India's path to redemption: Ambedkar's liberal legacy leads the way

India honoured the memory of the chief architect of its Constitution, Babasaheb Ambedkar, by declaring a public holiday on his 135th birth anniversary on April 14. Political parties have long competed to claim they are the true inheritors and sentinels of his political legacy. It has been easier to sing paeans in his praise and install his statues at prominent locations than to keep faith with his vision of a liberal and democratic India, where individual rights transcend community-based prescriptions.

 

The Constitution of India is citizen-centric, with the state under a legal and justiciable obligation to govern without heed to caste, creed, sex or religion. The enjoyment of fundamental rights by individuals is not only a protective shield against community oppression but also against a predatory state. Neither the claim of tradition nor religious sensibility may be used to abridge individual rights. In this sense, Ambedkar’s vision of India is unabashedly that of a liberal democracy. It is true that he argued persuasively for the promotion of social justice through limited community-based reservation for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, recognising the challenge of overcoming a long history of discrimination and oppression. But this was to be temporary, until social and economic justice had been substantially achieved.

 

It has been argued that the Constitution framed under the leadership of Ambedkar was, in some sense, “un-Indian” as it borrowed concepts from mainly Western constitutional theory and practice. In embedding the values of liberty, equality, and fraternity, in the Constitution, Ambedkar and other members of the Constituent Assembly were inspired by these Western ideals, but in fact went beyond them. The acceptance of universal suffrage was one such idea — adopted despite the widespread illiteracy and poverty of the Indian masses. It is also not true that Indian political and religious thought did not encompass some of the ostensibly Western conceptual categories. For example, Ambedkar himself recognised the egalitarian underpinnings of Buddhism, which is why he promoted the mass conversion of Dalits to the Buddhist faith. While notions of caste and rigid social hierarchies are entrenched in India, so too are notions of common humanity, of universal brotherhood, and there has always been room for eccentricity and non-conformity. Traditional Indian thought has always been layered, ascending from the bounds of community and custom to an overarching realisation of undifferentiated universality.

 

After all, if the quintessential Indian dictum — The World is One Family, or Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam — has relevance in India’s relations with other countries and peoples, should not the celebration of India’s own multitudinous “family” begin at home? How will it be possible to embrace the world as our family if we are divided and exclusionary within our own country? Fraternity, as a constitutional value, is no different from this most ancient of Indian precepts, which seeks unity in diversity.

 

 The liberalism that underlies the Constitution has as much Indian inspiration as Western. To reject liberalism as a Western implant is to deny its manifestation in Indian thought through the ages — expressed in a uniquely Indian idiom. Scepticism is deeply rooted in Indian thinking, as is the celebration of the argumentative Indian. The fundamental rights enjoyed by the individual in the Constitution recognise these innate attributes of the quintessential Indian. Conformity to community norms or political ideologies limit the Indian imagination. There is great pride in what ancient India achieved in science, mathematics, astronomy, and, above all, in recognising the unity of mind and body through the theory and practice of yoga. These were the fruits of soaring imagination and constant questioning.  But past luminescence is no guarantee of future brilliance. The past can be an inspiration but not a substitute for the future. Ambedkar’s contribution lies in giving India a forward-looking Constitution, with a vision of a modern India that has jettisoned the social infirmities of the past and, for the first time in its long and tortured history, created a just and inclusive society.

 

Ambedkar recognised the immense diversity of the country and the near impossibility of imposing a monochromatic framework through a rigid Constitution. What he sought to do was create a political dispensation that aimed to promote national unity — not through the suppression of the multiple identities that Indians preserve zealously, and often aggressively, but by transcending these in favour of a larger, overarching identity of citizenship. At this level, there is equal enjoyment of the fundamental rights guaranteed by the Constitution. The individual may be free to follow the norms of his community if he or she so chooses. But if she rejects community norms to exercise her own individual choice, the community can have no claim on her person or her conduct, and the state is bound to uphold her right against the community.

 

This is most often seen in inter-caste or inter-religious marriages, where the choices made by adult citizens must be upheld. Yet, we have witnessed the state itself upholding the claims of the community against the individual. This practice is now being formalised through laws in several states. This goes against the letter and spirit of the Constitution.

 

Ambedkar gave us a liberal Constitution, and liberalism is a fundamental attribute of democracy. An “illiberal democracy” is a contradiction in terms. The constant derision heaped on liberalism and the demonisation of citizens who keep faith with liberalism undermines democracy itself. This is not how Ambedkar would have wanted his legacy to be celebrated. If he were alive today, he would have been deeply troubled by the multiple fault-lines that have surfaced in Indian society, exacerbating social and economic inequalities, stoking communal and regional divisions, and distorting the vision of a modern India that he made an integral part of the Constitution. In truly honouring his memory, we should revisit his deep insights into the Indian condition and the path to redemption that he laid out before the country.

The author is a former foreign secretary