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Why Does India Still Need Nehru?

Mucheli Rishvanth Reddy

Inder Kumar Malhotra, a veteran journalist, once said, “Even in this age of uncertainty and contention, some statements can be made without any fear of contradiction. One of these is that Mahatma Gandhi was India’s liberator, and Jawaharlal Nehru its moderniser. In the huge and highly colourful pageant of modern Indian history, the Mahatma remains unquestionably the tallest figure; Nehru marches only a few steps behind him, yet streets ahead of everyone else”. The words ‘uncertainty’ and ‘contention’ in the preceding quote were written long before the BJP came to power. But those two words resonate with the times we live in. Maybe replacing the word ‘contention’ with ‘coercion’ would make it more relevant.

Another interesting aspect of Malhotra’s quote is the legacy of Jawaharlal Nehru. Nehru was and continues to be a ‘luminous’ personality guiding those who seek solace in his bower. Reading Nehru’s writings is an intellectually stimulating activity that helps one to reflect on the past, present, and future. Recently, I came across a fortnightly letter written by Nehru to Chief Ministers on December 16, 1958. This letter stands very pertinent to the contemporary conditions in the country, and the wisdom it offers is worth emulating by the ruling government and Prime Minister. A few paragraphs from that letter are quoted below:

We have now some experience of planning, though I cannot say that we are expert at it yet. Certainly we know more about it than when we prepared the First Plan or the Second, and we have more data at our service also.

In recent months, as you know, we have had a good deal of trouble about the foreign exchange situation. Credits and loans and other forms of help have come to us from friendly countries abroad and they have helped us to devise ways and methods to survey the entire scene of our economic activities and make a fresh appraisal….

The situation revealed by our fresh survey is a very difficult one and it demands far-reaching measures by us. We cannot allow a drift in a wrong direction to continue. Thus we have to pull ourselves up even though the process might be a painful one, and give, what we consider a right lead to the country. We have not also to do this for the remaining years of the Second Five Year Plan, but also in regard to our approach to the Third Plan.

It has struck me that all these detailed talks and discussions that we are having in the Planning Commission are naturally limited to a few of us, and you and the States, which are chiefly concerned with many aspects of the Plan and its implementation, do not participate in them. Of course, at a meeting of the National Development Council, the Chief Ministers come and we discuss some broad issues. But that is not enough, and I would like you to share in this progressive thinking process and to help us in it.

At a meeting of the Planning Commission, it was decided that important papers submitted to the Planning Commission as well as a brief record of our discussions should be sent to all the members of the Central cabinet and to all Chief Ministers of States, so that they might be kept in touch with these discussions. This will also enable them to send us, from time to time, their own suggestions or criticisms. Thus the process of discussion and consideration will spread out to you also, and we want them, and we want you particularly to apply your mind to these matters and give us the benefit of your views….

The burden we, indeed the people of India, have to carry is a heavy one, There appears to be no escape from it to progress as we want to. We shall have to give up many of the frills of our programmes and concentrate of the essentials and above all, we should develop massive support and cooperation of the people.

This whole question should be looked upon as a national issue of first importance. It must not be dealt with as a Party issue. It is from this point of view that I am forming a small all-party Committee in Parliament to consider questions relating to Planning. I would suggest to you to do likewise.

There are four important themes that are explicitly visible in the above letter, and those themes epitomise the commitment of Jawaharlal Nehru to India, Indians, and the Indian Constitution. Firstly, Nehru’s habit of writing letters to the Chief Ministers emphasising the matters that need immediate attention, underlining his position on various issues, and nudging the states to take immediate action. These letters are not secret manifestos or instruments of coercion to force the states to act in the way deemed right by those in the centre; rather, they are expressions of the importance of states to make independent choices that would contribute to the nation’s progress. These letters are addressing the people of India and asserting their role in the nation’s development. In a letter that he wrote to the Chief Ministers on February 2, 1950, he propounded the importance of mobilising masses in India:

We face big problems, economic and political, and yet, I am convinced that the biggest problem of all is this psychological problem of raising the morale of the people and of turning it to enthusiastic effort. Many people in India lead a poor enough existence and some kind of suffering and unhappiness is their lot. Obviously we cannot put an end to this suddenly as if by magic. There is, perhaps, a certain inevitability about the gradual progress of a nation. That gradualness can be speeded up somewhat, but where a whole nation of hundreds of millions has to be trained up, there is no magic way of doing it. So we should not be dispirited if the pace is sometimes slow, provided that there is a movement and in the right direction. It is true that pace itself counts when evil forces also march, for if we do not move fast enough, that evil overtakes us and might overwhelm us.

Secondly, what is most surprising about Nehru’s letters is that they aren’t just about self-praising, self-love, or mere talk about the progress that the nation made till that moment, but are filled with elements of clear-sighted hope, genial scepticism, and modest dogmatism expressed in terms of recognising the limits of processes of development adopted by the nation and the need for constant rethinking and critical appraisal of development prospects. Nehru openly condemned any issues that went against the nation’s spirit. He had numerous agendas for India and had no patience for any acts of mediocrity, and he was greatly irritated if any institution displayed less efficiency in its work. He called for giving up “frills of our programmes and concentrating on the essentials” and “developing massive support and cooperation of the people” to improve efficiency in the channels of development. For instance, in his letter to CMs on 16 November 1948, he expressed his concern about the deteriorating efficiency of public services:

There is one matter which has made me think hard and I want to share my apprehension with you. I think there has been a deterioration in the work of our public services. To some extent this was perhaps inevitable because of the rapid changes that have taken place and the quick promotions which have followed. Nevertheless, it is a disturbing development and we have to be on our guard against it. One reason for this deterioration appears to me to be due to an excess of provincialism which sometimes sacrifices quality in favour of some man from the same province. We have many first-rate men in our services. But it is true that the number of really good men for a country like India is really limited. Whatever policy we might adopt, it is ultimately the human material that counts. If we lower the tone of the material, our work will suffer greatly.

Thirdly, a quality displayed by Nehru is his tolerance towards taking suggestions and criticism from others. His mighty stature never obstructed his willingness to acknowledge his mistakes and reform his ideas. This feature has an intricate implication—he never considered himself above the nation and realised that any amount of progress in the country is conditioned by conscious and collective action by all its elements, importantly states. Federalism is the benchmark of the Indian Constitution, and Nehru remained a humble adherent to this facet of the Indian Republic.

Fourthly, Nehru was completely against dealing with issues concerning the nation as individual party issues. Whoever might be in power at the centre and in the states, all the parties should work together for the welfare of their people, instead of being parochial or provincial in their approach to problems. He was a man of conviction, compassion, and consistency, and was ready to compromise if necessary, for the greater good.

The four themes that are emerging from a single letter written by Nehru are worth remembering because these features are absent in the present regime. The current Prime Minister of India does not want to interact even through press conferences. He only speaks in meticulously orchestrated interviews, Mann ki Baats, and in public gatherings that chant his name alone, apart from occasional “Letters to Mother”. Decisions concerning the whole nation are taken without informing the states, and not even his own cabinet colleagues. Masses are important only once in five years, and the Prime Minister considers the electoral mandate as an instrument of unprecedented and unchecked legitimacy to do everything he deems to be right. Suggestions are rarely invited and never considered, and criticisms will not be tolerated. Any amount of criticism is considered to be synonymous with ‘sedition’ and ‘anti-national’, and the one who criticises is, by default, eligible to be admitted to jails under UAPA.

A new logic of federalism is extended by the ruling regime in India. This logic is completely antithetical to the ‘constitutional logic’ of cooperative federalism and it is, at best, a ‘majoritarian electoral logic’ to win the elections in the states. The ruling regime made it clear that if the majoritarian section of people belonging to a state wants peace, order, stability, and prosperity, they should vote for the current ruling party at the centre and in this route, any national issue could be reduced to a party issue that needs to be fought only on an electoral basis. The ruling regime is infallible.

These conditions are threatening to Indian democracy at large and they are a mockery of the Constitution. In these disturbing times, Indians can only seek shelter in Nehru’s shadow. In his memoirs, recalling a meeting with Nehru, Dean Acheson, former US Secretary of State, wrote that he and Nehru “were not destined to be friends…. But India was so important to the world and Nehru so important to India that if he did not exist then— as Voltaire said of God— he would have to be invented”. Even today, India remains more important to the world and Nehru so important to India. But the need of the moment is— Nehru has to be invented.

[Mucheli Rishvanth Reddy is an MSc in International Social and Public Policy (Development) from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Courtesy: Countercurrents.org, an India-based news, views and analysis website, that describes itself as non-partisan and taking “the Side of the People!” It is edited by Binu Mathew.]

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‘The Nehru Years’: The Lasting Legacy of Non-Alignment Pioneered by India’s First Prime Minister

Shakir Mir

If one were to examine the role that India played in helping de-escalate the major conflicts across the globe that have flared up over the last few years – the Russia-Ukraine war, the genocide in Gaza, the Iran-Israel skirmish – one would be hard-pressed to find any sort of a meaningful contribution on our part.

In recent times, New Delhi’s foreign policy has come under criticism for swinging confusingly towards the Western camp and its sworn commitment of backing India’s rise as a counterweight against China, or rushing under the carapace of the regional groupings like SCO or BRICS that promote the idea of a multi-polar world order.

Except for the generic counsels loaded with boilerplate statements, India’s largely non-interventionist approach – in quest for an amorphous idea of “strategic autonomy” – has turned the country into a spectator that merely watches from the sidelines, rather than an actor who is manoeuvring proactively to shape some of the consequential changes around us.

An architecture of diplomacy

But that was not always the case. The Nehru Years: An International History of Indian Non-Alignment, by scholar Swapna Kona Nayudu, illuminates the lasting legacy of non-alignment that India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, pioneered during his time.

Meticulously deconstructing the manner in which India built an architecture of diplomacy that kept it aloof from the the two hostile blocs – the US and USSR, the book offers a fascinating insight into the proactive role that India under Nehru played in helping resolve the hot conflicts of the 1950s and early 60s – Korean war, Hungarian revolution, Suez Canal standoff and Congolese secessionism.

This highly interventionist role, yet conscious of its commitment to the principles of non-alignment, is what catapulted India into the position of a responsible member in the comity of nations in ways that’s hardly registered today.

This makes Nayudu’s work highly relevant, not least for the young readers in the country today, who ought to recognise how things have changed for India in the foreign policy arena. As Nayudu explains, one of the first such successes was witnessed during the Korean War which began after Japan’s defeat in the Second World War, leading the US and USSR to take their respective spheres of control of the Korean peninsula, demarcated at a site called 38th Parallel.

Brought to the doors of the UN, the Korean dispute turned into a site where India’s instinct for mediatory diplomacy would be burnished. As head of the UN Commission for Korea, India brought the UN institutions to reflect its own non-aligned policy.

As Nayudu writes, it was the Indian proposals – although they were unsuccessful – which bought precious time in which American war cries during the tense standoff subsided. “By historicising the nation state outside of its national boundaries, Nehru made possible a move from a securitised discourse of nationalism to a politicised discourse on internationalism,” she adds. Although critical of the US, the coherence of the Indian discourse oriented along the non-alignment philosophy dawned upon the Americans the realisation that “India is not neutral in the sense that it is indifferent to Communism.”

The Suez Canal crisis marked the first occasion when India moved away from its earlier position of non-alignment to one that backed diplomacy and UN support for the deployment of troops. In fact, it was the first time ever India had flown its troops to be deployed elsewhere. The conflict started after Egypt, under its popular Arab leader Gamal Abdel Nasser, nationalised the Suez Canal, an important maritime corridor for European goods, provoking the anger of the British and French governments, who jumped into a confrontation with Cairo. To calm matters, US President Dwight Eisenhower suggested a conference, which Egypt refused to attend initially but later acquiesced upon India’s request. Nehru wrote to the British PM Anthony Eden, cautioning against the use of force against Egypt, and stoutly defended Egyptian sovereignty.

Initially, India was hesitant about the involvement of the UN (the reasons being India’s own “bitter” experience with the global body in relation to Kashmir), but later as Western powers press their own plans, especially the decision to create Suez Canal Users Association, which Egypt saw an being a “unilateral move”, Nehru recommended that Egypt solicit the UN aid, not least because the English and French, too, had gone to the UN with a complaint.

Citing India’s efforts to work on a settlement, Yugoslavia brought an adjournment to the proceedings at the UNSC in 1956. This became proof of India’s role in bringing about a stalemate even as the Western powers were eying to floor Egypt with a multi-front war.

Just when Nehru thought he had things under control, Israel struck Egypt, mirroring the revanchist hysteria that’s currently unfolding across the war-ravaged swathes of West Asia. But unlike today, India’s response wasn’t hedged with the language of “both-sidesism”. Instead, it was characterised by a spirited condemnation of what it called “a reversal of history.”

India asked members of the Bandung Conference to denounce the Israeli aggression, put pressure to bear upon the UN to expedite its procedures concerning the conflict, and also turned to the US for support. Washington introduced a resolution at the UNSC towards that effect, which was vetoed by Britain and France.

In his letter to Eden, Nehru expressed his dismay over his veto, arguing that the whole “purpose of the UN is undermined if armed might is to decide issues between nations.” As Nayudu observes, this brought the UK Foreign Office around to the view that India’s position was “not unfriendly” per se.

A second resolution introduced by the US at the General Assembly was successful, leading to Egypt agreeing to a ceasefire. With several adverse factors hovering in the backdrop, including a looming Russian threat, the British, too, announced the cessation of hostilities. The increasing correspondence between Nehru and Eisenhower during this time highlighted a prominent role played by India, the expression of which was the huge contribution that India made to the UN forces being deployed in Egypt to monitor and implement the ceasefire.

The revolutions in Eastern Europe

India’s failure to align itself with Russia’s position on the Suez Canal standoff went on to influence the country’s further course of action during the Hungarian revolution. As Nayudu writes, the Soviet views about India during the time of Joseph Stalin were colored by bias. The USSR saw India as an imperial enclave riven with the dynasticism of the Nehru-Gandhi family.

But that would change under Nikita Khrushchev’s stewardship, who warmed up to New Delhi. This change was a consequence of India’s determined commitment to non-aligned praxis even as other decolonised states were swinging into America’s orbit. At the same time, the discourse of “democratisation” would go on to trigger revolutionary impulses in countries under the USSR’s sphere of influence, chiefly Hungary and Poland.

The Soviet repression of these uprisings would trigger violent backlash, mapping onto the pre-existing fault lines of the Cold War rivalries, with the entire Western world backing the revolutionaries against the Soviets. This created problems for non-aligned nations such as India, which, although it made ceremonial condemnations of the Soviet-led crackdown, voted against Western resolutions at the UN that condemned the USSR.

In November 1956, for example, India became the only non-communist country to abstain from the US-sponsored resolution condemning Soviet actions. It also voted against another resolution demanding UN-supervised elections to be held in Hungary. Explaining this decision in the Parliament, Nehru hinted at the dangers of allowing this precedent to take place in light of the raging conflict in Kashmir.

Threading her narrative through these events, Nayudu also reveals fascinating details that provide additional context to Russia’s own vetoes at the UNSC on Kashmir-related resolutions, which helped India skirt past the threat of UN mediation and consolidate its authority in J&K during the 1950s. The issue originated from the controversial execution of Imre Nagy, the leader of the Hungarian revolution, which Nehru denounced as “a breach of international conventions.”

Fearing loss of support, Russians were prompt to dispatch their envoy to India, who indulged in a “gentle blackmail” to remind India of its Soviet vetoes on Kashmir. The intimidation seems to have worked as India abstained from the two anti-Soviet resolutions at the UN in December that year

Nayudu, however, interprets India’s non-condemnatory diplomacy as being driven by pragmatism. New Delhi’s belief was that symbolic condemnations closed the door for negotiations and led to highly securitised responses. This helped calm tempers eventually, as India was successful in bringing Hungarians around to its viewpoint. “Both superpowers took a conciliatory attitude towards India, embarrassed by their own actions or those of their allies,” Nayudu writes.

The Congolese separatism

Congo, which declared independence in 1990, became another site where India’s non-aligned character was subject to a test. Congo soon became enmeshed in military coups and secessionist wars that reflected the larger Cold War hostilities of that time. India had a delicate tightrope to walk and negotiate a complex political situation riven by the competing Russian and American interests.

It was the first time India was sending its troops, not merely to be stationed, but with a mandate of leading a military offensive. At the request of UN Chief Dag Hammarskjöld, Nehru dispatched Brig. Indar Jit Rikhye as the military adviser to the UN Mission in Congo, and Rajeshwar Dayal as Hammarskjöld’s special representative.

A coup led by Congolese general Mobutu Sese Seko made matters worse, with the USSR lambasting the UN for its inaction as the newly independent country got embroiled in cycles of war and bloodshed.

Nayudu points out that India played a very active role in which it both resisted the Soviet troika plan – which entailed splintering the secretary general’s office – as well as fought off American influence by bringing the UN Mission to denounce Mobutu’s takeover of Congo. In this way India was able to burnish its non-aligned character while also reinforcing a position that was demonstrably non-partisan. Nayudu also offers rare details of how India’s troops – accounting for a third of the UN military contingent – were crucial to ending the crises of secessionism in Congo.

As Nayudu points out, “apart from being written out of India’s diplomatic history, the operation (in Congo) has also been neglected in writing India’s military history.”

In times when we have come to lose minds over “laser-eyed” zingers delivered by the incumbent Foreign Minister when he is on his trips abroad, Nayudu’s work acquires a vital character because it reminds us that a foreign policy may also ought to have been edged with more passion, and willingness towards (the right sort of) interventionism.

[Shakir Mir is a journalist and book critic based in Srinagar. Courtesy: Scroll.in, an Indian digital news publication, whose English edition is edited by Naresh Fernandes.]

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Towards a State of Sorrow-lessness: Let Us Build Nehru’s Asoka Rajya

Faisal C.K.

Jawaharlal Nehru’s ideals of pacifist internationalism, secular pluralism, and the welfare state were profoundly inspired by the Mauryan emperor Asoka. Nehru perceived himself as the new Asoka of the nascent Indian Republic – a ruler guided by compassion, moral conviction, and universalism rather than conquest

Alasdair MacIntyre, the Scottish-American political philosopher, theorised that the modern state is a contradictory entity – Janus-faced, with one visage turned toward political imagination and the other toward bureaucratic rationality. The first appeals to the emotions of people and claims their imaginative allegiance; the second operates through cold cost-benefit analysis and administrative engineering.

This duality, MacIntyre argued, manifests not only in statecraft but also in statesmen themselves. Jawaharlal Nehru is a perfect example of this phenomenon. His political and philosophical career had two distinct phases – Nehru the Gandhian idealist and Nehru the Nehruvian realist.

In the first episode – during the freedom struggle and the framing of the constitution – he was an idealist, preaching the Dharma (normative order) of Asoka. In the second phase, during his tenure as prime minister, he was a realist practicing the Artha (purpose) of Kautilya. Philosophically, the first phase is far more relevant today, for Nehru’s political thought was anchored in Asoka’s idealist politics rather than his later pragmatism.

Asoka in Nehru’s imagination

Nehru wrote and spoke extensively about Asoka, both in his letters to his daughter Indira – later published as Glimpses of World History and Letters from a Father to His Daughter (1934) – and in The Discovery of India. In the latter, Nehru wrote: “Asoka’s pillars of stone, with their inscriptions, would speak to me in their magnificent language and tell me of a man who, though an emperor, was greater than any king or emperor.”

Historian Abraham Eraly, in Gem in the Lotus: The Seeding of Indian Civilisation (2002), similarly observed:

“Ashoka was fulfilling his duty as a king as his Enlightened vision perceived it. He hoped that compassion, liberality, truthfulness, purity, gentleness, and virtue would spread among mankind. For all his idealism, Ashoka was a realist. He would not tolerate crime but he would be humane towards criminals. His compassion was counterbalanced with sternness.”

The attributes of Asoka, as Eraly noted – compassion balanced with firmness – match perfectly with those of Nehru.

During the Constituent Assembly debates, when national symbols were being proposed to embody the new Republic’s identity, Nehru invoked Asoka’s ideals. Two millennia after Asoka’s reign, his moral vision echoed through Nehru when the Dhamma Chakra and Asoka Stambha (the Sarnath Lion Capital) were adopted as the official regalia of the Indian Republic. These insignia from the Mauryan imperium epitomised Asoka’s concept of ethical sovereignty. Through Nehru, that imagination found modern democratic expression.

Symbol of pacifist internationalism

Commenting on the Asoka Chakra, Nehru emphasised its dynamism:

“This wheel which is a rotating thing, which is a perpetually revolving thing, indicates to us that there is death in stagnation. There is life in movement.”

He connected this symbolism to the need for India to embrace change and reform as the essence of national vitality.

Nehru further linked the emblem to Asoka’s historical role:

“Now because I have mentioned the name of Asoka I should like you to think that the Asokan period in Indian history was essentially an international period of Indian history. It was not a narrowly national period. It was a period when India’s ambassadors went abroad to far countries and went abroad not in the way of an empire and imperialism but as ambassadors of peace and culture and goodwill.”

For Nehru, the Asokan symbol represented India’s “great internationalist spirit”– a message of “freedom and friendship to all people around the world.” Both Asoka’s and Nehru’s visions of internationalism stand in stark contrast to the parochial and jingoistic nationalisms of our own times. Their pacificist internationalism holds renewed significance in an age of religious and ethnic extremism. It demands introspection essential to humanity’s survival in the nuclear age. If the apocalypse is to be delayed, humanity must draw nearer to Asoka and Nehru.

The moral and political axis

The Dhamma Chakra carries a twofold significance. It stands for the entire repository of Buddhist values – righteousness, law, peace, non-violence, and universal moral order. Simultaneously, it symbolizes political sovereignty responsible for upholding and propagating those very values. Thus, it unites the idealist and realist aspects of the state.

Nehru expressed great satisfaction at this synthesis: “For my part, I am exceedingly happy that…we have associated with the flag of our not only this emblem but in a sense the name of Asoka, one of the most magnificent names not only in India’s history, but in world history.”

While Nehru admired Kautilya’s insights on strategy and Chandragupta’s political acumen, it was Asoka’s renunciation of violence and his Buddhist leanings that moved Nehru’s soul. His doctrine of Panchsheel, the cornerstone of India’s foreign policy, drew directly from Asoka’s pacifist internationalism.

Beyond non-violence, Asoka’s religious tolerance and pluralism greatly appealed to Nehru. Asoka protected even non-Buddhist sects like the Ajivikas from persecution – a principle mirrored in Nehruvian secularism. Nehru’s commitment to pluralism and freedom of conscience was thus a modern continuation of Asoka’s religious liberality.

Asoka’s missions of diplomacy and monastic outreach across Asia found their modern echo in Nehru’s Asian Solidarity and Non-Alignment during the Cold War. Likewise, Asoka’s welfare measures – roads, inns, community kitchens, hospitals, afforestation, and animal protection – resonated in Nehru’s conception of a welfare state.

Nehru envisioned a bureaucracy dedicated to social progress and ethical governance, akin to Asoka’s Dharma-Mahamatras. For both rulers, moral instruction and governance were inseparable. If Buddha was Asoka’s spiritual mentor, Gandhi was Nehru’s. Like Asoka, Nehru communicated his ideas widely–through letters, speeches, and books–believing that the pen was as potent an instrument of statecraft as the sword.

Asoka Rajya and Ram Rajya

While Nehru advocated Asoka Rajya, his mentor Gandhi spoke of Ram Rajya. Yet the two ideals differ sharply in foundation and form. Gandhi’s Ram Rajya was essentially spiritual and symbolic. He explained: “I mean by Ramarajya Divine Raj, the Kingdom of God. For me Rama and Rahim are one and the same deity. I acknowledge no other God but the one God of truth and righteousness. Whether Rama of my imagination ever lived or not on this earth, the ancient ideal of Ramarajya is undoubtedly one of true democracy in which the meanest citizen could be sure of swift justice without an elaborate and costly procedure.”

Gandhi’s Ram Rajya, though ethically profound, was utopian and ahistorical. As Devdutt Pattanaik observes in The Book of Ram (2015): “Ram never questioned varna-ashrama-dharma; he upheld the rules at any cost of personal happiness… Ram’s determination to uphold varna-ashrama-dharma under all circumstances, without questioning it, presented him with ethical and moral dilemmas.”

By contrast, Nehru’s Asoka Rajya was historical, rational, and inclusive. It offered a concrete model of governance rooted in justice, compassion, and reason – values that transcend mythology and sectarian boundaries.

At a time when both India and the world groan under the weight of parochialism, intolerance, and conflict, it is imperative to reclaim Nehru’s ideal of Asoka Rajya – a sorrow-less state, guided by reason and compassion.

Asoka and Nehru remain luminous beacons – a pharos for the adrift republic. To move toward their vision is not a retreat into nostalgia but a moral necessity. For only in the light of their ethical imagination can we hope to build a state – and a world – free from sorrow.

[Faisal C.K. is deputy law secretary to the government of Kerala and author of The Supreme Codex: A Citizen’s Anxieties and Aspiration on the Indian Constitution. Courtesy: The Wire, an Indian nonprofit news and opinion website. It was founded in 2015 by Siddharth Varadarajan, Sidharth Bhatia and M. K. Venu.]