Time to reaffirm the Constitution of India

Parties should reassert the vision of our founding fathers instead of engaging in petty debates for short-term gains

Recently, comments by a Union minister that his party was committed to changing the Constitution of India led to widespread concern. It is reassuring that subsequently these remarks were retracted and the authority of the Constitution was upheld. Nevertheless, political and social trends in the country over the past several years, including under different political dispensations, have resulted in blurring the fundamental tenets which underlie the Constitution. 

The Constitution of India is a very important document not only because it sets out the structure of the Indian state, its institutions, and processes of governance, but also because it reflects an overarching vision of India’s future, which our founding fathers sought to embody in its contents. The vigorous debates among the very distinguished members of the Constituent Assembly are fascinating to read today. They reflect the diversity of India, the multiplicities which defined its existing reality but at the same time, a broad consensus on what India and its people should aspire to become.

Certainly, there was an acknowledgement that the political, social, and economic reality of India called for differential arrangements to advance those sections of society which had suffered oppression and disabilities of various kinds through the ages. The country’s immense diversity also necessitated safeguards for deeply held social and cultural attitudes until education and persuasion brought about change. However, there was a compelling vision of a unity which would not suppress, but transcend diversity to eventually create an enlightened society, based on individual rights and obligations of equal citizens in a plural democracy. The Constitution of India upholds a polity which is citizen-centric and the state is committed to safeguard individual-based rights. Community- or group-based entitlements are temporary detractions, which must give way, over a period of time, to the full enjoyment of the individual rights enshrined in the Constitution. It is important to recall this fundamental character of our Constitution at a time when ever narrower and sometimes anachronistic community- or group-based entitlements are being perpetuated and expanded. If these become permanent features, they will supplant the primacy accorded to individual rights, which is an intrinsic feature of the Constitution. An over-arching national unity cannot be constructed by the mere agglomeration of entitled communities.

Illustration by Binay Sinha

Why is this original spirit of our Constitution so important in dealing with the contemporary challenges which we confront as a democratic nation? The authors of the Constitution envisioned a society which would enable every citizen to achieve their individual genius and the potential of their personality to the fullest extent, without regard to caste, creed or religious persuasion. It would be a society which would ensure equality of opportunity and not equality of entitlement, and such equality of opportunity could only be created if there was universal access to education, to health and security, and an absence of discrimination. It is only if the country marches ahead towards this goal would it be possible to unleash the creative energies of its people, enabling them to confront and overcome the challenges of widespread poverty, disease and social and economic inequality. In a very basic sense the Constitution recognised that the most precious resource available to the country was its people and that it is the quality of human resources which would determine its future as a flourishing democracy.

This understanding reflected the outstanding intellectual abilities of the members of the Constituent Assembly. The Assembly was a veritable knowledge pool, which set a compass for India to march ahead to its destiny. But this was also an unique gathering of people who were steeped in the civilisational values, which through millenia had given India its unique place in the world. Reading through the records of the Assembly, what one finds truly striking is the quality of debate, the sharpness of argument, the ready embrace of dissent, and the unfailing mutual respect for differing viewpoints. There is a confidence with which these debates were engaged in; confidence — indeed conviction — that it is only through this clash of titan minds would emerge a Constitution which their beloved India deserved. There are difficult and complex issues which confront the country today which need to be resolved through similar reasoned and well-informed debate both within and outside Parliament. However, there are more and more issues which are being decided on the basis of sentiments of this or that group of people who insist on imposing their own prejudices on the rest of society. If this is not resisted then the scope for dissent and argument will shrink irretrievably. It is the responsibility of the state to safeguard the individual’s freedom of expression but more and more frequently the state readily succumbs to the claim of veto by self-entitled communities citing possible “law and order situation”. This is an abdication of responsibility as we have witnessed in the banning of films or books on flimsy grounds.

We cannot make the preferred version of anyone’s reading of history as the basis of which the scope for debate and dissent is stifled. Each is entitled to his own historical narrative but cannot be allowed to insist that all others must accept it. Nor can sentiment, no matter how deeply felt, be placed above the law of the land. We are ending up with multiple contestations among such competing narratives as we witnessed recently in Maharashtra. How can a sense of nationhood be fostered if we continue to tolerate this dangerous trend?

Short-term electoral calculations tempt politicians to encourage and even reward narrowly defined identities but we are beginning to pay a huge cost in terms of the undermining a sense of common citizenship which is a fundamental principle of our Constitution. There should be an urgent consensus among political parties to reaffirm their commitment to the Constitution and its vision of an enlightened society of equal citizens, refraining from a brand of politics that encourages and exploits narrow identities based on ethnicities, caste, language and religion. A modern, democratic, forward-looking and innovative society can only emerge on the basis of reaffirming the consensus so carefully crafted by India’s far-sighted Constitution makers.

The writer is a former foreign secretary and is currently senior fellow, CPR