Our Lode Star

As these landmark cases remind us,for all our cynicism,our constitutional values have often rescued us,elevated us and made us proud....

After sixty years,it is fair to say that the Constitution of India marks the third great moment in the evolution of modern democratic republics. The American constitution enshrined ideals of liberty and limited government and proved that a republican form of government could endure over a large territory and in time. The Constitution that followed the French Revolution did not endure. But it gave an animating momentum to the ideas of liberty,equality and fraternity. And the Indian Constitution proved that a republic could be created amidst bewildering diversity and economic impoverishment. It also showed how a constitution could transform the moral compass of an ancient civilisation,ameliorate some its great ills,provide new hope,and create a new nation that would strive to ensure that every citizen felt at home in it.

The revolutionary character of the America often disguises the debt of that constitution to a long tradition of political theory and practice. The Indian Constitution has the opposite problem. Its surface debts to so many different traditions of constitutionalism,disguises its extraordinary novelty. The Constituent Assembly that put it together has not been memorialised in the way which the great Assemblies in France and America were. But it belongs no less in that pantheon. It had the daring to craft a political experiment like no other in human history.

A constitution is not just a series of letters. It endures when a range of factors work to sustain it: political leadership,the habits of citizens,the balance of power in society,the attractiveness of its moral vision,the creativity and artifice of its procedures,and its ability to serve as the focal point of an overlapping consensus. But while a constitution draws upon these sources,it also in turn acts upon them. It does not simply enunciate our values,or allocate governing authority. It slowly but surely comes to transform both self and society,the ways in which we relate to ourselves and others. There is consensus that the aspirational values enshrined in our constitution were often deeply at odds with the society in which they were embedded: equality in a land of hierarchy,liberty in a land of social conservatism,democracy on a scale that had never been imagined before,and a diversity that needed to be managed. The constitution was by no means a panacea for all challenges and its meaning has remained contested. But that it remained a focal point for our struggles and divisions,hopes and disappointments was testament to how its authority was being enhanced even as particular articles were be disputed or misinterpreted.

The Indian Constitution is one is the longest constitutions in the world. It is not parsimonious,but expansive. It does not have the neat elegance of simple first principles. It often represents the force of compromise. But even those compromises are in service of a cause. They are attempts to weld together a nation out of diverse hues,they are attempts to do justice to the fact that our values do sometimes conflict and do not always neatly cohere. Harmonious construction is more a legal figment than an accurate description of most moral reality. It was therefore inevitable that the balance of values would be open to contest and reinterpretation. But what is remarkable is that the Indian Constitution has allowed that,yet retaining a core that is republican.

The meaning of this constitution has often been created and recreated through the skill and craft of its dearest progeny: lawyers and judges. As you read the remarkable cases that changed the meaning of what means to be Indian two things will strike you. The first is this. While the constitution seems abstract,it is remarkable how it has shaped our moral imaginations and the social structures we inhabit. It has transformed our sense of rights and entitlements,property,dignity,development,religious identity,political power and even forms of permissible intimacy. It touches us deeply even when we do not recognise it.

The second is this. The meanings we give to the constitution are not often self-evident. They have to often be creatively secured by remarkable feats of argumentation. The best constitutional forms of argumentation are ones that manage to bring out its core aspirations,but in a manner that is still disciplined by the form of the law. Populist bombast or a instrumental view of the law are no substitute for formal discipline and the responsibility public reason places upon us. The remarkable lawyers,judges and struggling petitioners in these cases remind us,that for all of our cynicism,our constitutional values have often rescued us,elevated us and made us proud. This is indeed a republic that can long endure.

Pratap Bhanu Mehta is President of Centre for Policy Research