Constitution Day: Are ‘We The People’ Real?

On Constitution Day, we should be taking affirmative steps to make amends to ensure that women, tribals and the poor who have been ignored all these years are now included in our national narrative. We have to ask ourselves the question, whether our Constitution's epithet, "We, The People of India" is in fact an honest proclamation, says PRATIK PATNAIK.

———-

We celebrate November 26^th as the "Constitution Day" of our relatively new republic and our ancient civilisation. The original commissioned copies of our Constitution have hand-drawn illustrations of India's civilisational values and ideals from Bhagirath's penance to Ganga's descent; from Lord Ram's return home to Akbar's court.

Unfortunately, there is one ideal that is not only not illustrated but has also not been captured in the wordings of our Constitution: The idea of complete inclusivity. Inclusivity of the poor and marginalised, women and the tribal population in the Constitutional making process.

The preamble of our Constitution proudly proclaims, "We, The People of India". Implicit in this phrase, is both a promise of inclusion and the claim that everyone together legislated this Grundnorm (the basic norm), in 'our' Constitution.

NOT INCLUSIVE

However, a closer look at the history of its making shall make it abundantly clear that the Indian Constitution was and still remains far from being completely inclusive. That it was only legislated by a few privileged property holders who had access to wealth and education, that too of a kind which passed the British muster.

The Cabinet Mission, while discussing how the members of the future Constituent Assembly, who were to be mandated with the responsibility of drafting the new Constitution should be elected, made certain important observations. The Mission noted:

"In forming any assembly to decide a new constitutional structure the first problem is to obtain as broad-based and accurate a representation of the whole population as is possible. The most satisfactory method obviously would be by election based on adult franchise but any attempt to introduce such a step now would lead to a wholly unacceptable delay in the formulation of the new constitution. The only practicable course is to utilise the recently elected Provincial Legislative Assemblies as electing bodies".