Introduction
This chapter examines the fundamental principles, values, and objectives that form the foundation of the Indian Constitution, often referred to as its philosophy. Over the last 69 years, the Constitution has functioned successfully, leading to several critical questions :
● Why did the leaders of the national movement feel compelled to adopt a constitution after achieving independence from British rule?
● Why did they choose to bind themselves and future generations to this constitutional document?
● Why is it essential to accompany the study of the Constitution with a detailed examination of the debates that took place in the Constituent Assembly (CAD)?
● What moral objectives and ideals did India hope to achieve through this document, and what exactly is their content?
● What are the strengths, limitations, achievements, and weaknesses of the constitutional vision?
Understanding these points is crucial to grasping the philosophy of the Constitution.
What is Meant by the Philosophy of the Constitution?
Some people hold the view that a constitution is merely a collection of laws, and that laws should be separated from values or morality.
However, this is not entirely accurate. While not all legal provisions contain a moral element, many are intrinsically linked to values that a society holds dear. For instance, a law that prohibits discrimination based on religion or language is directly connected to the deep-seated value of equality. Such laws exist precisely because society values equality.
Therefore, we must view the Constitution as a foundational text rooted in a distinct moral vision. This requires adopting a political philosophy approach to interpret the document.
A political philosophy approach involves three key steps.
1. Understanding the Conceptual Structure: This involves exploring the potential meanings of central terms used in the Constitution, such as ‘rights,’ ‘citizenship,’ ‘minority,’ or ‘democracy.’
2. Identifying Embedded Ideals: We must attempt to establish a clear and consistent vision for the society and polity based on an interpretation of the Constitution’s core concepts. This helps us better comprehend the ideals embedded within the document.
3. Justifying Values via CAD: The Constitution should be examined in conjunction with the Constituent Assembly Debates to better understand and substantiate the principles it embodies. Since the framers deliberately chose to anchor the Indian polity in a set of guiding values, there must have been underlying reasons for these choices—even if they were not fully articulated in the final text.
This philosophical perspective is crucial not only for evaluating the moral substance and aspirations of the Constitution but also for offering an authoritative framework to resolve disputes over the meaning of its fundamental political values. Since constitutional ideals are frequently debated, contested, and at times distorted by partisan interests, the Constitution’s authoritative expression of these ideals must serve as the ultimate guide in their interpretation.
Case Study: The Japanese Constitution
The context in which a constitution is created profoundly influences the thinking of its makers. The Japanese Constitution of 1947 is widely known as the ‘peace constitution’.
● Preamble: It states that the Japanese people desire peace for all time and are conscious of the high ideals controlling human relationships.
● Article 9: This key article formalizes the philosophy by stating that the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as a means of settling international disputes. To achieve this, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, are never to be maintained.
Constitution as a Means of Democratic Transformation
Limiting State Power
A universally accepted reason for having constitutions is the need to restrict the exercise of power. Modern states possess immense power, including a monopoly over force and coercion. If this power falls into the wrong hands, the institutions meant for safety and well-being can turn against the people. Experience worldwide shows that states are prone to harming the interests of at least some individuals or groups. Therefore, constitutions establish the basic rules of governance, continuously checking the state’s tendency toward tyranny.
Empowering the Deprived
In addition to limiting power, constitutions offer peaceful, democratic means to achieve social transformation. For people emerging from colonial rule, a constitution embodies the first real exercise of political self-determination.
Jawaharlal Nehru recognized both aspects:
1. He claimed the demand for a Constituent Assembly represented a collective demand for full self-determination because only a Constituent Assembly of elected Indian representatives had the right to draft the constitution without external interference.
2. He argued that the Constituent Assembly was not merely a gathering of lawyers but a ‘nation on the move, throwing away the shell of its past political and possibly social structure, and fashioning for itself a new garment of its own making.’
The Indian Constitution was explicitly designed to break the shackles of traditional social hierarchies and usher in an era of freedom, equality, and justice. This approach fundamentally changes constitutional democracy theory, as constitutions are seen not only to limit those in power but also to empower those traditionally deprived.
Why Revisit the Constituent Assembly Debates (CAD)?
While historians study the past, students of politics must also examine the intentions of the framers
● In India, unlike countries like the US (where the constitution was written in the late 18th century), the values and ideals of the original farmers’ world have not changed drastically. A history of the Indian Constitution is still very much a history of the present.
● We may have forgotten the real principles underlying many of our current legal and political practices, taking them for granted. When these practices are challenged, neglecting the underlying principles can be harmful.
● Therefore, to grasp the value and meaning of current constitutional practice, we must revisit the political philosophy underlying the Constitution, found in the CAD.
What is the Political Philosophy of Our Constitution?
The philosophy of the Indian Constitution resists any single label because it is a blend of multiple ideals.
It is simultaneously:
● Liberal, democratic, egalitarian, secular, and federal.
● Open to community values and sensitive to the needs of religious and linguistic minorities and historically disadvantaged groups.
● Committed to building a common national identity.
In essence, it is committed to freedom, equality, social justice, and national unity. Crucially, it emphasizes peaceful and democratic measures for putting this philosophy into practice.
1. Individual Freedom (Liberalism)
The first core commitment of the Constitution is to individual freedom. This commitment was the result of over a century of continuous political and intellectual activity.
● Rammohan Roy: As early as the beginning of the 19th century, he protested the British colonial state’s curtailment of the freedom of the press. He argued that a state responsive to individual needs must provide the means (unlimited liberty of publication) for those needs to be communicated.
● Freedom in the Constitution: Freedom of expression and freedom from arbitrary arrest (a response to the infamous Rowlatt Act) are integral components. Other individual freedoms, such as freedom of conscience, are also included, giving the Constitution a strong liberal character.
● Non-Negotiable Value: For over forty years before the Constitution’s adoption, every key document from the Indian National Congress mentioned individual rights as a non-negotiable value.
2. Social Justice
The liberalism of the Indian Constitution differs from the classical western sense, which typically prioritizes individual rights over the demands of social justice and community values.
● Link to Justice: Indian liberalism was always linked to social justice.
● Special Measures: The most significant example is the provision for reservations for Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST). The framers believed that merely granting the right to equality was insufficient to overcome the age-old injustices these groups suffered or to give real meaning to their right to vote.
● Reservations: The Constitution provided special measures, such as the reservation of seats in legislatures and enabling the government to reserve public sector jobs for these groups.
● Historical Context: Indian liberalism emerged in two streams: one beginning with Rammohan Roy, emphasizing individual rights (especially women’s rights); and a second including thinkers like K.C. Sen, Justice Ranade, and Swami Vivekananda, who sought to introduce the spirit of social justice within orthodox Hinduism.
3. Respect for Diversity and Minority Rights
The Constitution encourages equal respect between communities.This was challenging in India due to two factors :
1. Hierarchy: Communities often have hierarchical relationships (e.g., the caste system).
2. Rivalry: When communities see each other as equals, they often become rivals (e.g., religious communities).
Avoiding these problems by not recognizing communities at all (as in most western liberal constitutions) was deemed unworkable and undesirable in India. Since India is a land of multiple cultural communities (linguistic and religious), it was mandatory to ensure that no one community systematically dominates others.
● Community Rights: The Constitution mandates the recognition of community-based rights.
Example: Religious communities have the right to establish and run their own educational institutions, which may receive financial aid from the government.
● Public Matter: This provision shows that the Constitution does not treat religion merely as a ‘private’ matter concerning the individual.
4. Secularism
Although the term ‘secular’ was not initially mentioned in the text, the Indian Constitution has always been secular.
● Western Conception (Mutual Exclusion): The mainstream western idea of secularism means the mutual exclusion of the state and religion to protect individual freedom and citizenship rights. This means the state should neither help nor hinder religions but maintain an arm’s length distance.
● Indian Conception (Principled Distance): The Indian framers departed from the western model for two reasons :
1. Inter-Community Equality: They recognized that a person’s freedom depended on the status of their community, thus granting rights to all religious communities (like running educational institutions). Freedom of religion in India applies to both individuals and communities.
2. State Intervention: Separation could not imply mutual exclusion, as certain religiously sanctioned practices—such as untouchability—profoundly violated fundamental human dignity and self-respect. Addressing such entrenched customs required active state intervention. This intervention was not limited to prohibition or regulation; it could also take positive forms, such as providing support or assistance.
Indian secularism is characterized by principled distance, a complex idea that allows the state to intervene or abstain from interference, depending on which action better promotes the core values of liberty, equality, and social justice.
Core Achievements of the Constitution
The Constitution’s philosophy has led to three substantive achievements :
1. Liberal Individualism: It reinforces and reinvents forms of liberal individualism in a societal context where community values are often hostile to individual autonomy.
2. Social Justice: It upholds social justice without compromising individual liberties. The commitment to caste-based affirmative action was constitutionally entrenched in India almost two decades before affirmative action programs began in the U.S. (after the 1964 Civil Rights Act).
3. Group Rights: Against the background of inter-communal conflict, the Constitution upholds its commitment to group rights (the expression of cultural particularity), demonstrating a willingness to face the challenges of multiculturalism.
5. Universal Franchise
Two other core features are considered major achievements :
● Commitment: It was a significant achievement to commit to universal franchise (voting rights for all adults) when traditional hierarchies were widespread and difficult to eliminate, especially since voting rights were only recently extended to women and the working class in stable Western democracies.
● Nationalist Ideal: The idea of a political order based on the will of every single member of society lay securely within the heart of Indian nationalism.
○ Constitution of India Bill (1895): The first non-official drafting attempt stated that every citizen (anyone born in India) had the right to participate in the country’s affairs.
○ Motilal Nehru Report (1928): Reaffirmed this, stating every person of either sex who had attained the age of twenty-one was entitled to vote for Parliament.
● Legitimacy: Universal franchise was consistently viewed as the most important and legitimate instrument for expressing the will of the nation.
Quote (Alladi Krishnaswami Ayyar, 23 November 1949):
“The Assembly has adopted the principle of adult franchise with an abundant faith in the common man and the ultimate success of democratic rule and in the full belief that the introduction of democratic government on the basis of adult suffrage will… promote the well-being…”
6. Federalism
The second major achievement is the introduction of asymmetric federalism.
● Unitary Bias: The Constitution created a strong central government, yet it contains constitutionally embedded differences between the legal status and prerogatives of different sub-units.
● Asymmetry: Unlike the constitutional symmetry of American federalism, Indian federalism is constitutionally asymmetric. This differential treatment was part of the original design to meet the specific needs and requirements of some sub-units.
Example (Article 371A): This article accorded special status to Nagaland, validating pre-existing laws and protecting local identity through restrictions on immigration. Many other States benefit from such special provisions.
● Multi-lingual Federation: India is a multi-lingual federation where each major linguistic group is politically recognized and treated as equal. This democratic and linguistic federalism has successfully combined claims to unity with claims to cultural recognition.
National Identity
The Constitution consistently reinforces a common national identity.
● Balance: This national identity was designed to be compatible with distinct religious or linguistic identities, which the Constitution attempts to balance.
● Priority: Preference was given to the common identity under certain conditions.
● Rejection of Separate Electorates: The Constitution rejected separate electorates based on religious identity, not because they merely fostered difference, but because they endangered a healthy national life.
● Fraternity: Instead of forced unity, the Constitution sought to evolve true fraternity, an objective dear to Dr. Ambedkar. The main objective, as articulated by Sardar Patel, was to evolve ‘one community’.
Quote (Sardar Patel, 25 May 1949):
“But in the long run, it would be in the interest of all to forget that there is anything like majority or minority in this country and that in India there is only one community…”
Procedural Achievements
In addition to these substantive achievements, there were notable procedural accomplishments:
- Faith in Political Deliberation:
Despite the limited representation of certain groups in the Constituent Assembly Debates (CAD), the discussions reflected the framers’ deep commitment to inclusiveness. This was evident in their willingness to revise their own positions, justify decisions through reason rather than self-interest, and appreciate the creative potential inherent in disagreement and diversity. - Spirit of Compromise and Accommodation:
Compromise and accommodation are not inherently negative; they can, in fact, be morally praiseworthy when one value is partially balanced against another through genuine deliberation among equals. The framers’ commitment to resolving crucial issues through consensus rather than relying solely on majority rule exemplifies this ethical and democratic spirit.
Criticisms of the Constitution
The Indian Constitution has faced three main criticisms:
1. It is unwieldy (too large).
2. It is unrepresentative.
3. It is alien to Indian conditions.
1. Unwieldy
This criticism assumes that the entire constitution of a country must be contained in a single compact document.
● Response: In India’s case, many details, practices, and statements that other countries might keep outside the core document (like provisions for the election commission or civil service commission) are included in the single document, which accounts for its large size.
2. Unrepresentative
This criticism stems from the fact that at the time the Constituent Assembly was formed, adult franchise was not yet granted, and most members came from the advanced sections of society.
● Two Components of Representation:
○ Voice: The Constitution is indeed unrepresentative by this component, as members were chosen by restricted franchise, not universal suffrage.
○ Opinion: It is not entirely lacking in representativeness by this component. A vast range of issues and opinions were raised in the CAD, reflecting the perceived interests and concerns of various social sections.
● Dalit Aspirations: The widespread presence of Dr. Ambedkar’s statue with a copy of the Constitution reflects the feeling among Dalits that the Constitution embodies many of their aspirations.
3. Alien
This criticism alleges that the Constitution is an entirely alien document, borrowed article by article from western constitutions, and that it sits uneasily with the cultural ethos of the Indian people. This concern was even echoed by some members of the CAD.
Quote (K. Hanumanthaiya, 17 November 1949):
“…we wanted the music of Veena or Sitar, but here we have the music of an English band. That was because our constitution makers were educated that way. …That is exactly the kind of Constitution Mahatma Gandhi did not want and did not envisage.”
Response: While the Constitution is modern and partly western, it was an innovative, selective adaptation, not blind borrowing.
Reasons why it is not alien:
- Protest against Tradition: Many Indians adopted modern thinking as a form of protest against the filth in their own tradition. This trend, started by Rammohan Roy, is continued by Dalits, who effectively adopted the new legal system (as early as 1841) to bring suits against landlords to address dignity and justice.
- Hybrid Culture/Alternative Modernity: When western modernity interacted with local cultural systems, a hybrid culture emerged through creative adaptation. Drafting efforts intentionally sought to amalgamate western and traditional Indian values.
Limitations
Despite its achievements, the Constitution is not a flawless document, and many features emerged mainly due to the exigencies of the time.
The limitations include :
1. Centralised Unity: The Constitution has a centralized idea of national unity.
2. Gender Justice: It appears to have glossed over some important issues of gender justice, particularly within the family.
3. Socio-Economic Rights: It is questionable why, in a poor developing country, certain basic socio-economic rights were relegated to the section on Directive Principles instead of being made integral to Fundamental Rights.
The chapter argues that these limitations are not serious enough to jeopardise the fundamental philosophy of the Constitution.
Conclusion
The features discussed above are what give the Constitution its character as a living document. The institutional framework described throughout the text rests on a shared and enduring vision that emerged from the freedom struggle. The Constituent Assembly served as the forum where this vision was articulated, refined, and ultimately transformed into a legal and institutional form—making the Constitution its tangible embodiment.
This philosophy is best captured in the Preamble, which humbly declares that the Constitution is not the gift of a select group of eminent individuals, but the collective creation of “We, the people of India…” It affirms that the people are the makers of their own destiny, with democracy as the means through which they shape both their present and future.
Despite decades of political contention, judicial disagreement, and tensions between the Centre and the States, the Constitution’s foundational vision endures—the shared aspiration to live and flourish together on the principles of equality, liberty, and fraternity. Sustaining this philosophical vision remains the Constitution’s greatest and most enduring achievement.
