Constitution is steeped in India’s civilisational values — but it’s not stuck in the past

To say that the Constitution framers thought of India as just a nation-state and undermined its civilisational identity is factually incorrect. There were repeated references to our civilisation in Constituent Assembly deliberations. For instance, supporting Nehru’s Objective Resolution — guiding principles that helped the Constituent Assembly of India draft the Constitution — Krishna Sinha criticised the nation versus civilisation binary. “There has arisen in India, an Indian nation, with Indian culture and an Indian civilisation,” he said.

Critics should, at least, accept the views of Syama Prasad Mookerjee, founder of Jana Sangh who also supported the Objective Resolution. He said, “After all, we are sitting here not in our individual capacity but we claim to represent the people of this great land. Our sanction is not the British Parliament, our sanction is not the British Government; our sanction is the people of India.”

In fact, while moving the Objective Resolution on December 13, 1946, Nehru recalled the great “civilisational journey of 5,000 years”. He termed it the moment of transition from old to new, when this “ancient land” would attain its rightful and honoured place. Purushottam Das Tandon mentioned ancient assemblies at which pandits discussed important affairs. He talked of protecting the civilisation, while also moving forward.

The assertion that the Constitution has no intrinsic value and decoloniality is imperative to prevent the decimation of what remains of “Bharat’s indigeneity” is too sweeping. For some such critics of the Constitution, indigenous identity means the Aryan identity, not that of the Adivasis. Jaspal Singh, representing the Adivasis in the Constituent Assembly asserted, “Adivasis are the original inhabitants of India and Aryans were intruders.” He said that the Objective Resolution cannot teach the Adivasis as they have been practising democracy for ages.

A section of the Constitution’s critics want to be seen as the saviours of Indic civilisation and oppose constitutionalism, secularism, socialism and individualism. They oppose the Sabarimala judgment (2017) for its reliance on constitutional morality. But then, was not Ashoka’s Dhamma a sort of constitutional morality, and not state-sponsored religion? Does not the term dharma mean righteousness rather than any religion? In 1944, Hindu Mahasabha framed the Constitution of the Hindustan Free State. Twenty years earlier, the Constitution of the Irish Free State came into force. Aren’t there similarities in the names? Article 8(15) of the Mahasabha’s Constitution declares that there shall be no state religion. Secularism was perhaps more explicitly incorporated in the Hindu right-wing constitution compared to the country’s Constitution.

M R Masani underlined the central issue before the Constituent Assembly: Should the state own people or the people own the state? He said, “in our democracy, men will neither be slaves to capitalism nor to a party or the state. Man will be free”. India adopted British parliamentary democracy but instead of having a hereditary head of state, the country became a republic with an elected head of state. In borrowing fundamental rights from the US, the Constitution framers incorporated restrictions in the text itself. The American doctrine of “due process” was rejected. Unlike other federations, our governors are nominated by the Centre and not elected by the people and we opted for separation of functions rather than separation of powers. Are not ideas of the separation of powers basically part of the Indian civilisation’s ethos of Lakshman Rekha?

Our ancient assemblies did not have direct elections based on universal adult suffrage. India had a caste system that undermined equality, liberty and individual dignity. In the Constituent Assembly, Hansa Mehta spoke at length on the unequal status of women in ancient India. We borrowed individualism from the West out of our free choice.

A constitution sets the agenda for the future. It should look forward, not backward. Learning from the past is good but an uncritical outlook towards the past and the desire to revive past values is fundamentalism. We are indeed proud of our glorious civilisation that gave birth to the idea of India that underlines protection to, and preservation of diversity, tolerance and acceptance. If the entire world is our family, Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam, we are entitled to adopt ideas from anywhere.

The writer teaches constitutional law and is Vice-Chancellor of Chanakya National Law University, Patna. Views are personal