Constitution of India- Reinstating the promise to We the people of India

As we commemorate the 73 years of our constitution rather tumultuous journey , the sorrowful vestiges of 26/11 , solicits painful memories of a day when The sovereignty of India was challenged , not through the violation of its territorial integrity but by egregious? deprivation of basic tenants of life , and the trampled control of over one destiny by coercion and fear .

The Indian constitution has always been a repository of people sovereign will , honoring the contract where it bestow upon its people the security and preservation of basic fundamental rights that people can enforce against the asymmetric power of The state . Indian Constitution is not only a mere collection of 365 articles but it is a REMINISCE of struggles endured by people like AK Gopalan , Champakam Doraijan ,Justice Puttuswamy , Naz foundation and countless others who shaped the basic structure of our constitution especially the chapter on Fundamental rights that is sacrosanct for enabling the meaningful conversation with the state itself .

Just after 16 days of its inception , the Indian constitution was in crisis .Judgments of the Supreme Court and high courts were stifling the government’s reform agenda, and the response had to be immediate and decisive. An intellectual justification was developed to compensate for the absence of a democratic justification – that the provisional parliament understood the Constitution better than the courts, and the same brains that made the Constitution were now amending it- creating schedules , laws and and rules that in a way rendered the fundamental rights affectless . This struggle between a unicameral single party dominated parliament will go even in future until the landmark Kesavnanda Bharti case in 1973 , made it fateful appearance in SC .

lawyer and jurist Nani Palkivala espoused his famous basic structure doctrine during his arguments against the government , which was later concurred by equally significant judge HR Khanna , that said With our varying and widely divergent creeds and ideologies, and a wide variety of religions and languages, our country is pre-eminently a country where inalienable fundamental rights are an absolute necessity. These rights have been called, not without justification, the ‘conscience of the Constitution’ or the ‘soul of the Constitution’. In material terms, they constitute the anchor of the Constitution and provide it with the dimension of permanence. The landmark case rightly said that although government have the power to amend the constitution but it cannot amend the constitution in such a way that changes the basic structure of the constitution , thus restricting government overarching powers that could be used to infringe the rights of the citizens .

Cases like Maneka Gandhi and later Minerva mills further consolidated the position and expanded the scope of article 21 " Right to Life " . Fundamental rights now stands on a higher pedestal than the Fundamental duties when it comes to ensure the promise made by the constitution in the phrase "WE the People Of India " which means that India state could only gain sovereignty from the acceptance of the Indian people. More importantly the legitimacy of ones vote in ballot , will not be decided by his ethnicity , colour , creed , religion . Not only citizens of India , but any person even person from foreign land will be conferred with the same protection of rights by the Hon .Supreme court .

?As we overcome our deficiencies as a nation and convert our strengths into an energetic force, we must remain deeply conscious of what we must preserve and what we must change.