“Today, a Constitution made by ourselves has been adopted, and even the last link with the British Commonwealth—the Crown, a symbol of British rule—has been replaced by the Ashoka Chakra. We are now no longer bound to the British, morally or politically, and are free to do what our conscience tells us to do.”
– Shri Guruji Golwalkar, Second Sarsanghachalak of RSS, while addressing the people on January 25, 1950, on the eve of the first Republic Day, Organiser Weekly, February 6, 1950
Since the Union Government instituted Constitution Day, or ‘Samvidhan Divas’ in 2015 to commemorate the adoption of the Constitution on November 26, 1949, the discussion about Constitutional values has gained momentum. The Constitutional values and the duties of people in protecting them have also gained prominence. While deliberating on these critical issues and celebrating the spirit of the Sam-Vidhan – the equal framework of law, we need to decode the core values of the Constitution and real threats to the same.
The Constitution of Bharat was an outcome of the long and consistent struggle for independence from the colonial rule. Even though the British framework was introduced, it is the spirit of the freedom struggle that influenced the evolution of the process. The Drafting Committee, under the able chairmanship of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar, infused the Bharatiya ethos into it, and the Constituent Assembly, studded with scholars and legal luminaries, ensured that the modern Constitution be rooted in the civilisational values of the ancient Rashtra. That is why ‘We, the People’ is the source of the Constitution, and justice, liberty, and equality are founded on the values of fraternity, unity, and the integrity of the nation. Freedom is not limited to individuals; it is given to groups as well. Freedom of conscience is critical to democracy. The Union is created for administrative convenience, yet its centrality is underscored in the division of powers for smooth functioning. The Constitution is rigid enough to protect these values and structures and sufficiently flexible to adapt to the changing needs of society. However, we need to know who are the forces that undermine and challenge the fundamentals of our Constitutional values?
The recent terror attack in Delhi, with a suicide bombing near Red Fort and the dreaded network of doctors that the agencies unearthed, have yet again exposed the real threat of Islamism – the ideology that gave birth to Pakistan. The people who opposed Vande Mataram, leading to the partition of the country and batted for Sharia above the Constitution, are the primary challengers and real threat to the civilisational and constitutional value of Spiritual Democracy – the right to follow one’s own path of worship. The freedom struggle, much before the arrival of the British, and the supreme sacrifice by our Gurus, including that of
Sri Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji, were for the protection of this fundamental religious right. The religious supremacist ideology rooted in Kafirophobia leads to the instrument of terrorism – the indiscriminate violence to assert power – which is against the spirit of democracy.
The Communists of all variants opposed the Constitution since its inception, as Dr Ambedkar himself pointed out in his last speech in the Constituent Assembly. For them, the independence was fake, and the Constitution was bourgeois. Even though some of them tried to mainstream them through electoral politics, wherever they gained political power, they ruptured the democratic process by monopolising the state machinery as visible in West Bengal and Kerala. The other political parties even denied the right to exist, forget political campaign, in the so-called party villages. The Maoist variant of red-terrorism still vows to overthrow the constitutional democracy to bring in their utopia of revolution. Though they are fighting the existential battle against democracy, their real masters in the urban centres – academic, media, legal activists and NGOs – are ready with their usual cry of human rights violations. The forces that do not believe in others’ human rights provide these people with a legal and intellectual shield, posing a grave danger to the Constitution and democracy. Subverting democracy through democratic terminology while whitewashing the armed revolution and terrorism is the core business of these intellectuals, from which we need to save the Constitution.
The political parties that put family interests above national interests always used both Islamist and Communist forces to survive. When someone believes that their birth in a particular family gives them the right to rule Bharat, it is against the basic principle of democracy, as we experienced during the draconian period of Emergency in 1975. People of Bharat are weary with those forces, as is evident from the verdict of the recently concluded Bihar Assembly Elections 2025. Dynastism, accompanied by corruption and criminalisation, gives space to Islamic terrorism and Maoism, which is more dangerous for the democratic process.
We, the people of Bharat, are the sovereign and the true guardians of Constitutional democracy. Eternal vigilance, along with adherence to the Constitutional values by performing our duties, is the guarantee of democracy. As Shri Guruji pointed out, the Ashok Chakra – the Dharma chakra of dynamism – ended the last link with the British Raj. We have to continuously strive to get rid of the colonial mindset to attain complete Swaraj. We need to fight, expose and eliminate the threat of all three dangers to the Constitution – Islamism, Maoism and Dynastism. Only then, would the Constitution, which has been the source of our unity and integrity, survive and thrive.
