10 years of Constitution Day: Why it risks becoming a masking ritual for a backsliding democracy

* In the national capital, citizens – young and old – have been repeatedly prevented, at times brutally, by cops for asking their government why it has no effective solution to Delhi’s lethally rising air pollution.

* In Jammu & Kashmir, the ever-proliferating ranks of Hindutva hotheads have formed a Sanatan Dharma Sabha to demand that 42 of the 50 students admitted to the Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Institute of Medical Excellence as per rules and the NEET merit list must be de-rostered only because they are Muslims.

* Dressed up as the “most comprehensive reforms since independence”, the Centre notified four labour codes that were designed to further exploit India’s teeming labour force and perpetuate the hegemony of corporate oligarchs.

* Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of a constitutionally mandated secular India, was back at the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya, this time to hoist a ‘saffron flag’ marking the completion of an edifice built on the site where a mosque was once demolished by a Hindu mob; an act that the Supreme Court had dubbed “an egregious violation of the rule of law”.

All of this comes in the immediate run-up to November 26, officially declared Constitution Day by the Modi regime in 2015, to mark that historic day in 1949 when the Constituent Assembly adopted India’s very own Magna Carta. A decade on, it is, perhaps, pertinent to analyse how far out of step the country and its incumbent political masters have moved from the core promises and living spirit of the Constitution and how hollow this pageantry of Constitution Day may have become. What began as an annual tribute now increasingly resembles a masking ritual for a backsliding democracy.

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“In 2015, when the Centre had decided to mark November 26 Constitution Day, I had welcomed the move despite being in Opposition because I genuinely hoped that this could be a good starting point for public discussions on issues arising out of the Constitution that otherwise remain confined to some special session of Parliament or to seminars,” said Rajya Sabha MP Professor Manoj Kumar Jha. He added: “A decade later, I am embarrassed at my own naivety given how brazenly every basic tenet of the Constitution has been attacked in these 10 years while we continue to mark Constitution Day.”

Markers of this regression have been visible and growing; the warnings against it are not limited to the echo chambers of the regime’s listless political Opposition. The booming resonance of the Opposition’s ‘Save Constitution’ electoral war-cry, which had shaved off the BJP’s brute majority of two consecutive Lok Sabha polls last year, is now only a whimper; muffled by the saffron party’s quick and surprising turnaround in successive Assembly elections across Maharashtra, Haryana, Delhi and most recently, Bihar.

Meanwhile, the fuming rebuttals of the Centre and its cheerleaders notwithstanding, India’s rating on sundry domestic and global indices of democracy, civil liberties, poverty, hunger, press freedom, unemployment, et al continues to fall. If the US-based not-for-profit organisation for advocacy of political rights and civil liberties, Freedom House, had rated India “Free” on its democratic index in 2014, the year Modi first took oath as Prime Minister; by 2024, the country had slipped into the “Partly Free” category.

In the still more recent and exhaustive Liberal Democracy report published in March this year by the Swedish V-Dem Institute, the country continues to plummet further down the “electoral autocracy” ladder, with a freefall in its position on the Liberal Democracy Index, Electoral Democracy Index, Egalitarian Component Index and Deliberative Component Index.

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Dr. BR Ambedkar, Chairman of the Constitution’s Drafting Committee, saw the Constitution as a “vehicle of life”, its spirit as “the spirit of the Age”. Moving the Objectives Resolution in the Constituent Assembly, Jawaharlal Nehru, the country’s first Prime Minister, had hoped that the Constitution would “give a live message to India… breathe life in human minds”. The two stalwarts of the Indian Freedom Movement may not have always agreed on political matters, but they shared the belief that the Constitution would serve its intended purpose only so long as the people called upon to implement it do so with the right intent.

Ashok Bharti, chairman of the National Confederation of Dalit Organisations (NACDOR), believes that the root cause of the current “constitutional decay” lies in the irony that “those who instituted the Constitution Day draw their inspiration from a book called the Manusmriti, which is the very antithesis of everything Dr Ambedkar proposed in the Constitution”.

“The loudest protests against the adoption of the Constitution even in 1949 had come from the RSS [Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the ideological fountainhead of the Bharatiya Janata Party]. Ever since, it has been an unfulfilled dream of the Sangh to replace Ambedkar’s ideas with the precepts of the Manusmriti. The only thing that has changed is that unlike earlier, when the Sangh and its affiliates, including the BJP, would openly challenge constitutional values, the project is being implemented now by simply amending anything in the Constitution that doesn’t fit well with their vision or by compromising the institutions that are meant to work the Constitution,” Bharti told The Federal.

Congress leader Anil Jaihind, a key figure in Lok Sabha Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi’s ‘Save Constitution’ outreach campaign, agrees with Bharti. “The BJP and Sangh Parivar are genetically tuned to oppose the Constitution. As Prime Minister, the late Atal Behari Vajpayee had set up a Commission to review the Constitution [headed by former Chief Justice of India JS Verma] despite facing severe backlash,” said Jaihind.

​He added: “Modi is cleverer and he has seen in the last Lok Sabha elections the electoral cost he may have to pay for tinkering with the Constitution, so he isn’t trying something as openly as Vajpayee did. Modi realises that it is different constitutional authorities who ultimately implement the constitutional scheme and if he compromises those people and institutions, the Constitution is compromised without even having to amend it and that is exactly what has been happening for the past decade; compromised media, compromised investigation agencies and even certain compromised people in the judiciary.”

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If to many, the jubilation of Constitution Day may seem like an exercise in symbolism rather than substance, the reasons are obvious, abundant and not simply limited to political powwow between those in power and their opponents. The palpably sharp rise in Opposition leaders being accused of criminal misdemeanours and spending months in jail, as opposed to the ‘clean chits’ dished out just as swiftly to Opposition members defecting to the BJP, is for all to see. As is the persecution and incarceration of students, public intellectuals and journalists — the Umar Khalids, Sharjeel Imams, Devangana Kalitas, Gautam Navlakhas, Surendra Gadlings and countless others — who dare speak truth to power or dissent with the regime.

The response of the government when confronted with tough questions is a mix of silence, denial, defiance and denigration. The Prime Minister, now in his 12th year in office, is yet to address an open press conference and face unscripted questions. The data released by the government from time to time to project the strides it has made in every sphere, unlike any past government, remains highly suspect and almost always ends up triggering more questions than answers. The tall claims about India becoming the world’s fourth largest economy, reducing poverty and expanding infrastructure seem paradoxical when lakhs of unemployed youth apply for a few hundred jobs that promise to pay only a pittance or when 80 crore Indians still have to be distributed free rations.

Evidently, the very constitutional framework that should mediate power and protect the vulnerable is weakening even as the government spends lavishly on advertising its ‘achievements’ and celebrating events such as Constitution Day.

“When constitutional institutions lose their independence and public trust in them deteriorates, the Constitution’s checks and balances no longer seem robust but co-opted. When probe agencies are seen not as neutral enforcers but as partisan instruments, their legitimacy is undermined. When the media becomes a government’s mouthpiece, accountability cannot function. When the country’s largest religious minority, the Muslims, are targeted in the vilest manner, branded as infiltrators and made to live like second-class citizens, the promise of a secular country is shattered,” contented Supreme Court advocate Anas Tanwir.

Tanwir added: “Unfortunately, all of this is happening today and the dangers of this growing trend are profound. The blame for all of this lies with the government because ultimately it is the responsibility of those the public votes to power to ensure that the country runs on the promises of the Constitution and not on the whims of one man.”

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The Constitution was meant to be a beacon that would guide a newly independent country that had to keep its tryst with destiny. Seven decades later, if that country is now searching for a light at the end of a seemingly unending tunnel, is there any point in treading on?

Former Delhi minister and Ambedkarite activist Rajendra Pal Gautam weighs in with a sobering assurance. “No matter how dark the present times may seem, the Constitution that Dr Ambedkar gave India will not only outlast it but also remedy the damage caused in the past decade. What is important, however, is that those who believe in the Constitution must re-imagine the way in which the public at large is made aware of the importance of preserving constitutional values and ideas and of fighting against any assault made on them,” Gautam, currently the chairman of the Congress party’s scheduled castes department, told The Federal.

Professor Manoj Kumar Jha agrees, while admitting to a “critical flaw” in the way conversations around the Constitution are framed, from the very basic level of a school to even in colleges and public awareness campaigns”.

“Not as a politician but as a person with a teaching background, I feel the one area where we have failed over the years is in making people develop a sense of ownership and pride in the Constitution,” he said. Jha added: “The way we teach the Constitution in schools, which is the level when people first develop an affinity or aversion to a subject, is unfortunately confined to a few dates, figures and milestones instead of explaining how the Constitution impacts all of us equally in our daily lives.”

He further explained, “The challenge today for the Opposition, civil society intellectuals and anyone who wants to strengthen the constitutional vision is to re-imagine how we explain the Constitution. Just holding the Constitution in your hand in public meetings is not protecting the Constitution; we have to convey it as a lived reality and experience. When we say social justice, fraternity or equality, we should be able to communicate clearly what we mean, or else the Constitution will remain an abstract notion that simply needs to be venerated once a year because we are told to do so.”

The need to go beyond ceremonial Preamble recitations as a symbol of dissent against the ruling elite and abiding faith in the Constitution has never been more pressing. Justice, liberty, equality, and fraternity cannot be reduced to aspirational text but need to be fought for, restored and celebrated as a living reality.