The Constitution Debate: Power, Rights and Democracy in India

Evolution is different from transmogrification. That India’s Constitution is a living document that keeps pace with generational changes in the needs and aspirations of its people needs no reiteration, but equally true, it is the foundation on which the pillars of democracy, the political institutions, and the representative system, are built. The basic structure doctrine is integral to the Constitution thriving as a living document. Change is a constant, but the Constitution, in public imagination, retains its essential character over time.

No Constitution can please all sections equally. It is, in some ways, a mechanism for balancing of conflicting interests. It is both an enabler for the ordinary people and a guide for their ruling representatives. As B.R. Ambedkar, a key architect of the Constitution, put it, a good Constitution is only as effective as the leaders who uphold it. India’s voluminous Constitution laid down in writing conventions and precedents in older democracies to limit ambiguity and scope for misinterpretation. But no text is immune to wilful misreading, and so it has been India’s experience with its Constitution in the last 75 years.

As the statute of a young nation, a union of widely disparate regions with different languages and customs, the Constitution gave the executive vast powers to put down fissiparous tendencies and dissent. Freedoms were defined by their limitations, but their very articulation created spaces for dissent and political mobilisation for change. Indeed, the Constitution now figures prominently in election campaigns, and those who talk of reworking Constitution, whether from the right or the left of the political spectrum, face intense criticism.

These articles seek to bring out some of these facets of the working of the Constitution in the last 75 years.