Mahatma Gandhi was a committed constitutionalist. He, like the entire pantheon of India’s freedom fighters including B R Ambedkar, believed in the rule of law, negotiated settlement and the integrity of democratic institutions. Mr Gandhi never went on a fast to make a demand; he fasted as an act of penance. Thus, neither the threat to fast in pursuit of a demand nor the assertion that citizens are above Parliament is Gandhian. It can certainly not be accepted as a legitimate assertion of a free people’s democratic rights. Arvind Kejriwal of the India Against Corruption movement is, therefore, wrong to assert that his leader Baburao Hazare stands above Parliament. Parliament is answerable to people through constitutionally mandated means, and not in the populist sense that Mr Hazare assumed when he fasted at New Delhi’s Ramlila Grounds seeking to shape Parliament’s business on an hourly basis in the name of the people. This way comes anarchy, not constitutional governance. Rather than behave like a latter-day Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, Mr Hazare and Mr Kejriwal should use the constitutional means available to make their demand. If the majority in Parliament reject their demand, so be it. Mr Hazare has started to intervene in the constitutional process by participating in an election campaign in Haryana. Though this is his right, if he wishes to seize power, he must secure it by constitutional means. The duly elected government of the day is the only legitimate expression of that process.
Those who have no respect for the Constitution, like Arundhati Roy, are free to seek publicity and notoriety but cannot aspire to provide leadership for a modern, democratic nation. At the present stage of its development, in the current context of a worrisome global situation that is crisis-prone, and facing the kinds of internal and external challenges that India does, no sane person can support an assault on parliamentary democracy and constitutional methods of functioning in the manner that Mr Kejriwal does. He must either reconsider his observations on the supremacy of Parliament or be held accountable for them.
Even as these anarchist elements challenge Parliament and constitutional means in the name of “civil society”, the judiciary continues to step on the toes of the executive with the same plea. The judiciary too should perform its legitimate duties, remaining mindful of the consequences of its actions and observations, for the proper functioning of all institutions and the Constitution. Union Minister for Law and Justice Salman Khurshid was right to worry about the economic consequences of judicial activism. This concern is germane to the current context in which business is gripped by uncertainty. Those who break the law must be punished, but due process is necessary. The present practice of first damning a person and then detaining her as an undertrial, even as investigating agencies and law enforcement authorities take their own time to file charges and prosecute and the judiciary takes longer to do its job, introduces an unacceptable degree of uncertainty, curbing basic rights and punishing people without being convicted. This gives as much a bad name to governance as the actions, inaction or mis-governance of the executive.
