 and Jammu and Kashmir was turned into two Union Territories in 2019 without the consent of the State concerned. The textbook formula for India is an indestructible Union of destructible States.
• (c)Canada — Canada is a genuine federation, but this sentence is not attached to it. Canada's founding text, the British North America Act of 1867, is better known for the opposite emphasis — the Dominion's powers of reservation and disallowance over provincial laws led K. C. Wheare to call the original arrangement quasi-federal rather than fully federal.
• (d)Australia — Australia's Commonwealth was formed in 1901 by colonies that voted themselves into it, and its Senate copies the American equal-representation model, so the second half of the phrase would sit comfortably there. It is still the wrong answer, because the words are a specific judicial formulation from an American case about American secession.

A federation is a two-level arrangement in which the constitution itself, and not the central government's goodwill, guarantees the existence and the powers of the units. Texas v. White (1869) is the case in which the United States Supreme Court fixed the American version of that guarantee in a single sentence, holding both that a State cannot walk out of the Union and that the Union cannot rub a State out.

This is a quotation item, so the reasoning has to run from the words back to the system that produced them. The clue is that both halves are absolute. India can satisfy the first half but not the second: Article 3 makes the reorganisation of States an ordinary legislative act, which is why Indian polity texts describe the country as an indestructible Union of destructible States. Once you notice that, the question is really asking which federation protects its units against the centre as firmly as it protects itself against them — and that is the American answer. One printed oddity worth noting: the stem asks about “the federation of which one of the following States”, using “States” in the sense of sovereign countries, which reads awkwardly in a sentence that also uses “states” for federating units.

• Texas v. White, 74 U.S. (7 Wall.) 700 (1869): “The Constitution, in all its provisions, looks to an indestructible Union, composed of indestructible States.”
• The opinion was written by Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase and held that Texas's ordinance of secession was void and that Texas had never left the Union.
• In the United States, no new State may be formed out of an existing one, and no two States may be joined, without the consent of the legislatures concerned; equal Senate representation cannot be taken from a State without its consent.
• Article 3 of the Constitution of India lets Parliament form new States and alter the areas, boundaries and names of existing States by simple majority, after merely referring the Bill to the State Legislature for its views.
• Indian practice bears this out — three new States in 2000, Telangana in 2014, and the conversion of Jammu and Kashmir into two Union Territories in 2019.

• Reading the phrase as a description of India because the Indian Union is itself indestructible — the second half is what rules India out.
• Assuming every federation protects its units' boundaries; in India that protection simply does not exist.
• Treating the Constituent Assembly's choice of the words ‘Union of States’ as an accident — it was meant to signal that the Union was not the result of an agreement between States that could be undone.

Either as a quotation to be attributed, or as a statements item asking which features of Indian federalism are unlike the American model.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Under the Constitution of India, a Bill to alter the boundaries of a State can be introduced in Parliament only on the recommendation of which one of the following?

  • (a)The Governor of the State concerned
  • (b)The President of India
  • (c)The Supreme Court of India
  • (d)The Inter-State Council

  Answer(b) The President of India — Article 3 requires the President's recommendation, and the President must refer the Bill to the State Legislature for its views, though Parliament is not bound by them.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The description of India as ‘an indestructible Union of destructible States’ rests principally on which Article of the Constitution?

  • (a)Article 1
  • (b)Article 3
  • (c)Article 245
  • (d)Article 356

  Answer(b) Article 3 — it empowers Parliament to form new States and to alter areas, boundaries and names of existing States by ordinary legislative procedure.