I wrote this as a response to Gautam Benegal‘s question of whether the Constitution protects us from Fascism.
<begin rant>
The Constitution is a piece of paper. What makes any piece of paper important or powerful is how deep the belief in it is for the majority of people. In the case of India, we have little or no understanding of the Constitution or the underlying principles of justice, liberty, equality, or fraternity. And this is as politely put as possible.
We are a tribal, casteist, xenophobic, bigoted, uneducated (and unwilling to be educated), misogynistic, might-is-right believing, superstitious, racist, sexist, cult-of-personality-worshipping society of coward, scared, survivalists with an inferiority complex so large that we hide it in our indignant superiority complex. And yes, we are short, dark-skinned, and small-genitaled too (that’s just science), which makes us peacock when behind a computer screen, whimper with our tails between our legs when challenged one-on-one, and go berserk when in an anonymous mob.
More importantly, we are not even one single, united nation. We are divided inside our hearts and minds, in our languages and cultures, in our costumes and cuisines, in our rituals and religious sects, in our families and tribes, in our genders and skin tones, in our headgear and facial hair, in the length of our trousers and completeness(?) of penises, in the directions we pray in, and the way we dispose of our dead, united only in the hatred of the “other”, the salivating adoration for fair skin and foreign accents, the unabashedness of our racism and the shamelessness of our open defecation, the lack of consideration for others when we spit or urinate with abandon, and the chest-thumping pride in our real (in which we had no role to play, and remember not with facts but with so much mythical spice added that we can call it a special variety of the indian khichadi or curry) or imagined past, along with a burning need to somehow convince the white man that we are (or at the very least, were) worth something while having skin so thin that the slightest bit of truth makes us bleed.
You speak of the Constitution. And people like you and I, the so-called educated intellectuals of this country, think that somehow, it matters, since it creates a robust 4-tiered structure of an elected and wise legislature, an impartial & disinterested judiciary, a well-trained executive branch that is controlled by the civilian administration (the ‘steel’ frame), and a free & fearless press, working jointly and with great focus towards the ideas and ideals described in this great, seemingly-immutable, objectively true document. We also think that each of these branches controls and checks the other, keeping the entire ship of the nation on an even keel, steaming towards some mythical port where “the mind is without fear and the head is held high”. We think that the Constitution provides iron-clad guarantees to safeguard our freedoms, to ensure social equitability, provide fair opportunity, encourage innovation and entrepreneurial thinking, protect & uplift the oppressed and downtrodden, punish the cheaters, frauds, and charlatans, and create a society along the lines envisaged in the preamble.
I say: Ha!
Needless to say, even while typing up the above paragraph, I was cringing. We all know how ridiculous this sounds even while reading it on screen, forget actually expecting it to be true. And then going about designing and living our lives with the presumption that it is.
We know all that, but we still choose to remain in denial.
We choose to believe in pithy one-liners like “the people will eventually triumph” or “the Constitution will prevail” or “in the long run, democracy will win”. We like to trust that the media will check the lawless lawmakers, or the police will arrest the offending politicians, or the courts will act as a brake on the out-of-control bureaucracy, or that the army is incorruptible, or elections are free & fair, or that being elected by a majority automatically makes you fit to represent them. We are sure that “growth and development” (the elusive ‘Vikas’?) is coming to the country and our society gradually, that we are on a trajectory which is inevitably on the up and up which nothing can bring down but for a few notches for a short few times, which can easily be disregarded as silly (and temporary) hiccups, and that slowly with education, time, and the gloriously synchronised working of all the pillars of democracy as envisaged and documented in this brilliant, written work, the Constitution, people will come around to our point of view (which is, obviously, the same as the Constitution’s). We sit around in echo chambers nodding our heads and asking profound questions and convincing ourselves we are important, and hoping secretly in our hearts that others think so too.
But we are not. We are a minority. Intellectualism was never the norm. Intellectuals were never really liked, respected, or listened to in this society, regardless of what our sanitised history (written by other intellectuals) teaches us. Democracy, rule of law, and the kind of society described in the Preamble to the Constitution are new to us. They are not the norm, even if they are written as final goals and not as a set of descriptive lines to reflect the society as it was when they were written. We must realise that they are the exceptions to the way this society has looked for millennia, and are simply guiding lights, just like the Pole Star, which we use to navigate, but is over 435 light-years away. We are still in the nascent stage of this experiment set up by other intellectuals from a century ago, who believed that India was one country, one nation, one people, and needed one law that held its expectations and ideals high enough for everyone to aspire to, that if we can, for long enough, all just pretend that we are one (“unity in diversity” and all that jazz) and that we are all pursuing a common goal of a better society (with “better” being defined in this extremely progressive book of laws), we would actually become what we were pretending to be.
In effect, they adopted a “fake it till you make it” strategy. Unfortunately, just 7 decades later, it is all coming apart.
Back to Gautam’s question: the Constitution does not protect us. It is a piece of paper. As for all the other so-called “institutions” of the state, they are for the rich and the powerful, the highest bidders, and as such, will do their bidding.
If you think otherwise, as do I (unfortunately, even after writing all this, I remain who I am: an optimist and an idealist in many ways, and in denial, as per my own admission), you are likely to suffer a great heartbreak someday, when eventually you will awaken to see (and accept) reality.
<end rant>
