Indian Constitution and the Idea of India

 Indian Constitution and the Idea of India

The Indian Constitution is extremely relevant in discussions and discourse even after over seventy years of its making. Some people consider the Indian Constitution as a replica of the 1935 Act of British India while some others call it a congregation of various governing laws. While all these perceptions may hold some validity, these are incomplete conceptions of the longest constitution of the world. We must go beyond these points of view and try to understand its indispensable worth.

Rationale

Over the last few years, democracy in India has stooped to a new low. The current regime is continuously trying to subvert our constitution by passing legislations to shatter constitutional tenets such as Secularism, Federalism, Social Justice, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Faith and so on. Institutions responsible for protecting the constitution are either being subverted or being used to serve the interests of the current political dispensation. Our society is being directed towards relying on unsubstantiated glories of the past while purposefully ignoring the history that is full of struggles, debates, social churning, and ideas. The glorious process of making and shaping the Indian nation state that occured with the evolution of nationalism under the broader ideologies of Humanism and Internationalism is being thwarted. Ideas of rationality and scientific temper are being curbed, challenged and threatened. All of this is happening in a country where people at large have not separated themselves from arenas of conflicts, the world of struggles, and sacrifices of our great freedom fighters and the makers of the constitution. Today, the reactionary forces do not want the younger generations to take inspiration, feel pride and define their ideals in the light of the freedom movement. It is in this context and background that our constitution should be brought to the fore. People do not only need awareness of the tenets of our constitution but also of the history of it- the underlying principles, the ideals embedded in the constitution and the intent of the framers of the Constitution. 

Ideals

Nehru's quote accurately captures the essence of the intent of the framers of the constitution- "The Constituent Assembly is not just a body of people or a gathering of able lawyers. Rather, it is a nation on the move, throwing away the shell of its political past and possibly its social structure, thus fashioning for itself a new garment of its own making". The Indian Constitution was designed to break the shackles of traditional social hierarchies and to usher in a new era of freedom, equality and justice. The raison d'être of the constitution is not to limit people in power but to empower those who have traditionally been deprived of it. It provides vulnerable people with the power to achieve collective good. Granville Austin described the Indian Constitution as the 'first and foremost social document'. The majority of India's constitutional provisions are either directly aimed at furthering the aim of social revolution or attempt to foster this revolution by establishing conditions necessary for its achievement.

Civil Liberties

The text prepared by Ambedkar provided constitutional guarantees and protections for a wide range of civil liberties for individual citizens including the freedom of religion, the abolition of untouchability, the outlawing of all forms of discrimination. This text was a result of a lot of debates, conflicts and contradictions among various political strands. The glimpses of the ideological battles may be revealed through the mention of a few instances in and of the Constituent Assembly. One such instance of prominence is that of the debates held between December 9,1946 to November 26,1946 on the issue of Indianness.

Varied Views

K. Hanumanthiah, a member of the Assembly from Mysore on November 17, 1949 lamented, "We wanted the music of Veena and Sitar but here we have the music of an English Band." Pandit Govind Malviya's suggestion was to start the Preamble to the Constitution with the words, "By the grace of Parmeshwar, the Supreme Being, Lord of the Universe…". Mahavir Tyagi, on December 27, 1948 emphasized regaining "spiritual freedom" and not just political freedom. Loknath Mishra said on December 3,1948, "If you accept religion, you must accept Hinduism as it is practiced by an overwhelming majority of the people of India."

The plea for Indianisation was confronted not only by the values of Western Liberal Democracy but also by the finer aspects of the Indian tradition, which were organically incorporated into the Constitution. This synthesis of ideas provides great strength to the Indian Constitution. There were several meetings of the Constituent Assembly and in every meeting, intense debates took place. These debates had various shades with respect to the evolution of the Constitution. The journey of the making of the Constitution shows that ideals of our constitution certainly had their roots in the ideas that emerged during the 19th century Reform Movements. 

Evolution

The commitment of the Constitution to humanistic ideals did not emerge miraculously out of calm deliberations around a table. Rather, it was the product of continuous intellectual and political activity for well over one and a half centuries. Beginning as early as the 19th Century, these activities started with Ram Mohan Roy's efforts towards the abolition of Sati. Almost all reformers advocated the urgent need to free women from the shackles of this moribund custom. This contributed to women's active participation in the national freedom struggle and eventually, women's equality was established in our constitution as one of its fundamental aspects. Similarly, with the commencement of the fight against the oppressive caste system under the leadership of Periyar, Jyotiba Phule, Swami Vivekananda and then Ambedkar, the Dalit section of the society emerged to the forefront as citizens of the country. And, we find in the constitution the provision for reservations for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. Equal citizenship for women and Dalits or the spirit of Social Justice was well placed in the constitution from the very beginning. 

Likewise, the most important tenet of a liberal constitution is individual freedom. It too has been incorporated with great prominence in our constitution. Raja Rammohan Rai, Dadabhai Naraoji and other such reformers stood for democratic rights and put forth demands like the right of Indian nationals to have a voice in the administration of the country. At the same time, demand for a free press was emphatically made. The roots of the idea of Individual Freedom lie in Rammohan Rai's protest against the curtailment of the freedom of the press under the British rule. It might be recalled that for over forty years before the adoption of the constitution every single resolution, scheme, bill and report of the Indian National Congress mentioned individual rights not just in passing but as a non-negotiable value. In fact, Ram Mohan Rai and his fellow enlightened Indians initiated social-reform and religious-reform movements which represented endeavours to reform Indian society and religion in the spirit of the new principles of democracy, rationalism and nationalism. These movements were the expression of the rising national democratic consciousness among a large section of the Indian people. 

Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Rabindranath Tagore, Keshab Chandra Sen, KT Telang, Justice Mahadev Govind Ranade, Mahatma Jyoti Rao Phule and Swami Dayanand were some of the early pioneer nationalists. These reformers were fighting for the abolition of privileges based on birth or sex. These efforts for social reform were being made in the backdrop while a capitalist economy was being initiated in India. Thus, the restructuring of the economy and social reforms went hand in hand leading to the foundation of a modern Indian State.   

Redefining The Western concept of Secularism:  

The prevalent Western conception of Secularism is that the State should neither help nor hinder religions. Instead, it should keep itself at an arm's length from them. The makers of the Indian Constitution had to work out an alternative interpretation of secularism- one that would fit the unique needs of India due to its diverse populace. 

Secularism in the Indian Constitution and Religious Reforms of the 19th century

Rights of Religious Minorities: 

The Indian constitution grants rights such as the right to establish and maintain educational institutions to all religious communities. This right serves the purpose of maintaining equality among all communities thus maintaining equality amongst each individual irrespective of which community they come from. Moreover, the separation of the State from religion in India could not amount to mutual exclusion because religiously sanctioned customs such as untouchability deprived individuals of the most basic dignity and self-respect. Such customs were so deeply rooted in Indian society that without active State intervention, there would not be any hope for their dissolution. Thus, the state simply had to interfere in the affairs of religion. Similarly, in the 19th century when Ram Mohan Roy made efforts for the abolition of Sati with the help of Lord William Bentick, intervention in religious affairs was necessary and was done through the formation of a law against this practice. 

Another reason for forming and adopting a different version of secularism is that reformers such as Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Surendra Nath Banerjee, Bipin Chandra Pal, Aurobindo Ghosh, Lala Lajpat Rai, Rabindranath Tagore, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Abul Kalam Azad, Mohammed Iqbal, Syed Ahmed Khan, Khwaja Altaf Hussain Hali, Maulvi Nazeer Ahmed, Maulvi Shibli Nomani, Tayyabji, Sheikh Abdul Sharara, Jagdish Chandra Bose (less names needed) and others in the philosophical, political and cultural disciplines stood for, in different ways and varying degrees, a revision of traditional religions. Thus, the minorities and 'pluralism' became and remain a crucial aspect of address in the constitution.