Durable foundation: The Constitution reflects India's founding values

Constitution remains a guarantor of Indian democracy despite the efforts of those who seek to undermine it

The flawless pageantry on display in the celebration of each Republic Day has a special resonance this year, which marks the 75th anniversary of the Indian Constitution coming into effect.  The existence of the Constitution as a dynamic and rambunctiously contested document deserves celebration for two reasons.  First, it reflects India’s survival as a united, vibrant, argumentative republic against all the odds and the dystopian predictions by Western commentators in the 1950s. Second, when set against the examples of American electoral practices and transfer of power, the Indian Constitution has proven a bulwark of democratic principles. For instance, Article 326 guarantees Indians universal adult suffrage, one of the first bold steps introduced by the constitutional authors. This is a right all Indians above the age of 18, irrespective of caste, creed, race, or economic background, can take for granted today. By contrast, in the world’s most powerful democracy, electoral rolls are the states’ responsibility, making them vulnerable to discretionary policies tailored by administrations’ political inclinations. Also, where Indians can assume a peaceful handover of power, the American establishment remains traumatised by the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, by supporters of Donald Trump, who refused to accept his defeat in the 2020 elections. 

Transfer of power based on citizens’ electoral decisions is not to be taken lightly, especially when set against Xi Jinping’s move in 2018 to appoint himself President of China for life. That said, like any living document, the Constitution relies on the people, political leaders, and the healthy enabling of independent institutions to work. The Emergency of June 25, 1975, to March 21, 1977, declared by Indira Gandhi, has stood as a cautionary tale in Indian political lore as an example of how the checks and balances of democratic functioning — Parliament and the judiciary in this case — can be manoeuvred to suppress citizens’ rights. That interlude underlined how Constitutional protections of citizens’ rights cannot be taken for granted. For example, several rulings have upheld the Indian judicial principle of “basic structure”, which asserts that several basic features of the Constitution (notably fundamental rights) cannot be amended by Parliament. But politicians in states and at the Centre have often sought to erode the right to freedom (including of speech and expression), the right to freedom of religion, and the right to equality. It is fair to say that the institutional checks and balances — including the judiciary and the Election Commission of India — have proven variable custodians of these rights.

  A good part of the problem lies in the inefficiency of the judicial system with its huge case backlogs and vacancies that have weakened the constitutional provision of the judicial review (ironically borrowed from the United States Constitution) to ordinary citizens. Cynics often dismiss the Indian Constitution, the world’s longest written Constitution, as a clone of the Government of India Act, 1935, and, indeed, that legislation accounts for the bulk of its contents. But the fact that the Opposition sought to make defence of the Constitution an electoral issue in the recent Lok Sabha elections suggests that the people’s representatives see value in it. It remains a guarantor of Indian democracy despite the efforts of those who seek to undermine it.