 For more videos on people's struggles please subscribe to our YouTube channel. Hello and welcome to People's Dispatch. The 26th of November this year marked the 70th anniversary of the adoption of the Indian Constitution. The Indian Constitution was adopted in 1949 just over two years after India gained independence in 1947. This was a very complicated and interesting process because the partition of the country had caused a huge amount of violence, there was a great amount of social inequality, a number of communities which formed part of the country and there were many people who asked if it was even possible for a country like India to have a constitution. So what has been the experience of India over the past 70 years? What have been the ups and downs? To talk more about this we have with us Pravir Burkayastha. Hello Pravir. Pravir, so could you first start by looking at what is really unique about India's constitution and the process through which it was drafted? I think that does not bring out the complexity of the process that you talked about and I think if we look at the Constitution of India we should look at not how it was drafted but that it represented the aspiration of the national movement. So it's actually the Indian national movement which in this sense is the creator of the Constitution of India not simply the people who drafted it. I think that's an important issue and the aspiration of India itself what should be India was not something which was determined a priori. It actually came out of the struggle of the different sections of the people who were in that struggle and one section of that movement or I would not say those who participated in the movement remained outside the movement wanted in that nation national identity should be based on some homogeneous identity of the people and one said therefore it should be Hindu nation that was that was the proposition of a section of the people at that time who were involved in politics and there was the counterpart that there which was the section of the people who said we are Muslims we want a separate nation. Overarching national movement that was built up which a huge number of people participated in was that we want freedom from British exploitation and therefore we want a nation which not only represents all its people but where the exploitation of foreign capital will be completely abolished we will be therefore building a nation which will be relatively free of exploitation and we expect the government of this country to represent our aspirations by providing us a better life. So this became what was the difference between the secular nationalism of that period which wanted the nation to have a development agenda also to have an agenda for all its people not just a section of its people and the sectarian nationalisms if we can use such a term which is really identity politics if you will of identity based nationalism which wanted to separate from this or wanted to create an exclusionary nation or nations so that led to one side Pakistan being formed but the larger Indian part of the subcontinent at that point of time remained outside such identity based nationalism exclusionary nationalism became actually a national of all its people and of course it didn't mean that the rich did were not there it did not mean landed interests were not there but the basis of the constitution it must include all and also that is fundamental part of the what is called the secular basis of the nation which the supreme court is affirmed even when it did a judgment recently which was relatively shall we say against the spirit of the constitution but it upheld that this constitution is a secular constitution belongs to all its people the second part which is quite unique in the constitutions of that period was it had a clause which would be today regarded as affirmative action it said that sections have suffered generational violence what are today called the Dalit communities they are they were designated scheduled castes or scheduled tribes and they have they have been outside the benefits of whole or not range of things and they therefore need special provisions and that was reservation in government jobs as well as reservation for education these are the two instruments which today in as we know in the post 60s are known as affirmative action comes out of civil rights movement of the United States they were there in the Indian constitution as you said from 48 onwards so these I think were really very very important but out of the constitutional process we also get what is later on becomes a developmental state or developmentalist state which accepts the state has a responsibility of developing the economy providing education for the people and looking at also at public health so these all of these are not commodities but the responsibility of the state are also spelled out in the constitution so I think in that sense the constitution was the expression of that time for a country which is coming out of colonialism to assert that this color this country which is coming out of the colonial period is not going to be a country which will be based on quote unquote exclusionary nationalist identities but a nation which will include all its people and that's what still even today holds good in spite of all the forces that are working against it so it's interesting you mentioned the colonial experience because India becomes independent at the beginning of a wave of post-world war two decolonization movements and it continues till the 60s even but many of the countries which simultaneously become independent around that time do not are not able to continue the democratic experiment so to speak and whereas India somehow with all its faults managed to so do you see the framing of the constitution and as one of the reasons why it was able to well you know the fact that it allowed all sections and representation is one part the second part the spirit of this constitution and also the fact that it had come in as a part of larger national movement which had fought the British colonial administration suffered massacres as we know fought the police on different occasions also had a history of movements and the respect for the movements because the national movement was the key element of the decolonization process in India so there was a more a respect for movements and public voices than perhaps those where the national movement wasn't that strong but what happened was the weakness of colonialism after the Second World War led to some of the countries then giving liberation not so easy the fights over there but some of it followed from the weakness of the colonial powers themselves and their inability therefore to continue the same kind of colonial exploitation they had earlier so in this case it also meant that we had linguistic states which were formed so others started owning up to the nation who might have otherwise disassociated in different ways so the political experiment of talking to people keeping two people together was also a part of the national movement but I think what was important was the state also took upon the responsibilities of development on itself and doing that it came immediately against the big colonial powers the United States English the United Kingdom French all this the western countries so to say or refused to part with technology their argument was India should be basically a primary producer exporting raw materials to the developed countries and developed countries will send back the manufactured goods a kind of reiteration of the colonial regime but under now indigenous rulers but the continuation of what would be called neocolonialism and then the government at that point of time actually negotiated with Russia with for instance with Romania for oil for example for Hindustan antibiotics came up negotiating with Russia Soviet Union at that time so all of these were really to try and develop indigenous industry in India heavy electricals which came again with the collaboration with Soviet Union so all of this meant also conflict with the ex-colonial powers and of course the United States but they all looked upon the world in bipolar terms you are either with us or against us so you couldn't have any other any other part or they don't play any other role and therefore the process of decolonization came up against a neocolonialism and therefore what happens in this process is India becomes one of the leaders of the non-aligned non-aligned movement and non-aligned movement is not that it was just not aligned to the two military blocks it was really decolonization and the non-aligned movement therefore supported every decolonization process in the world be it South Africa apartheid or it was Vietnam which was a colonial war which was continuing all of this non-aligned movement took a position not because they're looking for being non-aligned but because they're aligned towards decolonization and I think the Indian state therefore placed that important part the second part of it what you said or that what was the kind of other issues that come up and why did it hold together in spite of that I think the issue there was that this whole idea that you should that you have political equality in terms of voting one man one vote one person one vote and we got women women's vote earlier than a lot of other countries did because we had it even in the colonial period now this kind of one person one vote go militates against the fact that there is huge inequalities starting with property that that type property was held to be a fundamental part of the constitution but it was one of the fundamental rights right to property now all that changes slowly and you get slowly the idea that fundamental parts of the constitution is not the right to property so it brings up the other issue that Abedkar who was the founder one of the founding drafters of the constitution he had said there'll be dichotomy between political rights on one hand where they are supposed to be equal before law and the inequality that you have in social and economic terms so this was a dichotomy which still continues and except that we now have the neoliberal departure which goes back which also does not recognize the right of the nation state in the role of development and development for all its people and that that is the second crisis that we start seeing to emerge particularly in the 90s but the decolonization project and the non-alignment project were really projects of emancipation from the stranglehold of the ex-colonial powers and the now new new new colonial power which had earlier stuck its regime to South South America's and Central America which now was becoming the linchpin of global neocolonialism the United States so this is I think the really the issues that came out and I think in the process the Indian democracy in spite of the fact it is under new attacks and we can come to those attacks has been able to weather the storm because people still see the value of the constitution in protecting some of their rights if not all of their rights and delivering at least to the people some voice in who their rulers are going to be so that one more one person one vote the principle of political democracy is still the safety valve if you will by which the Indian state manages to hold itself together considering it's one of the most diverse countries in the world and such a diverse country embarking on an experiment of holding everybody together but with no overarching identity is a unique experience experiment and the only other one in the world of such scale could have been considered could have been considered European Union which also has a number of identities nationalities and so on which is seeing rather unfortunate end right now looks like and also never could achieve the kind of political unity which still till date India has maintained of course we have to see with the current dispensation of power taking a wrecking ball to various provisions of the constitution how much further we would also be able to travel or should we travel on the path of European Union that's something we have to we have to watch so to come back to your point about the 90s and the liberalization process so in many in most of India even today it's seen as a pure a process of reform a process of economic changes and something that brought about a couple of decades of prosperity the whole notion of growth that is being celebrated by economists across the spectrum but what you're in some sense is saying is that this whole process over the last 30 years has actually militates against the spirit of the constitution in a certain sense as it reduces the role of the state and say prevents the enactment of certain aspects of the constitution well let's be very clear this is not being celebrated by different section of opinion in fact a strong section of the opinion would say that these last 30 years has seen an enormous strengthening of the power of the rich over the Indian economy and much sharper growth of inequalities and this whole argument that the waters will lift up all the ships rising tide lift rising tide dry arrays all the ships yes they do but they raise it very differentially and the benefit of the last 30 years you can see the benefit of that has gone to a much smaller section so while yes even the poorest have got some benefits there has been a transition from being extremely poor to being merely poor and in and in what would be defined as not complete poverty but the threat of poverty is still being very strong and just one illness or accident can throw the whole family back into complete poverty so this growth of the middle what is called the middle class is really extremely small middle class and not more than 10 percent really have gained out of the last 30 years and 90 percent has actually the distance between the average wealth of the 10 percent and this 90 percent have increased enormously in fact that's why Piketty talks about from British Raj to billionaire Raj where you have the fastest growth of billionaires today so the fact that in the benefit of all this is not reached the poor there is also another aspect to it which is something which is not again made public that the entire growth of this wealthy set that today dominates the economy has been done by bleeding the public sector banks the financing has come from them reducing tax huge tax reliefs that they have got the ability to what is called privatize the profits and socialize the losses the losses are being borne by the people the banks the national exchequer tax reliefs and so on while the privatization has led to a private capital has gained enormously by taking its claims to supplying electricity supplying telecom services to all of that if any point there is a loss they have a crisis just simply abandoning the company but declare bankruptcy while the other ventures then make money so this this kind of crony capitalism is the last 30 years model now whether we are reaching the end of the throne or not we don't know because at the moment crony capitalism is continuing with this government the Modi government being particularly favorable to the biggest capitalist in the country Mr. Ambani who runs his oil empire as now his telecom empire and a lot of lot of other things beside and then you have another very good friend of Mr. Modi Gautam Adani who runs an empire based now on coal based on other things and also coal mines in Australia so he seems to be the another favored person or his empire is favored in different ways so you do have these kinds of what would be otherwise called crony capitalism emerging on the other hand you also have this whole identity of using religion a religious identity as the basis of the nation particularly with its attack on minorities in this case the Muslims and also externalizing it as Pakistan the familiar West European shall we say disease where the internal enemy and the external enemy was always conflated so Germany never lost the war except for the fact they were Jews this is the after First World War what Hitler says so this whole externalizing the internal enemy building an internal enemy to homogenize a majority this kind of divisive politics is again taking place my problem is the Indian constitution makers were clear about that and knew that if you bring about a fracture in the country there are number of other lines of fracture in which the country can break up in so it will not be just one fracture but like glass doesn't fracture cleanly it will lead to myriad of other fractures in society and that's not something which can hold India together I think the fundamental vision of the national movement of how to hold the country together and this is being lost by those who are propounding essentially the kind of nationalism which led to the first great rupture in the subcontinent which was the partition of India and what unfortunately what these set of forces are doing if we cannot defeat them would be to again create not one partition but number of partition across language across ethnic boundaries and those are already becoming manifest in different different areas so my fear is that the glue that held the nation together which really came out of the national movement was the emancipatory vision of India as a place is a country of all its people and if that's given up then there is no one set of people who then emerge and that's not a problem for India alone as you can see it's probably be for United Kingdom where the Scott the Irish the Welsh and the English all fighting about what is the future of United Kingdom so I think we are entering a larger period of this kind of ethnic identities being projected and the fracture lines would actually be of their constitutions as well so can the Indian constitution whether this storm will depend on the people because that's ultimately the guarantor or the arbiter of the constitution is not the judiciary not the executive but ultimately the people right and one of the major challenges the Indian constitutional process faced in the last 70 years was the emergency in the 70s during the prime minister ship of Indra Gandhi so the habeas corpus was suspended political opponents were placed in jail there was a massive crackdown the censorship of the press continued today we have a slightly different situation the far right wing is in power but many people have compared these two time periods and have mentioned that there are certain similar characteristics although formally they may look very different so how do you see this well that's interesting because you asked because I did spend 12 months of that period behind bars as a guest of Mrs. Gandhi's government okay so I would say that that led to India emerging more strongly and the realization of a huge number of people including the middle class that the value of the Indian democratic processes it gives everybody certain rights otherwise the middle class used to think that why should the poor have the rights if only the state controls everything with an iron hand and all these unruly elements they meant the poor are kept in check India can then develop therefore their need of a strong person strong leader this was the shall we say the dinner table conversation among the middle class a large sections of the middle class I think the emergency taught them that this is really not how it works that actually strengthening the state means strengthening all sections who are in the state against its own people and I still remember the Chilean coup there was a famous film in which Costa Gavra's film where a person goes who's the senator goes to the military government and complains about certain things and the guy who's sitting there who's lowly functionary or the military government said you've got a car from the senate a deposit here and you can walk back so it says now the things have changed the fact that you are rich you are a capitalist and you helped us in the coup means nothing so this is I think something the middle class grasped also in India at that point of time that this is not strengthening the state is not something which is going to benefit us as a class so that was one lesson which that's why the poor as well come out and vote in large numbers in India because they realize the value of their vote that it may not give them the government they want but at least they can help to get rid of the government they don't want and therefore teach it a lesson so that limited purpose is at least fulfilled by the right to vote now this government which has come in thinks like a lot of authoritarian governments think particularly those without too much imagination and knowledge of history or shall we say a wrong understanding of history which comes from not knowing history that if you have the stick a big stick and you have the right to the megaphone which is all the media that you have at your command including the private media because they do listen to the governments then you can control the people so the belief that people can be fooled or beaten into submission is fundamental to this kind of polity can in a countryside country as large as India we run like this I don't believe it I also do not believe that the Indian people and the expression of the Indian people through various instruments that it has will fall so easily to the constitutional coups that have affected for instance Brazil at the moment or certain other countries including the United Kingdom where actually you have Boris Johnson in a partial coup earlier so if you see all of it I believe that yes we have a difficult period ahead of us this is not that this is going to be easy but I do not believe that you will get the same emergency as Mrs. Gandhi had instituted neither will you get the success of this kind of policies in the long term I think in the short term or at least the medium term these policies are bound to fail question is the damage they do to the democracy and the secular fabric of the country that's going to take much longer to repair so yes they will cause damage yes I think they will be defeated but it is going to take time effort and a much more emancipatory vision of the country to be able to offset this divisive agenda that they have foisted on the people and they are furthering through their control over the government mechanism government machinery thank you premier that's all we have time for today keep watching people's dispatch