A TIME FOR RESETS, A TIME FOR DIALOGUE

IN 2020, THE STREETS INTUITIVELY OWNED THE CONSTITUTION. IT IS NOW ALSO TIME FOR THE RULERS TO BE LIMITED BY IT

- Sanjay Hegde

In January 1950, newly independent India emerged as a republic with a new Constitution that had been forged against a backdrop of great anarchy in the preceding decade. The India of the 1940s had witnessed the Second World War, the Jewish Holocaust, the atomic bomb, Partition riots, and the murder of the Mahatma. The founders of our republic consciously chose a path that steered the country away from the causes of violence of the past decade and set it on a route to a peaceful rise as a functional democracy that protected every citizen.

The evening before the signing of the Indian Constitution, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar gave three warnings to India. He warned India to avoid agitations and only resort to constitutional means to settle political questions. Secondly, he enjoined India to never lay its liberties at the feet of a great man. Thirdly, he warned India that mere political democracy was useless without a social and economic democracy. His speech on November 25, 1949, to the Constituent Assembly, also had a fourth warning.

Dr. Ambedkar warned that “it is quite possible in a country like India—where democracy from its long disuse must be regarded as something quite new—there is a danger of democracy giving place to dictatorship. It is quite possible for this new-born democracy to retain its form but give place to dictatorship, in fact. If there is a landslide, the danger of the second possibility of becoming actuality is much greater”.