Many a times I feel despondent at the way things are going on in our country these days. I was born in a free India; an India that was recovering from the trauma of partition on religious lines; Pakistan had been carved out of India, based on the religion of the majority population. Inspite of Hindus being the majority in this part of the land, India decided to continue with its secular tradition. In contrast, Pakistan chose religion to be the basis of its new nation state. This was a great folly as in 1971 it was proven that religion cannot be the glue that can bind a people in to one nation state; East Pakistan broke away from Pakistan to form an independent nation, Bangladesh. It was thus clear that religion cannot, and should not, be the basis of a modern nation state.
I find that most people of our country have been/ and are being polarised by our political class on religion, caste, creed, ethinicity, etc. This art of 'divide and rule' had been perfected by the British during their rule in India. However, this British legacy has been very finely tuned by their inheritors, the Congress party, after departure of the British from India. The Congress has thus been directly responsible for subverting the spirit of our Constitution; a spirit of secularism that believes in treating every one as an equal citizen. The successive Congress governments of free India hardly paid any heed to the provisions made in the Constitution, but kept creating vote banks out of the lower castes and religious minorities. Reservations, and other temporary and the transient provisions, were used freely to pander to the just and unjust demands of their vote banks; the aim was not in the best interests of these very same people, but mostly used for winning elections. 'Garibi hatao' was a slogan that remained a slogan, as wealth is needed to remove poverty, and the systems did not permit generation of wealth. The entrepreneurial spirit of the people of India was slowly but surely killed over the years by our taxation and licence raaj system. The more determined and ambitious entrepreneurial people left the country, starting with the 60s; a trend that has not abated even till date.
In due course this art of 'divide and rule' was learnt by the regional leaders too, who could fine tune things much better at the state level, knowing the caste, sub caste and religious equations much better at the state level. Thus in due course, Congress fell behind in the states, and had to make do with playing a supporting role to the regional parties, in state elections. Corruption and 'family and friends' centred politics started to dominate the national scene. It did not take the knowledge of rocket science to understand that in due course some party would come on the scene that would espouse the cause of the majority community citizens, and use the opposite of 'divide and rule' as its election strategy; that of uniting the Hindus. The BJP arrived with just that aim, and their aim was to unite all of the majority population, irrespective of castes/ sub castes. They knew that the majority population comprised about 80% of the population, a large portion of which had unspoken angst against the working of the governments, thus far, especially in the aftermath of the Shah Bano case judgement.
The consolidation of Hindus started with the rath yatra undertaken by Advani. The BJP never looked back thereafter. The BJP needed something bigger now to capture the imagination of all Indians, and this was reflected in their new secular slogan of, "Sabka saath, sabka vikaas", under the dynamic leadership of Modi, who had a proven track record as CM of Gujarat. Gujarat had been, until his CMship, a state that had countless religious riots, sometimes more than once a year. Gujarat became a peaceful state, after the 2002 riots, with no religious riots thereafter; a fact that every citizen acknowledged, irrespective of beliefs. Governance and development in terms of 'bijli, paani, sadak' became the hallmark of Gujarat, and every citizen of the country acknowledged that.
The people of India were also by now fed up of 'divide and rule' politics of all the regional satraps, as also the Congress brand of 'family and friends' politics coupled with heavy 'coalition compulsions' and its free rein to corruption. They elected the BJP to power in the centre, and now in most of the states in India. There is now great resistance being put up by the old guard of politicians from the Congress, Communists, BSP, SP, RJD, etc and the left leaning journalists/ intellectuals to the change that is being brought about by the BJP in the way doing things. The BJP juggernaut is not halting, and all the opposition parties are uniting to defeat the BJP. It is a no holds barred contest and no institution of the country is being spared, because the stakes are too high for the 2019 elections. In case the Congress loses again, then Congress would perish forever from the national scene, unless they introspect and re-invent themselves in line with the Constitution - a document that accepts the reality of India, as it has been, and as it should be. The Constitution confers equal citizenship to all citizens, and gives equal rights and responsibilities to all its citizens. It also envisaged a Uniform civil code (UCC), so that all citizens could be treated equally, and 'rule of law' would be equally applied to all.
This visionary constitution is also one of the things that holds us together, besides our national flag, and our national anthem. There are voices against UCC as it considered an infringement on their religious 'Shariat' law. This is very selective, as the same Muslims do not wish Sharia to be applied in criminal cases. They want to follow IPC for criminal cases and Sharia for civil cases. There are also voices today that do not wish to stand for our national anthem, and all in the name of belief and personal freedom. I wish to inform these very same people as to what is guaranteeing them this freedom - it is only our Constitution that protects them from people who given the freedom will summarily lynch them for such an act.
I wanted to understand the thoughts in the minds of our founding fathers, on the way India should shape up as a country, when they wrote this brilliant Constitution. Our constitution is a live document that captures the essence of our heritage, as also the guiding force for our growth as a modern nation state. I wanted to understand what our founding fathers considered important from our long history, as a sub continental civilization; something that we could all rightly be proud of, and which could be the binding foundation for all Indians irrespective of caste, creed, religion, or ethnicity; something that we could all relate to as citizens.
The internet is a vast repository of information and it came to my rescue. I was lucky to have found photo evidence of what the original framers of Constitution had in mind when they signed this document. My research brought out the following.
The original book had 1,000 photolithographic reproductions of the Constitution of the Republic of India, which came into effect on January 26, 1950, after being approved by the Constituent Assembly on November 26, 1949. The original of this elaborate edition took nearly five years to produce. It was signed by the framers of the constitution, most of whom are regarded as the founders of the Republic of India. "The original of the book is kept in a special helium-filled case in the Library of the Parliament of India. The illustrations represent styles from the different civilizations of the subcontinent, ranging from the prehistoric Mohenjodaro, in the Indus Valley, to the present. The calligraphy in the book was done by Prem Behari Narain Raizda. It was illuminated by Nandalal Bose and other artists, published by Dehra Dun, and photolithographed at the Survey of India Offices".
"At the beginning of each part of the Constitution, Nandalal Bose has depicted a phase or scene from India's national experience and history. The artwork and illustrations (22 in all), rendered largely in the miniature style, represent vignettes from the different periods of history of the Indian subcontinent, ranging from Mohenjodaro in the Indus Valley, the Vedic period, the Gupta and Maurya empires and the Mughal era to the national freedom movement. By doing so, Nandalal Bose has taken us through a veritable pictorial journey across 4000 years of rich history, tradition and culture of the Indian subcontinent".
"The Vedic period is represented by a scene of gurukula (forest hermitage school) and the epic period by images from the Ramayana and Mahabharata. Then there are depictions of the lives of the Buddha and Mahavira, followed by scenes from the courts of Ashoka and Vikramaditya. There is a beautiful line drawing of the Nataraja from the Chola bronze tradition".
"Other important figures from India's history include Akbar, Shivaji, Guru Gobind Singh, Tipu Sultan, and Lakshmibai. The freedom movement is depicted by Mahatma Gandhi's Dandi march and his tour of Noakhali as the great peacemaker; Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose makes an appearance too. Scenes of the Himalayas, the desert and the ocean are also included".
"The original handcrafted Constitution of India was exquisitely designed and executed. The fine calligraphy in the book was done by Prem Behari Narain Raizada using a holder and nib (nib no. 303). He did not charge any fee for this work".
"In Shantiniketan, along with his students, Nandalal Bose completed the art work. The "Preamble" page was done by Beohar Rammanohar Sinha. Another Kala Bhavan artist associated with the artwork was Kripal Singh Shekhawat from Rajasthan, who after returning to his home state, subsequently went on to revive Jaipur blue pottery from near extinction".
"Many pages of the Constitution are embellished with highly stylised decorative borders, headers and backdrops. The complex patterns in the borders and in the front and back covers, embossed in gold on leather, are reminiscent of the Ajanta murals".
In essence the Constitution does not talk of religion at any stage. Rama and Krishna are part of our heritage and should not be interpreted in narrow religious terms. They are a part of the 'epics' of this revered land; their lives being the guiding philosophies of the secular inhabitants of this land, much before other practiced monotheistic religions came in to existence. So, all inhabitants, irrespective of their present beliefs should take them as part of our common heritage rather than as religious symbols of just the modern Hindus.
We, as citizens, have equal rights and responsibilities, as enumerated in our constitution. We have a responsibility to consciously elect only those people who are willing to work as per our enlightened secular constitution, and not those who believe in 'divide and rule' by which they promise to give us more than the 'other' citizens, based on our voting for them. Jats, Patels, Muslims, Dalits, Lingayats, etc are all the caste/ religion combinations that work in the favour of 'divide and rule' politicians; beware of them. Vote as citizens for a better India of our dreams, not as minority/ majority/ reservation aspirants. Jai Hind.
Do you agree?
I find that most people of our country have been/ and are being polarised by our political class on religion, caste, creed, ethinicity, etc. This art of 'divide and rule' had been perfected by the British during their rule in India. However, this British legacy has been very finely tuned by their inheritors, the Congress party, after departure of the British from India. The Congress has thus been directly responsible for subverting the spirit of our Constitution; a spirit of secularism that believes in treating every one as an equal citizen. The successive Congress governments of free India hardly paid any heed to the provisions made in the Constitution, but kept creating vote banks out of the lower castes and religious minorities. Reservations, and other temporary and the transient provisions, were used freely to pander to the just and unjust demands of their vote banks; the aim was not in the best interests of these very same people, but mostly used for winning elections. 'Garibi hatao' was a slogan that remained a slogan, as wealth is needed to remove poverty, and the systems did not permit generation of wealth. The entrepreneurial spirit of the people of India was slowly but surely killed over the years by our taxation and licence raaj system. The more determined and ambitious entrepreneurial people left the country, starting with the 60s; a trend that has not abated even till date.
In due course this art of 'divide and rule' was learnt by the regional leaders too, who could fine tune things much better at the state level, knowing the caste, sub caste and religious equations much better at the state level. Thus in due course, Congress fell behind in the states, and had to make do with playing a supporting role to the regional parties, in state elections. Corruption and 'family and friends' centred politics started to dominate the national scene. It did not take the knowledge of rocket science to understand that in due course some party would come on the scene that would espouse the cause of the majority community citizens, and use the opposite of 'divide and rule' as its election strategy; that of uniting the Hindus. The BJP arrived with just that aim, and their aim was to unite all of the majority population, irrespective of castes/ sub castes. They knew that the majority population comprised about 80% of the population, a large portion of which had unspoken angst against the working of the governments, thus far, especially in the aftermath of the Shah Bano case judgement.
The consolidation of Hindus started with the rath yatra undertaken by Advani. The BJP never looked back thereafter. The BJP needed something bigger now to capture the imagination of all Indians, and this was reflected in their new secular slogan of, "Sabka saath, sabka vikaas", under the dynamic leadership of Modi, who had a proven track record as CM of Gujarat. Gujarat had been, until his CMship, a state that had countless religious riots, sometimes more than once a year. Gujarat became a peaceful state, after the 2002 riots, with no religious riots thereafter; a fact that every citizen acknowledged, irrespective of beliefs. Governance and development in terms of 'bijli, paani, sadak' became the hallmark of Gujarat, and every citizen of the country acknowledged that.
The people of India were also by now fed up of 'divide and rule' politics of all the regional satraps, as also the Congress brand of 'family and friends' politics coupled with heavy 'coalition compulsions' and its free rein to corruption. They elected the BJP to power in the centre, and now in most of the states in India. There is now great resistance being put up by the old guard of politicians from the Congress, Communists, BSP, SP, RJD, etc and the left leaning journalists/ intellectuals to the change that is being brought about by the BJP in the way doing things. The BJP juggernaut is not halting, and all the opposition parties are uniting to defeat the BJP. It is a no holds barred contest and no institution of the country is being spared, because the stakes are too high for the 2019 elections. In case the Congress loses again, then Congress would perish forever from the national scene, unless they introspect and re-invent themselves in line with the Constitution - a document that accepts the reality of India, as it has been, and as it should be. The Constitution confers equal citizenship to all citizens, and gives equal rights and responsibilities to all its citizens. It also envisaged a Uniform civil code (UCC), so that all citizens could be treated equally, and 'rule of law' would be equally applied to all.
This visionary constitution is also one of the things that holds us together, besides our national flag, and our national anthem. There are voices against UCC as it considered an infringement on their religious 'Shariat' law. This is very selective, as the same Muslims do not wish Sharia to be applied in criminal cases. They want to follow IPC for criminal cases and Sharia for civil cases. There are also voices today that do not wish to stand for our national anthem, and all in the name of belief and personal freedom. I wish to inform these very same people as to what is guaranteeing them this freedom - it is only our Constitution that protects them from people who given the freedom will summarily lynch them for such an act.
I wanted to understand the thoughts in the minds of our founding fathers, on the way India should shape up as a country, when they wrote this brilliant Constitution. Our constitution is a live document that captures the essence of our heritage, as also the guiding force for our growth as a modern nation state. I wanted to understand what our founding fathers considered important from our long history, as a sub continental civilization; something that we could all rightly be proud of, and which could be the binding foundation for all Indians irrespective of caste, creed, religion, or ethnicity; something that we could all relate to as citizens.
The internet is a vast repository of information and it came to my rescue. I was lucky to have found photo evidence of what the original framers of Constitution had in mind when they signed this document. My research brought out the following.
The original book had 1,000 photolithographic reproductions of the Constitution of the Republic of India, which came into effect on January 26, 1950, after being approved by the Constituent Assembly on November 26, 1949. The original of this elaborate edition took nearly five years to produce. It was signed by the framers of the constitution, most of whom are regarded as the founders of the Republic of India. "The original of the book is kept in a special helium-filled case in the Library of the Parliament of India. The illustrations represent styles from the different civilizations of the subcontinent, ranging from the prehistoric Mohenjodaro, in the Indus Valley, to the present. The calligraphy in the book was done by Prem Behari Narain Raizda. It was illuminated by Nandalal Bose and other artists, published by Dehra Dun, and photolithographed at the Survey of India Offices".
"At the beginning of each part of the Constitution, Nandalal Bose has depicted a phase or scene from India's national experience and history. The artwork and illustrations (22 in all), rendered largely in the miniature style, represent vignettes from the different periods of history of the Indian subcontinent, ranging from Mohenjodaro in the Indus Valley, the Vedic period, the Gupta and Maurya empires and the Mughal era to the national freedom movement. By doing so, Nandalal Bose has taken us through a veritable pictorial journey across 4000 years of rich history, tradition and culture of the Indian subcontinent".
"The Vedic period is represented by a scene of gurukula (forest hermitage school) and the epic period by images from the Ramayana and Mahabharata. Then there are depictions of the lives of the Buddha and Mahavira, followed by scenes from the courts of Ashoka and Vikramaditya. There is a beautiful line drawing of the Nataraja from the Chola bronze tradition".
"Other important figures from India's history include Akbar, Shivaji, Guru Gobind Singh, Tipu Sultan, and Lakshmibai. The freedom movement is depicted by Mahatma Gandhi's Dandi march and his tour of Noakhali as the great peacemaker; Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose makes an appearance too. Scenes of the Himalayas, the desert and the ocean are also included".
"The original handcrafted Constitution of India was exquisitely designed and executed. The fine calligraphy in the book was done by Prem Behari Narain Raizada using a holder and nib (nib no. 303). He did not charge any fee for this work".
"In Shantiniketan, along with his students, Nandalal Bose completed the art work. The "Preamble" page was done by Beohar Rammanohar Sinha. Another Kala Bhavan artist associated with the artwork was Kripal Singh Shekhawat from Rajasthan, who after returning to his home state, subsequently went on to revive Jaipur blue pottery from near extinction".
"Many pages of the Constitution are embellished with highly stylised decorative borders, headers and backdrops. The complex patterns in the borders and in the front and back covers, embossed in gold on leather, are reminiscent of the Ajanta murals".
In essence the Constitution does not talk of religion at any stage. Rama and Krishna are part of our heritage and should not be interpreted in narrow religious terms. They are a part of the 'epics' of this revered land; their lives being the guiding philosophies of the secular inhabitants of this land, much before other practiced monotheistic religions came in to existence. So, all inhabitants, irrespective of their present beliefs should take them as part of our common heritage rather than as religious symbols of just the modern Hindus.
We, as citizens, have equal rights and responsibilities, as enumerated in our constitution. We have a responsibility to consciously elect only those people who are willing to work as per our enlightened secular constitution, and not those who believe in 'divide and rule' by which they promise to give us more than the 'other' citizens, based on our voting for them. Jats, Patels, Muslims, Dalits, Lingayats, etc are all the caste/ religion combinations that work in the favour of 'divide and rule' politicians; beware of them. Vote as citizens for a better India of our dreams, not as minority/ majority/ reservation aspirants. Jai Hind.
Do you agree?
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