My Constitution, My India: Where Can I Find It?

21 years after the Indian Constitution — a 234-page document, touted as world’s lengthiest rule book for a sovereign nation came into effect — I was born. Don’t be surprised if I say that it was a handwritten document and this mammoth task was accomplished by a person known as Prem Behari Narain Raizada in an italic style with calligraphy. It was was published in Dehradun and photo-lithographed by the Survey of India.

The Constituent Assembly, which met on 9 December 1946 for the first time, took precisely 2 years, 11 months and 18 days to come up with the final draft of this rule book. As many as 2000 amendments were made to the first draft before being passed by the Constituent Assembly on 26 November 1949. It was only after that it came into effect on 26 January 1950 — a date specially chosen to commemorate the declaration of Purna Swaraj (Full Independence) in 1930. A total of seven (7) eminent people — Alladi Krishnaswami Ayyar, N Gopalaswami, Dr. B R Ambedkar, K M Munshi, Mohammad Saadulla, B L Mitter and D P Khaitan — under the leadership of Dr. Ambedkar were entrusted with the responsibility to give free India its own method to live through a defined set of rules called as constitution. We became a Republic — a nation which its supreme sovereignty.

India has been a republic for 71 years now. I have proudly lived in it for 50 years without any fear because my constitution says “We, the people of India, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a [Sovereign, Socialist, Secular, Democratic Republic] and to secure to all its citizens:

• Justice: social, economic, political
• Liberty: of thought, expression, belief, faith & worship
• Equality: of status and opportunity and to promote among them all;
• Fraternity: assuring the dignity of individual and the [unity and integrity of the nation]

Before many of you even start disputing the preamble mentioned above, let me clarify it myself that the terms SOCIALIST, SECULAR, & INTEGRITY came into being only after the 42nd amendment act of the constitution in 1977. Unfortunate, as it could be, these amendments were made just a little prior to the lifting of EMERGENCY — a 21-month period from 1975 to 1977 — of extreme shame for Independent India when the then prime minister Indira Gandhi, on the pretext of internal disturbances, brought the nation into a state wherein that she could rule literally by decree.

However, the focus of this blog is neither those three words and nor am I trying to revisit the historical importance of the glorious rulebook of India.

After living for 50 years in a free republic, I, like many others, want to objectively interpret the four key pillars of this great preamble: Justice, Liberty, Equality & Fraternity — the bedrock of a nation which is a beautiful assortment of different cultures, languages, ethnicity, dialects, food, attire etc. And in my own right (remember the clause LIBERTY) I am free (if at all I am) to express myself whether they are at all significant?

I was an infant when the Emergency was imposed. The only source of information (of that period) for me was the material available to read. And after reading that all, I could very very well say that it was perhaps the first time this great constitution was compromised. I’d rather use an even harsher term ‘subjugated’. There’s no point being soft. No amount of civil unrest, whatsoever, mandates an elected government to assume the role of a dictator to subvert the very spirit of a democracy and rule its constituents by a decree.

However, over four decades have gone since that dark phase of independent India’s history got over. But things have only deteriorated further. While there have been no declared emergencies since then, there have been many patches (rather long ones) of undeclared emergencies directly butchering, hurting, subverting and crushing these four pillars of the “Sovereign Republic” that we are.

Justice: When we say justice, one would easily assume it is about the judicial system or judiciary. Okay, let’s deal with it for a moment if that’s what we mean my justice. As of February 2020, India had nearly 4 crore pending cases across the spectrum of judiciary including Supreme Court, various high courts and the numerous district and subordinate courts. But that’s about the legal system.

However, in the preamble of the constitution Justice means much more than just the myopic view I just explained above. It is about social, economic and political justice. Let us, for a moment, take the issue of social justice, which is associated with social equality and provisioning of equality of opportunity for all citizens. If we see the disparity in the society that exists today, I would not have to explain to you where we stand. At any point, when the society has faced a crisis, the social fabric has shown visible cracks. What was the meaning of “equality of opportunity” during the severe Pandemic that hit India recently? The poor, destitute, daily wagers, labourers were left to die on the highways with almost zero assurance from the state apparatus for their well-being. And this is not the only example of social injustice. There have been cases in the past decades when a similar type of treatment has been given to the socially backward and poor citizens of India. When 80 percent wealth is reserved with less than 10 percent of the population, this has to be a natural outcome. Does it surprise anyone? According to a publicly available Oxfam report:

The top 10% of the Indian population holds 77% of the total national wealth. 73% of the wealth generated in 2017 went to the richest 1%, while 67 million Indians who comprise the poorest half of the population saw only a 1% increase in their wealth. Many ordinary Indians are not able to access the health care they need. 63 Million of them are pushed into poverty because of healthcare costs every year — almost two people every second. t would take 941 years for a minimum wage worker in rural India to earn what the top paid executive at a leading Indian garment company earns in a year. Is this justice?

Liberty: I know liberty isn’t a term to be used in isolation. But do we really have the liberty of thought, expression, faith etc.? Debatable. Many of you may target me for this but India ranks among of one of the least free democracies in the Freedom in the World 2020 report. We are ranked at 83rd position along with Timor-Leste and Senegal among the bottom five of “free democracies.” From regular Internet Shutdowns to a perpetual threat to ‘freedom of expression’, suppression of protests to citizenship amendment act to various other local laws like the ones made to counter ‘Love Jihad’ in states like Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, and Madhya Pradesh to arrest of social/political activists in almost all states across the nation irrespective of which political dispensation rules there, has been a continuous withdrawal from the basic premise enshrined in our preamble which states: liberty of thought, expression, belief, faith & worship. Forget about the religious aspect, but a person from a lower caste (based on the prevailing caste system in India), cannot go to certain places of worship. There are temples in India where the entry of women is not allowed. Case in point: On 28th September 2018, the Supreme Court of India delivered a landmark verdict in Sabarimala Temple Entry. The bench said that the temple’s practice of excluding women is unconstitutional. It held that the practice violated the fundamental right to freedom of religion — Article 25(1) — of female worshippers. Is that what we call Liberty? Among the extreme radicals it is becoming fashionable to tag people as ‘anti-nationals’ if they have a difference of opinion, especially one that opposes that of a majority radical group. There has been a gross misuse of serious laws like Unlawful Activity Prevention Act (UAPA) and agencies like NIA are unleashed on dissenters at the drop of a hat. Student movements, cartoonists, comedians, cinema artists, writers, social activists, so much so even farmers are under attack. As said by J. William Fulbright, “In a democracy, dissent is an act of faith. Like medicine, the test of its value is not in its taste, but its effects. May we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion. No matter that patriotism is too often the refuge of scoundrels.” But we have taken dissent as an act of anti-nationalism. Is that how liberty was envisioned by our forefathers?

Equality: The basic principles of equality, as enshrined in the constitution, are to have equality of status and opportunity and to be promoted among all. But that have sounded ideal for all the time since its being. This, to me, is by far the most unvisited and ignored aspect of the Indian constitution. More so, if we look at the contemporary India, it has deteriorated even more moving towards perversion. It has become atrocious. The impact is dramatic here than anywhere else because perhaps no other major society in recent history has known inequalities so gross or so long preserved such as India. Be it gender equality, or is the equality of all religions, politicians and policy makers have ignored it or even misused it to their advantage. Sections of Indian societies are even deprived of their fundamental rights forget being treated equally.

Time and again political leaders have promised and overpromised legislations and policies against discrimination and disadvantages suffered by religious minorities and to create frameworks for delivering equality of opportunity but seldom has any result come out of those efforts. Often the result has been overlooking of minority rights and also communal violence — time and again. On the other hand, the UNDP 2020 report ranks India at a staggering 122 among 189 countries in its Gender Inequality Index. Even though governments after governments have made promises to bridge the gender inequality meant to help women avail educational facilities, only 39 per cent of Indian women avail secondary education in contrast to 63.5 per cent. The labour force participation of women is also terribly low — 23.6 per cent as opposed to 78.6 per cent in men. Our Parliament has only 11.7 per cent female representatives — and this is after implementing reservation for women in seats.

Minorities in India have always been a tool either for appeasement or used as a safe vote bank. In almost every state there have been polarisation of minority votes. This comes from the fact that there’s severe inequality that exists in the social, political and economic spheres as far as minorities are concerned.

Another severe form of inequality is economic. I mentioned above, quoting the Oxfam figures that almost 80 percent of wealth in India lies with just 10 percent people. Rest 90 percent form the lower middle class or the poor. When it comes to the distribution of wealth opportunities or even the state welfare services like education, or healthcare, there is a huge disparity. A local on a small town of Rajasthan state once told me that under India’s most ambitious rural employment guarantee scheme MNREGA offers him a paltry sum on Rs. 185 (~US$ 2.5) per day. This is in 21st century India.

Fraternity: A major milestone in the making of Indian constitution was the “Fundamental Rights” resolution passed by the Indian National Congress in its 1931 convention in Karachi. The INC met under the leadership of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, and said “any constitution should include fundamental rights of the people such as freedom of association and combination, freedom of speech and press, freedom of conscience and the free profession and practice of religion”. It also added that such a constitution should prohibit discrimination against persons of any “religion, caste or creed in regard to public employment, office of power, and the exercise of any trade or calling” and should rule out any “civic bar on account of sex”. However, the word fraternity wasn’t part of the preamble until the beginning of 1948. Many say that Dr. Ambedkar chose to add this as an afterthought of Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination in the month of Jan 1948. During his famous speech of November 25, 1949 to the Constituent Assembly Dr. Ambedkar said: “Without fraternity, equality and liberty will be no deeper than coats of paint.” Cut to 2021. Not only does the word ‘fraternity’ has lost its meaning but also a great deal of poison and venom has been spread by different divisive forces in India today. In 100s of communal riots since the time we gave ourselves this constitution, India has lost hundreds of thousands of lives. Most riots in India were between Hindus and Muslims barring a few involving other religions or ethnicities. As a result of these riots, the social fabric of India has been badly compromised.

As recent as last year, during the (largely) peaceful protests against the government’s Citizenship Amendment Act 2019 (CAA), a massive riot broke out in Delhi and it resulted in taking lives on many people. The riot took a violent turn and started targeting a particular minority. The principles of ‘fraternity’ were severely crushed and compromised. The state apparatus was also found very ineffective in curbing it. This has been a case with many other similar incidents in the past.

It seems endless. However, I tried to stay focused on the Preamble and thankfully after writing this blog for three days, I am able to post it on the day it should have been up there.

Towards the end, I’d only like to say that curtailment of the fundamentals enshrined in our constitution will only deteriorate the situation further. Is this how the constitution makers, the torchbearers of democracy and a sovereign republic thought of the 21st century India?

NOTE: Views expressed in the above article are my own and has no bearing on any institution or organisation that I represent. The links in the article are mostly public information available on the internet.