I was first introduced to the Constitution of India by my father when I was 14 or 15 years old. He had purchased it especially for me. Showing me the book, he said, “This is India. This is the law. This has everything. He who knows this book well will go far in life.” So, we began reading. We probably spent six months just reading the Preamble! Over the years, the entire Constitution is memorized. Today I can recite the entire constitution like Pundit who recites the Vedas! The way my father had introduced that book to me is something I can never forget in this life.
Until I began to understand, analyze and reason, the Constitution of India remained a sacred book in my eyes. And Bhimrao Ambedkar ji was my superhero. “The entire world would salute you if you know this book,” my father would say. “The struggles, sacrifices, ambitions, expectations and aims of the people of India are enshrined in this book,” he would tell me. How elections were to be conducted, the qualifications required to become a Member of Parliament, etc., fascinated me.
Years later, as I reread the entire book, things began to dawn on me. I realize today that my father was emotional, rather overemotional, about this very ordinary book. When I look at this book, I do not find anything extraordinary in it.
Every important aspect that touches the daily lives of “We the People” is overloaded with complexities. The makers of the Constitution knew that India consisted largely of an illiterate peasant population. They should have made education a Fundamental Right. Instead, they made it a recommendation / a DPSP. Had they made it a Fundamental Right, by now at least 90% of the population would be educated.
We proudly say that Kerala has 100% literacy. But here, literacy means being able to sign one’s name! People do not necessarily know how to read or write; they only know how to sign! Men perennial illiteracy are successfully created by the Constitution.
I have every reason to say that we are ‘Cheated by the Constitution’.
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
