How political drama let Constitution debate down

It is difficult to say whether the ongoing posturing over the Constitution is funny or tragic.

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In this year, when the Constitution entered the amrit moment — 75th year — there has been a lot of unfruitful manthan — churning — in the political arena over what our Constitution means and why we should protect it. Unfortunately, the noise generated does not seem to have led to any meaningful lessons for political players and citizens. Following the Bharat Jodo Yatra, the top leadership of the Congress went into overdrive over the “red book”. They attacked the ruling party for its violation and subversion of the Constitution and, to some extent, made it an election issue. While there is no evidence that voters were swayed away from the BJP because of this, at least the Constitution became a talking point. However, this initiative of the Congress was rather vacuous because the party did not convert it into a mass movement. In all probability, Congress workers continue to be clueless about the substantive import of this invocation of the Constitution. Cynically, this move was seen as an attempt to win over the Dalits — as if the Constitution mattered only to them. As the year comes to an end, the Prime Minister has paid back in the same coin of empty symbolism and harsh polemic, arguing that the Congress always subverted the Constitution. The small difference is that while Congress argued that the Constitution was being violated today, for the ruling party, the violations of yesterday matter the most. Isn’t this both funny and tragic? There seem to be three different ways in which the Constitution has come under attack. Right from the time of its commencement, criticism was offered that the Constitution was an alien document, that it was not Indian enough; more specifically, it was not based on the value