In Kerala where I was born and brought up, it
was quite common for Christian preachers and pastors to distribute some books
of the Bible, if not the whole book, free of cost to those willing to accept
them. Gideon is an organisation that promotes the distribution of the Book. It
is because of Gideon that one finds the Bible in hotel rooms the world over.
Other religious groups have learnt from these
pioneers. Recently, I saw a monk belonging, most probably, to the Hare Krishna
movement distributing copies of the Gita at a nominal price. Since I have a
beautiful, bilingual edition of the Gita, explaining in English the meaning of
every Sanskrit word, I politely refused to accept it.
The last time I went to the International Book
Fair at Pragati Maidan in New Delhi, the largest crowd was at a bookstall where
copies of the Quran in English and Hindi were given free of cost. Again, I
refused to accept because I have a beautifully printed, calligraphed holy book
of the Muslims that contains the text in both Arabic and English.
The motive that drives the Christian
missionary, the Hindu monk and the Islamic publisher is the same, to propagate
their religion, perfectly sanctioned by the Constitution. A few years ago, I
met a different kind of missionary who distributed free copies of the Indian
Constitution.
It was a pocket edition. I gladly accepted it
and when he said that he accepted donations also so that he could reach more
people, I gave him a small donation. His mission in life was to see every
Indian family having a copy of the book. After all we as a nation are governed
by the provisions of the Constitution. In fact, the Constitution impacts our
lives much more than the religious books I mentioned.
I had a little interaction with the
missionary. He argued that to be a good citizen, it was necessary to learn by
heart the national anthem, the national song and the preamble of the
Constitution. Every student, every citizen should at least understand the significance
of the Preamble, one of the most beautiful features of the Indian Constitution.
I wished him the best in his endeavour.
On June 15, I was very happy to read a report
circulated by UCAN that the Catholic Bishops Conference of India has decided to
teach in all its educational institutions the salient features of the
Constitution. The Constitution is not for the CBCI alone. True, it was the
Catholics who first set up a printing press in India, long before the “Indian”
government had one. It marked the beginning of the printing revolution.
Let the CBCI idea be picked up by every
government, municipal bodies, religious and social institutions running
schools, colleges and universities in the country. Knowledge is power. If every
citizen knows the provisions of the Constitution, especially his fundamental
rights and duties, India will be a better place to live in.
Early in his career as Prime Minister, one
significant statement Prime Minister Narendra Modi made was that the only book
that would guide him was the Indian Constitution that came into force on
January 26, 1950. Had he imbibed the spirit of the Constitution, he would not
have presented to his Japanese counterpart an expensive edition of the Gita or
2000 kgs of sandalwood to a temple in Kathmandu or utilised government
infrastructure to visit temple after temple. He should have spent his own money
for the same.
Be that as it may, Modi belongs to a group, a
powerful one at that, which has its representatives presiding over the nation,
both Houses of Parliament and occupying almost every Raj Bhavan and Raj Niwas
in the country.
This particular group has an aversion for the
Constitution. When the 284 members of the Constituent Assembly signed the
document on November 26, 1949, after deliberating on it for two years, 11
months and 18 days and decided to enforce it from January 26 the next year, it
was a day of celebration for Indians the world over.
MS Golwalkar, popularly called Guruji, who
headed the RSS, had this to say about the Constitution: “Our constitution, too,
is just a cumbersome and heterogeneous piecing together of various articles
from various constitutions of Western countries. It has absolutely nothing
which can be called our own. Is there a single word of reference in its guiding
principles as to what our national mission is and what our keynote in life is?”
Alas, it is this view that guides the thinking
of the RSS. When the BJP came to power at the Centre for the first time, one of
the first things it did was to appoint a committee to review the Constitution.
Former Supreme Court Chief Justice MN Venkatachalia, who headed the Committee,
was not ready to do a hatchet job and he gave a report that could not have
pleased the then Home Minister LK Advani, who took the initiative to appoint him.
That does not mean that the Sangh Parivar has
abandoned the project. Every now and then we hear Union ministers and top
leaders of the Parivar making assertions that the solution to the problems of
the nation was in redrafting the Constitution. For the creation of the New
India that Modi often talks about, the BJP needs a two-thirds majority in both
Houses of Parliament. It is to amend the Constitution.
Of course, the Supreme Court has ruled that
the “basic structure” of the Constitution cannot be altered but it did not
explain what constitutes the basic structure. With some judges, whose IQ is as
good as to claim that peacocks do not copulate to produce their offspring,
around us, we cannot be rest assured that the judiciary would take care of any
attack on the Constitution. Central to the exercise of protecting the
Constitution is to disprove the myth that it was a piecing together of various
provisions of various constitutions.
A noteworthy fact about the Constitution is
that out of 35 constitutional polities born after the Second World War, India
is the only country which survives with its Constitution. All other countries
fell prey to totalitarianism, civil war and military take-over. Why did it work
in India, whereas it failed in Islamic Pakistan, Hindu Nepal and “Buddhist” Sri
Lanka? Was there anything true in Golwalkar’s assertion?
Great jurists NA Palkhivala, Justice HR Khanna
and Justice Krishna Iyer had answered the question: how much Indian is the
Indian Constitution? They argued that our Constitutional values are those human
values evolved in India through her crowded history of 5000 years. MP Raju is
an eminent lawyer and author of several books. Nothing fascinates him more than
the defence of the Constitution.
I heard with great interest his extempore
speech at the Kerala Club while introducing his new book
India’s
Constitution: Roots, Values and Wrongs (Media House, Pages 464, Rs
595) in December last. He has picked up the thread from where Palkhivala,
Khanna and Iyer had left it. And I can say with confidence that he did a
marvellous job in dispelling the impression that the Constituent Assembly did
what is today known as a cut-and-paste job.
Raju begins his argument highlighting a
little-known or little-discussed aspect of the making of the Constitution. The
first thing that the Assembly consisting of members like Bhim Rao Ambedkar,
Jawaharlal Nehru, Vallabh Bhai Patel, Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, Sarojini Naidu,
Raja Jaipal Singh, Frank Anthony and Rajkumari Amrit Kaur did was to pass the
Objective Resolution. This was done on January 22, 1947.
The resolution contained the values and
objectives of the Constitution to be framed. The members wanted to send a
message to the posterity on the importance they attached to it. Hence they
decided to pass the resolution, all the members standing. All other resolutions
and provisions were to be voted and passed with the members sitting only.
“Thus at the outset of the framing of the
Indian Constitution, the centrality of human values was categorically stressed
and declared. There were great leaders both saintly and wise to take
inspiration from. We had great works, both religious and secular, to lay our
foundation on. Models of great nations and their constitutions were available
to emulate.
“But our civilizational experience had taught
us the supreme lesson: it is values and ideals which should govern us. We are
not to be governed by charismatic leaders or heroic saints. We should allow
ourselves to be governed by values and by values alone. We might take assistance
from all other things as appropriate according to those values. The declaration
of values as the objective resolution with a few changes found place in the
Constitution when it was finally framed — the preamble of the Constitution of
India”.
When I read this, I remembered the missionary
I quoted who wanted the preamble to be learnt by heart like the national anthem
by every Indian. Raju has such a good command of the Sanskrit language and
considerable knowledge about the sacred texts of India that when he argues he
uses them with telling effect. Take the case of the rivalry between the Aryans
and the non-Aryans or between Devas and Asuras. The Devas were led by Indra and
the Asuras by Prahlada.
In the battle that ensued, Indra was defeated
by Prahlada who became the ruler of all the three worlds. Indra could not
understand why or how Prahlada could defeat him. Inquiries revealed that
Prahlada had a virtuous character (sheel) based on the values of non-violence
(adroha), compassion (anugraha) and charity (danam). Prahlada was invincible as
long as he followed those values.
Using a clever stratagem, Indra sought and
obtained a boon from Prahlada under which Prahlada loses all the great
qualities he had — righteousness, truth, good deeds, power and prosperity, all
of which have their roots in good character. As a result, Prahlada became
vulnerable and he was eventually defeated.
Now compare Prahlada with Modi. There were
millions of people who believed that he would do something great. But as he
began speaking lies, people began losing their trust in him. Today his speeches
evoke laughter, not confidence. He has become, like Prahlada, vulnerable. There
are not many to defend him when he asks foolishly and mischievously why Nehru
did not go to the Cellular Jail in Andamans to meet Savarkar.
Once a leader loses character, he loses
everything. In India’s Constitutional scheme of things, rules based on values,
matter, not rulers. When Indira Gandhi tried to tinker with the rules, the
people were ready to throw her into the electoral dustbin. Raju argues that the
issue was settled long back in Greece. Plato argued for a philosopher king but
his disciple Aristotle argued that even a philosopher king would not be without
passion.
“Hence what is required is to make him also
subject to the principles and values extracted from philosophers and the
constitutions of others”.
When the British wanted to build a house for
the Viceroy in New Delhi, they did not choose a European model. Instead, they
looked closely at a Buddhist vihara. That is why the Rashtrapati Bhavan looks
like a Buddhist vihara. “The five precepts taught by Buddha are almost
identical to the universal values arrived in both the Brahmanic and Sramanic
traditions”.
Kautilya’s Arthasastra classified the duties
common to all as non-violence, truthfulness, uprightness, freedom from malice,
compassion and forbearance.
Ashoka’s pillar edicts reflect the values that
should guide the nation. It was not accidentally that Mahatma Gandhi chose
non-violence as the only weapon in the fight against the British. As Raju
points out quoting several texts, Ahimsa (non-violence) is the queen of
all universal values. “Ahimsa paramo dharma” thus becomes the national creed.
There were many Western scholars who believed
that India’s was a case of Oriental despotism and it would never be able to
become a democratic nation. Amartya Sen in his seminal work on Justice proved
that India practiced some sort of democracy long before it became the norm in
the West. Raju points out that India had a panchayati raj system in place
thousands of years ago.
What all this suggests is that the
Constitution is absolutely Indian in character. It is the failure of the people
which is touted as the failure of the Constitution. Rule of men, instead of
rule of values, is a constitutional wrong paraded as governance. The fault is
not with the Constitution. It is with the people who have to function within
the parameters of the Constitution and who have to uphold it at all times.
Raju’s book must be read by all those who wrongly believe that the Indian
Constitution is foreign, not Indian.
