I have seen and read with interest the constitutions of various countries that are fewer than 10 pages! I have also seen a country that does not have a written constitution. Ours is the only country with the longest and largest written constitution of any sovereign country in the world. Why do you think we ended up with this?
Our people were greedy…too greedy. They were too ambitious too. The Constituent Assembly and the Drafting Committee thought that by taking all the ‘good things’ from various constitutions around the world, we would have the best constitution for India! How wrong they were! Two most important questions arise here:
- By taking ‘all the good things’ from various constitutions across the globe, how can our constitution can we become good?
- Why would any country have ‘not-so-good’ things written in its constitution? Are they crazy?
What our people should have considered was the applicability of all the good things and their relevance to India. If, for instance, the UK’s constitution includes ‘liberty’, it does not mean that it is good for us. The people of England spent over five centuries – maybe more – developing the concept of liberty. They know that freedom is not free. Our people never knew the concept of liberty. Every princely state in India had a different concept of liberty.
Let me explain with a well-known and understandable example. The God of the English people live in beautiful church and it is specially planned for that purpose. Their God is away from the roads in a spacious church with a well-planned garden. Whereas our gods live literally on the roads! Every temple of ours is on the road, and in many cases, are located in the middle of the road. Imagine the freedom we have from the right for freedom of religion!
If a sheep is in a tiger’s skin it does not mean it is a tiger! It only means that it appears fierce, powerful, or impressive on the outside, but is weak, timid, or lacking in real substance on the inside. Similarly, mindlessly copying various constitutions does not make our constitution good and strong. Rather it will have negative consequences. We have never considered the applicability these things to our country. This so-called ‘Right’ given by the constitution became ‘a knife in the hands of a madman’!
Explaining this argument further – the right to freedom of religion became perverted. Every festival and its celebrations crossed all civilized limits. They became obscene. You will be cheating yourself to call it either as religious freedom or culture. Religious perversion because of a perverted constitution. Right now, the only feeling in my heart is the feeling of being ‘cheated by the constitution’.
About the Author
Dr. K. Raja Gopal Reddy is a seasoned internationally qualified Insurance professional. What you are reading here, may not answer all the questions we have, but has the absolute power of asking unsettling questions which increase the interest in the strange world, and show the contradictory wonders lying just below the surface of the commonest things of life. Look at this disturbing but beautiful thought of Friedrich Nietzsche “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him”.
Dr. Reddy can be reached at: raja66gopal@gmail.com
