A panel that included former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Sunday underlined the “democratic erosion” in the country and said the trend could be arrested with the citizens’ assertion of constitutional values.
At a book launch, Singh, former Vice-President Hamid Ansari, former Jammu and Kashmir governor N.N. Vohra and former law minister Ashwani Kumar spoke of how the dignity of the citizen, as enshrined in the Constitution, was becoming a casualty.Singh launched the book, Human Dignity: A Purpose in Perpetuity, authored by Kumar.
“The essays in the book remind us that in these troubled times the process of democratic erosion can be arrested with the citizens’ assertion of constitutional values,” the former Prime Minister said.
His referred to the countrywide protests by students and ordinary citizens against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, the proposed National Register of Citizens and the imminent update of the National Population Register
“In recent days, young people across the country have reminded us that freedom is best secured in the custody of enlightened citizens and when it is protected for all,” he said.
Singh said the institutions of India’s liberal democracy had been put to the test several times, when fundamental freedoms were threatened.
“These institutions nurtured over the years need to be strengthened and must assert themselves in defence of the Constitution,” he said. “This is another important message of the author who has spent a lifetime in the study and practice of law. Indeed, the idea of freedom can acquire shape and form in the lives of our people only if they can live as equal citizens under the law.”
In the audience were former finance minister P. Chidambaram and veteran BJP leader L.K. Advani.
Ansari said the State often violated the citizen’s dignity with impunity. “India is going through a transformation. The young generation has its own vocabulary for seeking dignity in structuring their future. We need to understand and accommodate it,” he said.
“As an eminent academic wrote last week, ‘over time governments everywhere have learnt that the anger and wrath of students is something that even authoritarian regimes cannot afford’. And we after all are a vibrant political democracy.”
Ansari stressed the principles cited in the Preamble to the Constitution — justice, liberty, equality and fraternity — and said that dignity for the individual was achieved through fraternity.
Vohra said there had been a continuous decline in all the organs of democracy. The general level of awareness among the public has increased but their awareness of fundamental duties is lacking, he said.
Historian Mahesh Rangarajan, the moderator, asked Kumar whether he felt it significant that the citizenship protesters were reading out the Preamble to the Constitution across venues.
“Quite clearly, a large segment feels the values of the Constitution are under siege. We are not a populist democracy; we are a constitutional democracy,” Kumar said.
He said the Constitution provided for the pursuit of human dignity but incidents inimical to the idea of dignity continued to happen. For instance, people died of police torture and Dalits were prevented from cremating their relatives, he said. Political persecution was rampant. Kumar said the courts must ensure the dignity of the people was secure.
“Article 21 provides for the right to life but we don’t have a law against custody torture. Privacy is a fundamental right but we don’t have a privacy law. Every day, privacy is impeded under the eyes of the judiciary. A media trial is happening. Chidambaram’s is a case in point,” Kumar said.
