
As Yogendra Yadav points out in the latest of his thought-provoking commentaries on the current issues in our politics,(INDIAN EXPRESS December 16) the BJP has to walk on a tightrope in celebrating 75 years of our constitution.While RSS icons have always scoffed at it as a colonial constitution and BJP has never concealed its allegiance to RSS,the latter also flaunts its deep reverence for the Constitution as a national heirloom.The Prime Minister prostrated himself on the floor of the old Parliament building and later touched his forehead with a copy in a gesture of veneration on his first day in Parliament.
Yet in the same breath it also has insisted on its revision and replacement.Meanwhile it goes on amending it any number of times to suit it to objectives quite alien to the original and innate purpose.MPs and party leaders have repeatedly and stridently ranted in parliament and outside that a ‘suitable’ new constitution was the need of the hour.
Yadavjee has chosen to answer their claim by showing that it is an entirely native product of Indian conditions and had been produced by natives of the country following a century-long freedom struggle.True,it has incorporated certain foreign elements,but they had been suitably adapted to Indian conditions.
I fear I cannot agree.What is wrong if we adopt certain ideas that have foreign origins?Christianity was a foreign creed in most of the countries where it is practised today.But they are little perturbed by that accident.What we are in urgent need of today is democracy.And our constitution underwrites just that.If in our folly we go on to fabricate an Indian brand we might come upon something like a KHAP PANCHAYET marked by casteism and patriarchy.
Representative modern democracy is a relatively recent phenomenon with several countries contributing to its development.The seeds of the seminal ideas like the ineffable dignity of the individual and his liberty and separation of powers first emerged out of and during Britain’s long popular struggle against royal despotism.The first written constitution of such a character was drawn in America in 1788.Intellectuals dedicated to the goal of a modern democracy,including some of the finest products of the Enlightenment like Benjamin Franklin,John Adam,Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton.It proposed rule of law,an elected government and guaranteed a bill of rights based on sovereign dignity of the individual citizen.But franchise was limited,women and slaves were out of its purview.The French Revolution went much farther as it gave women equal property rights and marital status,but stopped short of giving them the right to vote and hold public office. Its unique document UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS served as a clarion call to oppressed people and nations the world over to throw off their chains.
The Indian Constitution while drawn in the name of the Indian people invoked these universal principles and not its age-old traditions.Protestant Christianity born in Europe made all men equal before God(and law!),while in India even the anti-caste Bhakti movement placed the GURU between man and the deity while expelling the priest.
As for adapting these ideas to Indian conditions our founding fathers had not tinkered with the fundamental ideas,and only suited them to Indian conditions.For instance the principle of equality was opposed to such iniquities as caste and patriarchy.Interestingly,if applied with conviction it had the potentiality to transform Indian society without a violent struggle.
Not that all members of the Constituent Assembly agreed whole-heartedly.Some opposed it tooth and nail.But eventually it was carried.But once back in their own turf they resolutely resisted its application and defanged it to mean something nominal.
Since it was not moved by a revolutionary class at the triumphant conclusion of a class war the idea of equality did not do away with the inherited structures of social power.But neither was it thrown into the garbage bin.It continued to disturb and disrupt those structures.
Why was Ambedkar so sanguine that reservation in education and jobs would do the trick?Apparently the initial euphoria of freedom had conjured the vision of closing the millennium old gap at one stride.Besides from his experience as Labour member in the Governor-General’s cabinet which carried the weight of paramount imperial authority sweeping all before it, he had cherished the hope that the free Indian state would raze down the formidable dividing walls.But he discovered to his chagrin that it was hamstrung at the start by old and shrewd vested interests.
As for the much vaunted genuine Indian contribution to the ideology of modern democracy——–the equality of all religions in the eye of the state,I am not sure it had been such a great blessing.It had at one stroke elevated a civil matter to the political level and enabled designing powers to use the state to play havoc in the name of a risen spirit.The spectacle of the police joining rioters in honour of some religion or other had been the dire consequence.
This has served the purpose of religious bigots and fanatics well.When the Constitution was being discussed the mouthpiece of the RSS , the ORGANISER, had rued that anglicised half-breeds were foisting on India a wretched copy of the Westminster form of democracy,whereas India already had for ages such a priceless gem of political wisdom as the venerable MANUSMRTI.As for the mentor of RSS, Savarkar dismissed as junk the idea of equality and denied cituzenship to Muslims and Christians.I also suspect he was the first proponent of the pernicious idea of ‘duties of citizens’, which is now so often invoked to strangle civil liberties.
Hiren Gohain is a political commentator