Look again at the snapshot from the Constitution Day celebrations at Parliament’s Central Hall Wednesday. It didn’t merely capture what has become an annual event,since 2015, marking the adoption of the Constitution by the Constituent Assembly on November 26, 1949. In times of great political polarisation, and with the dust of the campaign for Bihar yet to settle, the photograph brought together Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi, among other leaders from both sides of the political divide, along with the President, Vice President and Speaker — all reading from the Constitution’s Preamble, with Mahatma Gandhi gazing kindly down at the proceedings from a frame on the wall behind them.
Of course, that photograph is also deceptive. At the very least, it does not tell the whole story. Outside the shared frame, the BJP still paints spectres that fold in an ostensibly unfinished agenda of decolonisation with the supposed dangers to national integrity posed by alleged Congress pandering to extremist ideologies. And Congress says that the BJP’s show of respect to the Constitution is only hypocrisy and the document needs to be saved from the ruling party. It is true that the political middle ground, anchored by constitutional values and ideals, remains largely unoccupied. And yet, at the same time, the Constitution’s uplifting and moderating influence can also be seen and heard in other occasions and spaces. Listen to the new Chief Justice of India, Surya Kant, hearing pleas in the Supreme Court challenging the SIR of electoral rolls in states. The CJI recast the villainous “intruder” or “ghuspaithiya” in the ongoing citizenship debates, in a more compassionate tone — “somebody working as a poor rickshaw puller, somebody working as a labourer on a construction site”. If an Aadhaar card is issued to them, “that’s something part of our constitutional ethos, that is our constitutional morality”, said the CJI, even as he asked whether or not that means he can also vote in this country.
As a new Parliament session opens on Monday, it is the common ground and the compassion that need to be amplified and given more play. Of course, that is easier said than done. But both the writing of the constitutional compact all those Novembers ago and the institution of Parliament that contributes towards making it meaningful, reflect a despite-it-all optimism in the possibilities of democracy. After celebrating Constitution Day, and on the eve of the House opening its doors again to dialogue and debate, that’s the challenge — and hope.
