Constitution a work in progress

Neera Chandhoke
Political Scientist

The Indian Constitution, one of the longest in the world, is generally interpreted as a lawyer’s gold mine. Many legal battles have been fought over each provision, careers have been made and wrecked, and a great deal of jurisprudence generated on every issue. However, the judicialisation of the Constitution has obfuscated its essential nature as a political document. We tend to forget that the basic rules of the political game were established in, and through historical processes initiated at the turn of the 20th century. By the 1920s, the freedom movement was transformed into a mass movement, and the concept of freedom was cast in liberal notions of fundamental rights, rule of law, parliamentary government, and universal adult franchise. Though the administrative structure of the Constitution is based on the 1935 Government of India Act, the Preamble, fundamental rights and Directive Principles were the outcome of initiatives taken by the leaders of the national movement.

The Constitution seeks to create a democratic community out of a welter of cultural, religious, linguistic and ethnic communities. The project still awaits realisation.

The leaders insisted that Indian Constitution would be written by Indians themselves. As Republic Day approaches, it is time we begin to appreciate this aspect of the struggle for freedom, and recollect that these precepts were a creative response to a particular crisis in the body politic. We also need to recollect that the Constitution was written against the background of tremendous upheavals: the assassination of Gandhi, agrarian revolts, integration of princely states into the Union, and above all, the Partition that left a million dead, half a million in the region of Indian Punjab alone. And yet, the makers of the Constitution held fast to their cherished dreams of democracy and minority rights. It is this we should memorialise when we celebrate its making.

On December 9, 1946, a Constituent Assembly met to draft a constitution for a people headed towards independence. The Objectives Resolution was introduced by the PM of the interim government, Jawaharlal Nehru. He drew attention to the fact that the Constituent Assembly was not a gift of the colonial government. Indians had fought for the right to author their own Constitution. ‘For a long time, we have been having various plans for a free India in our minds, but now, when we are beginning the actual work, I hope, you will be at one with me when I say, that we should present a clear picture of this plan to ourselves, to the people of India and to the world at large.’ The task of the Assembly was to build on previous initiatives, as well as set a blueprint for the future.

Nehru’s words served to remind the Assembly that Indians had begun to conceptualise the basic precepts of their own Constitution as far back as 1895, when a ‘A Constitution of India Bill’ came to the attention of the public. No one was sure who the author was, though Annie Besant thought that Tilak had scripted the Bill. In the second decade of the 20th century, 43 distinguished Indians signed a memorandum accompanying ‘The Commonwealth of India Bill 1925’. The Bill was sent for consideration to the Labour government in England. However, after the first reading in the British Parliament, the Labour government was voted out of power and the Bill did not come to fruition. The Bill included a list of civil liberties, the right to freedom of religion, and social rights. A fuller version of these rights was enshrined in the 1928 document, known as the Motilal Nehru Constitutional Draft. The Bill stated: ‘We could not better secure the full enjoyment of religious and communal rights to all communities than by including them among the basic principles of the constitution.’

The Congress session held in Karachi in 1931 adopted ‘A Resolution on Fundamental Rights and Economic and Social Change’. It incorporated a fuller list of fundamental rights. In 1945, the Sapru Commission Report stated that the fundamental rights of the new constitution would serve as a ‘standing warning’ to all. ‘[W]hat the Constitution demands and expects is perfect equality between one section of the community and another in the matter of political and civic rights, equality of liberty and security in the enjoyment of the freedom of religion, worship, and the pursuit of the ordinary applications of life.’

Rejecting the 1933 White Paper issued by the British government, the Congress Working Committee stated that the ‘only satisfactory alternative to the White Paper is a constitution drawn up by a Constituent Assembly elected on the basis of adult suffrage. If necessary, important minorities should elect their own representatives.’

These resolutions and initiatives embodied three precepts of the freedom manifesto. The first was self-authorship. Indians could only own their Constitution if it was written and signed by their representatives. Two, elections to the Constituent Assembly must be held on the basis of adult franchise. Three, special consideration was given to the interests of the minorities.

In 1940, Nehru authored a piece titled ‘Why We Ask for a Constituent Assembly’? A Constitution authored by and for the people ‘means the creation of a new state; it means the walking out and away from the economic foundations and structure of imperialism. This cannot be done by the wisest of lawyers sitting together in a conclave; it cannot be done by small committees trying to balance interests and calling that constitution-making; it can never be done under the shadow of an external authority. It can only be done effectively when…the urge and the sanctions come from the masses. Hence the vital importance of adult suffrage.’

Constitutions are historical documents. The Constitution of India embodies the aspirations of the Indian people who had dared to dream of a life that was free of colonialism. The Constitution is also a project for the future. Dr Ambedkar, quoting George Grote, the historian of Greece, spoke of constitutional morality as ‘a paramount reverence for the forms of the Constitution’. This morality, he accepted, has to be cultivated. But it must be learnt because the Constitution gives us the wherewithal to think and act democratically. The Constitution seeks to create a democratic community out of a welter of cultural, religious, linguistic and ethnic communities. The project still awaits realisation.