 Ramila, at the heart of all the argument, the violence, the discourse, both rational and irrational that's been going on, is the notion of citizenship. Shall we talk about citizenship historically speaking? When did this notion come into being? The thing we forget is that citizenship actually is a very modern notion. He goes back to ancient Athens and Greece and whatnot, but let's not forget that citizenship in Athens was extremely limited. It was about a third of the people living in the city of Athens that were citizens. The rest were slaves and other categories of people who didn't have the freedom of citizenship. That's a different story altogether. That's an older society with its own background of tribal structures and this, that and the other. Modern citizenship is something that comes very specifically at historical moments. What is this historical moment at which it comes? In the 18th century, you find a change going on where various things happen. Industrialization begins, capitalism comes in as providing the economic base of this new form of society. The middle class emerges. The middle class is very aware of the fact that the older authorities, the feudal aristocracy, basing themselves on the labor of the subject people, were declining. The middle class was taking over. You get a historical change, very fundamental historical change, where the old relationship of the Lord and the subject, the King and the subject, gradually changes to a new relationship between the state and the citizen. Now both the state and the citizen are new because the state under this kind of system is very different from the monarchy of earlier times. The citizen is no longer a subject. The citizen has rights and that is the meaning of the rights of citizenship. The citizen has rights and duties and these rights and duties, obligations, whatever name you choose to give them, are in a sense what is spoken of in the Constitution. Before we get to the Constitution, suppose I introduce the Indian context here. Yes, there is a new contract between the institution of the state and the individual citizen and the citizenry as a collective. But in the case of India and many other countries, this is the result of a struggle for freedom from colonialism. So there is an additional edge there in the sense that a certain contract has been envisioned and that is what, when we say the idea of India, is that what we are talking about? Where the colonial system interferes, let's not forget that in a sense citizenship didn't really exist under colonialism. India was still the subject of the British rule, the British monarch. So that old idea of the king and the subject continued under colonialism in the case of colonialism in India. The real change really only comes when India ceases to be a colony and becomes a nation. Now my point is that that change in the relationship and the understanding of what is meant by the citizenship or by the citizen was not fully discussed, explored, understood in these years of independence. There's been a little hangover of the older subject idea. And the realization that the citizen is the independent thinking Indian who has views and has the right to express those views, that didn't quite establish itself. So I think that one of the problems that we have today is making those in authority, anyone who's in authority, understand that in the change to what we call the nation modernization, whatever it may be, the notion, if you're going to use the notion of the citizen, you have to understand that it's a changed relationship. And you have to concede that the contract of the change, which is the Indian constitution, has to be respected like all contracts have to be respected. And then the setting of this particular contract, which is why I refer to the idea of India during the freedom struggle, is taking cognizance of the fact that this is and will always be an extremely diverse citizenry. Absolutely, absolutely, that is understood. And that is understood in the sense that citizenship where it has succeeded, and you know, this is a change that practically every part of the world has been undergoing in the last 200 years. In some parts actually seeing it now, I think, in contemporary Europe as well. And in some ways also questioning the basis of citizenship and so on. What is very, very clear is that if you are going to continue with democracy and the notion of citizenship, you have to understand that the definition of a citizen is not by indicating one item of identity. It has to be multiple. It has to take in every citizen no matter what their thinking may be and what their pattern of culture may be. It does have to include everybody. And that's something which I think is causing a lot of problems because there is an assumption that, you know, the whole question of majoritarianism comes in here. And you can't have democracy if you are going to base your citizenship on majoritarianism. Chief Justice has made special mention recently of the duties of the citizen and of course immediately one wants to ask about the relationship between the rights of citizens and their duties. So if you were to sum up some of these rights on the one hand and some of the duties, what would you? I would say to treat it from the basics going up, the rights would be the rights to at least a minimum reasonable livelihood, which means food, water, housing, etc., employment, education, healthcare, and very important, once you've got these, the freedom to say what you wish to say, free speech, free thinking, and social justice. That is the only way in which you can then begin to talk about the possible equality of every citizen. Unless every citizen has these rights, equality is not possible.