Constitution was a product of freedom struggle
HISTORIAN Eric Hobsbawm memorably wrote that nations without a past are a contradiction in terms. What makes a nation is history, and historians produce nationalist histories. They define who is the rightful inheritor of the nation and who is not. History in the hands of nationalists, writes Hobsbawm caustically, can kill more people than incompetent builders. Historians cannot evade their complicity in the creation of brutal nationalism.
Durbari historians, ignoring the ethics of the profession, twist the past. A historian well-versed in his or her craft will take care to register the multiple events that make up the past: contradictions, dominance and resistance. Historians who serve power write of a past as if it was taken out of a fairy tale. This is exactly the problem with the concept note of the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR) that accompanied the government’s order to observe Constitution Day on November 26 as Bharat: Loktantra Ki Janani (India: Mother of Democracy).
We are told that since ancient times people ruled themselves in village republics. This democratic political institution protected a glorious Hindu civilisation against invaders and colonisers. For these historians, history is a smoothly unfolding saga of events that are completely unaffected by any internal or external factor: earth-shaking changes in knowledge systems, waves of migration that led to the fusion of two cultures, discoveries in new ways of understanding society, political innovations and political institutions, new forms of domination and newer forms of resistance.
Their intention is to represent India as a nation right from time immemorial, notwithstanding that the concept of the nation originated in the 18th century in France and Italy. The second purpose is to erase the contribution of the Mughals to architecture, painting, language, poetry, literature, cuisine, manners and knowledge. The third objective is to subvert the contribution of our freedom struggle, and the role of our Constitution in democracy. Every schoolchild knows that there is a distinct difference between the 1857 revolt led by feudal elites and the freedom struggle, which beginning in 1885 gradually moved to not only Independence, but also democratic constitutionalism.
Constitutions have existed since ancient Greece. The history of modern constitutions was inaugurated in the 18th century. In the USA, the Constitution, written at the Philadelphia Convention in 1787 and subsequently ratified by a majority of states that subsequently formed a federation, took effect in 1788. In France, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, which came into existence in 1789 during the fall of the Bastille and the French Revolution, formed the Preamble to the Constitution enacted in 1791. In both cases, a new Constitution followed the overthrow of the previous regime; a colonial power in the case of the US and the monarchical regime in France.
By the middle of the 20th century, the arrival of newly decolonised states onto the world stage was marked by an explosion of constitution-making. The postcolonial world looked to India where a democratic Constitution came into force in 1950. This was accomplished despite the fact that the country did not meet the requirements set by western theorists for democracy — literacy, a middle class, a degree of economic wellbeing, cultural homogeneity, and a civic culture. Modern constitutions are distinct from earlier ones because they establish conditions for the legitimate and justifiable exercise of state power. Central to the limits on state power is a Bill of Rights for Citizens.
The Constitution, which was adopted on November 26, 1949, was written by the Indians and for the Indians. It was a product of the freedom struggle. If Indians who mobilised in massive numbers behind the egalitarianism of Jawaharlal Nehru and the ethical politics of Mahatma Gandhi were not aspiring for equality, freedom and justice in a post-colonial order, what were they aspiring for: imaginary village republics?
BR Ambedkar had dismissed this vanity by calling villages cesspools of cruelty, caste prejudice and communalism. Even a cursory reading of the deliberations of the Constituent Assembly tells us of the dreams of the founding fathers to overturn the highly inegalitarian social order of India and give to the people democracy.
Our fine Constitution was written against the background of the destruction and death that followed the Partition. Yet, the specific mandate of the Constituent Assembly, said Rajendra Prasad, President of the Constituent Assembly, was to create a Constitution in a spirit of courage, kindness, generosity, tolerance, and regard for each other’s feelings.
Members of the Constituent Assembly had the confidence that this could be done. There were also doubts. Dr Ambedkar reminded us in his final address on the draft Constitution on November 25, 1949, that, howsoever, good a Constitution might be, it is sure to turn bad if those who are called upon to work it happen to be a bad lot. However bad a Constitution may be, it might turn out to be good if those who work it are good.
Ruling classes must respect history, even if they were not a part of it. Those who disrespect history today are condemned to being disrespected tomorrow. Their best laid plans can be overturned by what Italian diplomat Niccolo Machiavelli called fortune: “Fortune changes, but men are set in their ways. Men will succeed when the two are in harmony and fail when they are not in accord.” His was a word to the wise: be careful of how you treat history for tomorrow fortune will ensure that history does not treat you well.
