Safeguarding the Constitution is a moral imperative
IN the acclaimed web series Dahaad, a police inspector is prevented by an upper-caste man from entering his mansion. He cites her lower caste as the reason. She tells the man that the Constitution gives her the right to enter a home for the purpose of an investigation. He is left dumbfounded and she confidently proceeds with her task of probing fake news and ‘love jihad’. This is the power of the Constitution. It protects the basic dignity of citizens. We can speak back to power.
We have every reason to be proud of our Constitution — a product of the freedom struggle and the skills of its makers. The task the framers of the Constitution were confronted with was a stupendous one. Indians spoke different languages, practised distinctive rituals, had unique worldviews, and diverse expectations of politics. Newly independent India strained at the seams with diversity and differences, both of which can be troublesome. People were strangers to each other. And in many parts of the country, democracy was a stranger to them. Independence had come clothed in bloodshed. Social hierarchies were left intact, elites continued to hold themselves above the rest of the people, and discrimination on the grounds of religion and caste ran rife. We needed a Constitution that provided an alternative to ‘tribal’ loyalties triggered by the Partition. Jean-Jacques Rousseau had written that we must take people as they are and laws as they should be. It is this feat that our Constitution accomplished.
It established relationships between citizens and the state and also among the citizens. People divided along the lines of politicised religion were now bound in a political community united by their allegiance to the Constitution. They were offered an alternative to the claustrophobia of closed-in communities, besides opportunities for consolidating links forged by the freedom movement, knowledge of what cosmopolitanism is and what solidarity should be. Indians were introduced to new norms enshrined in the Preamble to the Constitution. A political community based on equality, freedom, justice and fraternity was born. Despite a rocky journey over the decades, the Constitution has been consolidated through collective action.
Constitutions are significant because they are regulatory and prescriptive. Without a Constitution to regulate the exercise of power, democracy degenerates. Without a foundational document that etches the ideals of democracy on the proverbial stone, it goes haywire. Democracy does not stand upon its own feet; it has to be institutionalised. The difference between modern constitutionalism and constitutions in the city-states of ancient Greece — where democracy was born — is the Bill of Rights. This limits the powers of the government and establishes the status of every citizen as someone who counts, and counts equally. Despite the uncomfortable fact that successive governments have mauled the Constitution at times, it still stands tall as testimony to what politics has descended into, and as the embodiment of what politics should be.
Admittedly, attempts to tame power have not proved successful in every country that has adopted a Constitution. In many countries, constitutions have been periodically dumped, replaced by another one and subsequently replaced by yet another one. In some countries, political elites have bent constitutions to their will, aided by the judiciary and the media. In other cases, constitutions camouflage authoritarian governments. Yet, even authoritarian rulers are reluctant to dispense with the Constitution, for a Constitution casts a veneer of legitimacy over the exercise of power and translates raw power into moral authority.
It is true that when democracies lapse, constitutions and political practices go their own way with little prospect of intersection. But it is equally true that we can recognise the derailment of democracy only if we possess a Constitution. The Constitution, in a significant sense, provides a guide to democracy; it acts as a check on anti-democratic politics, protects the rights of the people and above all, provides a criterion for judging the state of democracy or the lack thereof. This can and has sparked off collective action and strengthened the political community.
Collective action reiterates a truth often overlooked by legal jurists. A society cannot be held together only by the dry bones of law. Unless people relate to each other with solidarity because they are fellow citizens, unless they realise that we inhabit a community of fate, legal ties can prove brittle, laws can be subverted, corrupted and ignored. The language of rights is indispensable for democracy because it allots moral stature to individuals. But rights by themselves can easily lead to self-serving action and indifference to others. Law inhabits a cold, hard place.
Political communities should be able to reach out to vulnerable sections of society and connect with each other on the basis of sympathy and solidarity. Our Constitution forms a bridge between the world of procedural politics regulated by law and the political community that clothes the law with sentiments. In a society where debate is frowned upon, dissent is discouraged, activists are jailed and minorities are harassed, the political community has to gear up to defend the Constitution. The Constitution protects us. It is time we realised that we have to protect our Constitution.
