Eight eminent personalities, including former Supreme Court judge J Chelameswar and ex-Chief Election Commissioner S Y Quraishi, have appealed to people to "introspect and audit" the working of the Constitution ahead of the 70th anniversary of the Republic.
"Is the Constitution a mere administrative manual which enables the elected governments to claim legitimacy for abuse of power, and allows the citizens to convert liberty into license disregarding rights of others? Is it simply another text penned by ink, or a sacred text written in the blood of innumerable martyrs who transcended the barriers of caste, religion, region, ethnicity and language?" they asked in an open letter.
Their appeal has come at a time when there have been protests, some of them violent, against the new citizenship law, which critics say discriminates on the basis of religion and violates the Constitution.
Stressing that peaceful reconciliation of conflicting interests, healthy public discourse, and respect for dissenting views are at the heart of democracy, they urged people to "introspect whether truth and non-violence the two values held very dear to the heart of the Father of the Nation continue to inform our actions in the public sphere."