A short description about India’s Constitution And Liberal Democracy

The Constitution of India sought to cast India as a liberal, democratic republic, in keeping with the ideals of the members of the Constituent Assembly.

Democracy vs Republic

A democracy is a system of government where popular vote selects who gets to govern and make decisions. Republics are democracies, but come with a set of limitations on the powers of government. In a Republic, there exist inalienable rights which cannot be taken away by majority vote. The Indian Constitution, thus is a republican one, and bestows rights on its citizens which they cannot be deprived of by majority vote.

However, constitutions can be amended. As with most democratic constitutions, the Indian Constitution has provisions that allow it to be amended with a two-thirds majority in both Houses of Parliament, and a simple majority in a majority of state legislatures. Courts have ruled that this power of amendment is limited, but that’s a discussion for another day.

Popular Will

The popular will of Indians, as borne out by electoral results, often stands in contrast to the constitution. Unconstitutional ideas often seem to have wide popular acceptance, including

• Exclusion of citizens on the basis on not speaking the majority language of the state
• Preferential treatment of citizens on the basis of caste or religion
• Subversion of constitutional affirmative action by forward castes that now want reservations!
• Misuse of Constitutional protection for Minorities, and conversely, subversion of such protections

While these and similar ideas are hard to codify into law — they would be thrown in a jiffy by courts — it is not very hard to set up an informal system of preferential treatment helped out by a pliant bureaucracy and police force. Past governments in UP have been not-so-shining examples of caste and religious groupings (M-Y etc.) that voted a government into power being treated preferentially.

A rather openly majoritarian government being elected in the same state is now cause for concern. The sudden heightened concern stands in contrast to significant lack of concern shown for lapses by the “other” side in the past (riots, accusation of bias shown towards M-Y by the police etc.). However, while a pendulum does swing, and how, it cannot be of much comfort to the liberal mind that the shoe has moved to the other foot.