While Bal Gangadhar Tilak electrified the nation and accelerated the momentum of the freedom struggle with his historic slogan “Swaraj is my birthright and I shall have it”, it was M.K. Gandhi who, while speaking at Amravati on March 19, 1921, proclaimed that Indians had the birthright to establish a republic as there had been village republics in India from times immemorial.
That statement of Gandhi to fashion the destiny of India as a republic underlined the struggle of the freedom fighters to invest Indians with citizenship status which sharply negated their standing as subjects of the British monarch. It is instructive that Gandhi’s assertion to constitute India as a republic was a radical departure from its subservient role under the British monarch and so the British regime took harsh penal measures against those who persuasively mobilised people around the vision of converting India to a republic after achieving independence.
Eleven days after Gandhi’s articulation that Indians had a birthright to establish a republic, he explained in his notes, published in Young India on March 30, 1921 under the caption, “Repression and its Lesson” how one freedom fighter Cholkar was being persecuted for speaking in Nagpur for a republican form of government for India.
Gandhi stood in solidarity with Cholkar and forcefully remarked that if he faced the wrath of British rulers for the alleged offence of taking a stand in support of the Indian republic, then every Congressman would be held liable for committing the same offence.
He then affirmed, “For he will not hesitate to think of, and work for, a republic, if he could not gain his birthright without complete independence.”
B.R. Ambedkar, in his last speech in the Constituent Assembly on November 25, 1949, said that the Constitution would come into force on January 26, 1950 which would be the independence day for the country. This historical context is a categorical imperative to better appreciate the Objectives Resolution moved by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru in the Constituent Assembly on December 13, 1946 and one of the key aspects of that resolution was to declare the firm and solemn resolve of the assembly “to proclaim India as an Independent Sovereign Republic and to draw up her future governance a Constitution”.
In fact, Nehru unequivocally stated, “India is bound to be sovereign, it is bound to be independent and it is bound to be a republic.” “I will not,” he remarked, “go into the arguments about monarchy and the rest, but obviously we cannot produce monarchy in India out of nothing.”
Nehru then asserted by saying, “It is not there. If it is to be an independent and sovereign State, we are not going to have an external monarchy and we cannot have research for some local monarchies. It must inevitably be a republic.”
Almost seven months after Nehru expressed the resolve to make India a republic, Gandhi, in a prayer meeting in Delhi on June 12, 1947, referred to the aforementioned initiative of Nehru and explained the meaning of the republic in four words, “… all will live together …”
That meaning of the republic that all will live together assumed enormous significance in the grim context of the dreadful carnage and displacement of people in the name of religion from India to Pakistan and vice versa. Delhi, where Gandhi was speaking in a prayer meeting, was witnessing massive communal violence and desecration of places of worship on an unprecedented scale. So Gandhi’s understanding of the republic was not by employing legal or constitutional terminologies but by proclaiming that “all will live together”.
He celebrated the practical ideals of acceptance, tolerance, humanism, harmony and reconciliation, which remained central to the idea of India. That historical backdrop is a critical necessity to assess and reflect on when the 75th anniversary of our republic on January 26, 2025 is being celebrated.
The establishment of the Republic of India on January 26, 1950 was historic and constituted an event of global significance. While in our neighbourhood and other parts of the world, republics were founded on the basis of religion we, the people of India, chose to opt for a sovereign and democratic republic without religion defining its identity.
Along with uncompromising features of sovereignty and democracy, we opted for socialist and secular dimensions. Even though these two words were incorporated in the Preamble of the Constitution in 1976, these are of abiding significance for India and flowed from the vision of our leadership while spearheading our freedom struggle.
Gandhi stressed the neutrality of the State to religion in 1931 when he drafted the resolution on Fundamental Rights for the Indian National Congress for its adoption at the Karachi session. Now, secularism has been held to be the basic structure of the Constitution by the Supreme Court in its historic S.R. Bommai judgment, delivered by a nine-judge Bench.
The “Jana gana …”, which Tagore invoked in our national anthem, remains supreme and their mandate and might lie at the root of our republic. This secular fabric needs to be strengthened. The danger to it has come from the philosophy and outlook of many political parties and their actions.
Opening of the Babri Masjid for constructing a temple and its demolition posed a grave danger to our republic. The danger is getting compounded day by day. Now, the Places of Religious Worship Act of 1991, which upholds secularism, is being violated with impunity by the powers that be and even courts are permitting the survey of mosques on the basis of petitions filed by some Hindutva leaders in violation of that Act.
The Supreme Court in its 2019 judgment permitted the construction of Ram temple in the same place where the Babri Masjid was demolished and described that act of demolition as “an egregious violation of rule of law”. However, while explaining the relevance of the Places of Religious Worship Act, it made pertinent observations about our condition.
It stated,
“Our history is replete with actions that have been judged to be morally incorrect and even today are liable to trigger vociferous ideological debate.
“However, the adoption of the Constitution marks a watershed moment where we, the people of India, departed from the determination of rights and liabilities on the basis of our ideology, our religion, the colour of our skin, or the century when our ancestors arrived at these lands, and submitted to the rule of law.”
Now the Constitution itself is in danger. We note that the march of the republic in many sectors has been impressive. In several others, it is very disappointing. The single biggest danger is that inequality has been increasing and marginalising people and making them victims of exploitation.
When the Constitution was adopted on November 26, 1949, Dr Ambedkar very rightly said,
“On January 26, 1950, we are going to enter into a life of contradictions. In politics we will have equality and in social and economic life we will have inequality… How long shall we continue to deny equality in our social and economic life? We will do so by putting our political democracy in peril.”
In fact, on the 75th anniversary of our republic, the contradictions pointed out by Ambedkar have multiplied and have assumed proportions of a crisis. It is extremely important to salvage the republic.
In the name of cultural nationalism, the creative nationalism fashioned during freedom struggle is being endangered. Minorities are living in perpetual fear and anxiety about their life and liberty. Now, there are blood-curdling calls for arms and genocide in the name of faith to target Muslims.
Other deprived sections of society are being targeted on the basis of the food they eat and the caste or tribe they belong to. A market economy is reducing everything to the level of commodities. The value of health and education and many vital aspects of our lives are determined by the market and corporations. This is very dangerous.
We need to salvage this great republic. Only jana gana can do it. Ambedkar’s slogan “Educate, Organise and Agitate” has to be followed to deepen public reasoning and democracy to empower people to use constitutional methods for reducing inequality and contradictions pointed out by Dr Ambedkar.
Long live the Indian Republic and its core meaning anchored in Gandhi’s words: “Let us live together.”
(The author was Press Secretary to President of India late KR Narayanan. Courtesy: The Leaflet, an independent platform for cutting-edge, progressive, legal & political opinion, founded by Indira Jaising and Anand Grover.)
