Constitution in refreshing retrospect

Our Constitution has lately acquired the status of being etched in stone, not unlike Moses' Tablets, and its framers are deemed oracles, if not demigods.

- SHREEKANT SAMBRANI

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on the day he first entered the Lok Sabha, declared it to be his holy book. The Constitution became a major issue in the 2024 general election, with the opposition parties openly expressing their fears that the ruling National Democratic Alliance would drastically change the Constitution, if not abandon it altogether, if it was voted back to power with a thumping majority. Since then, there has been a virtual competition as to who worships the Constitution and its framers more. In all this, we conveniently gloss over the paradox that the Constitution, the longest in the world, has already been amended 106 times since its adoption in 1950.

It is, therefore, extremely refreshing to read the latest book by the renowned constitutional scholar Gautam Bhatia. His core argument is that "In the seven decades of the working of the Constitution, there has been a gradual drift towards enriching its first set of characteristics: Unitary, concentrated, representative, electoral, homogeneous, and Statist power, at the cost of federal, distributed, direct, guarantor, plural, and individual power." These are not the traits one associates with divinely ordained and unalterable documents. The framers and interpreters of the Constitution were and are all human beings, perhaps wiser than most, but also fallible like the rest.