On the 65th anniversary of promulgation of the Constitution, there’s little awareness within the smug middle class and academia of the extent to which mass illiteracy and sub-standard public primary and secondary education have impacted daily lives and endangered the future of the Republic: Dilip Thakore For right-thinking citizens who find the time to make an honest assessment of the state of the Republic, the 65th anniversary of the Constitution of India which falls on January 26, is likely to be a sombre occasion. Intensively debated for almost three years by the Constituent Assembly comprising the finest legal minds and intellectuals of newly independent India, the Constitution of India is arguably the most idealistic and noble charter of national governance, which drew upon the best features of the American and French among other national constitutions. Since then, against all expectations, it has enabled the survival of India which became independent after almost two centuries of British rule on August 15, 1947, as a functional constitutional democracy. The preamble of the Constitution was carefully drafted by master spirits of the age led by Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, who despite his degrees from Bombay and Columbia (USA) universities had suffered humiliating caste and social discrimination for being born into a Dalit household. Therefore he ensured that under the Constitution all citizens of the free, independent Republic would enjoy justice, liberty, equality and fraternity and a social order in which minorities would be protected by guaranteed fundamental rights beyond the amending rights of ephemeral parliamentary majorities. Among them: freedom of speech and expression, to conduct any legitimate business, trade, profession or occupation in any part of India, to form political parties, associations and trade unions, among other ‘seven freedoms’ specified in Article 19. Moreover Article 14 unequivocally stated that all citizens without exception are equal before the law. Although the eminent British constitutional law jurist Sir Ivor Jennings described it as “a lawyers’ paradise”, the architecture, detail and balance of the Constitution of India was — and continues to be — widely admired in India and abroad. The American scholar Granville Austin (1927-2014), author of two authoritative commentaries on the Constitution of India (The Indian Constitution: Cornerstone of a Nation (1966) and Working a Democratic Constitution: The Indian Experience (1999)), described it “as the greatest political venture since that originated in Philadelphia in 1787” when the US constitution was promulgated. According to Austin, the successful drafting of the Constitution of India was “a gigantic step for a people previously committed to irrational means of achieving other worldly goals”. Nevertheless although as chairman of the drafting committee, Dr. Ambedkar was satisfied with the task the Constituent Assembly had accomplished, he warned that the Constitution was a mere roadmap for fair, firm and orderly governance of an unprecedentedly diverse nation state. As recounted in Ramachandra Guha’s authoritative India After Gandhi (2007), Ambedkar predicted that after the country formally adopted the Constitution on January 26, 1950, it would “enter a life of contradictions”. “In politics we will have…
