India is entering into her 75th Republic Day on the 26th day of January 2024. We adopted our constitution on this day in 1950. When we talk of the Constitution, we do not just talk about the laws, articles, and variety of provisions enshrined by the founding fathers, but we also discuss the inherent ideology or, in other words, the philosophical aspect behind the inclusion of these laws and provisions. This philosophical aspect is required to understand as behind its articulation, there stand the social and political issues that define the idea of inclusion in a coherent manner in the Constitution.

As we celebrate the adoption of the Indian Constitution on January 26, 1950, it is helpful to look at the vision that the chief architect of the Constitution, Dr Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, had for the Indian republic. A little glimpse into Ambedkar will be necessary to understand his vision of the Indian republic. The humiliating and discriminatory experiences that Ambedkar went through for most of his life gave him first-hand experience of what an ordinary man desires in his lifetime. When he was entrusted with the task of being the chairman of the drafting committee, these experiences guided him towards a vision of an ‘India for all its citizens’, not just a privileged few. The privileged were placed in that category through religion, caste, language, and wealth. But the India that Ambedkar dreamt of was an India that every Indian would be proud to own and claim to be his own. In Ambedkar’s own words, “the most vital need of the day is to create among the mass of people, a sense of common nationality, a feeling not that they are Indians first and Hindus, Mohammedans or Sindhis and Canarese afterwards, but that they are Indians first and Indians last.”

In this regard, it is noteworthy to consider Dr. B. R. Ambedkar as an important reason for the inclusion of provisions in legal terms in the Constitution. The idea of inclusion of the basic rights of individuals through Ambedkar’s understanding is categorized into two levels: micro level and macro level. For Ambedkar, these basic rights were the basic needs of the untouchable communities and marginalized groups. But when he found these basic rights missing in the lives of many marginalized groups, he struggled for their realization. In its articulation, he came across a variety of rights that were inevitable for the survival of life. In this way, his idea of inclusion can also be analyzed through his idea of converting basic needs into basic rights, and to gratify his desire, he tried his level best to incorporate them into the Indian Constitution with his interventions at the level of the Constituent Assembly and Parliament.

For him, inclusion was not simply the inclusion of disadvantaged people within a group or structure, but with a larger spectrum, he understood its comprehensive meaning, which is the practice or policy of providing equal access to opportunities and resources for people who might otherwise be excluded or marginalized. In the Indian case, he considered the Dalits, tribals, women, and religious minorities as the excluded communities and worked tirelessly for their inclusion in the mainstream life of the nation through the mechanism of the constitution. He fervently argued that India must strive to be a social democracy and not merely a political democracy. Social democracy, he noted, ‘is a way of life which recognizes liberty, equality and fraternity as the principles of life’.

Ambedkar categorically is associated with the Constitution as its chairman, whose task was to defend the Draft Constitution, which the Committee prepared and therefore intervened in nearly every debate. Ambedkar’s interventions and speeches on various aspects of the Constitution were insightful, well-reasoned, and thoroughly researched. This won him the support and respect of other members of the Assembly who allowed him to lead the constitution-making project. He was a member of eleven such committees that worked for the drafting of the Constitution. Some were the Sub-committee on Fundamental Rights, Sub-committee on minorities, ad hoc Committee on Citizenship, Sub-committee on Minority Problems affecting East Punjab and West Bengal, etc. The extensive analysis of these committees if we all see would tell us the journey of their working for the inclusion of those communities or groups that were humiliated and exploited in one form of the other and Indian history is full of this evidence.  

As pointed out earlier, Ambedkar understood the basic rights at two levels: micro and macro level. At the micro level, he discussed and debated those basic rights without which the existence of the life of millions of untouchables had no meaning. He placed rights like equal access to water, temple entry, education, basic services of village washermen, barbers, grocery shops, etc., under the division of micro level.  But when he talked about the notion of rights at the macro level, his understanding revolved around those opportunities, equivalent to high caste Hindus, which were inevitable for the economic, social, and political growth of the community. The basic rights at the micro and macro level which Ambedkar advocated were his categorization of the types of rights which were both moral and prudential; at the moral level, he talked about the right to live, right to basic amenities, right to education, and at the prudential level he demanded his community people right to political participation, right to legal remedy, right against humiliation and exploitation and right to adopt any other religion.

Ambedkar analysed the crux of the problem; the caste system and graded inequality. These he termed the structures of the Hindu social system, which were very much visible and administered, presuming justice and ethics. The denial of basic rights to the people of the untouchable community became the core element of Ambedkar’s research on the human race. Keeping these rights as a requirement, Ambedkar first demanded them at the micro level, and after the conscious construction among the untouchables, his attention was diverted to the macro level. At the micro level, he talked about establishing the foundation of society just for the untouchables, and when he explained his idea of the macro level he yielded their expansion and ground deepening.

After thorough deliberation on the issues of the Dalits as a whole on one side and the proper implementation of the Constitution of India on the other side, Ambedkar in between tried to place his scheme of rights at the macro level. His main aim was to see his people at the mainstream level. This he visualized as a casteless and classless social structure. For its realization, he understood, it was very significant that the untouchables should be placed in political positions. The theory of rights at the macro level that he promulgated was his purpose of shifting the attention of the downtrodden sections of society from identity construction to nation-building. He was of the firm view that untouchables, as natives of the land, had the fullest right to render their contribution to the making of the nation. For this, he asserted, their presence in the politics and administrative sectors was inevitable. Therefore, his ideological fight with Gandhi on the issue of a separate electorate and untouchables as a minority group outside the fold of the Hindu religion could be evaluated as his idea of rights at the macro level.

Ambedkar was quite aware that the country’s independence was not the only and ultimate answer to the issues of the untouchables; rather, it was the democratic values that reached the foundations of society, extending the fundamental rights to the oppressed. At this juncture, he attempted to bring about basic changes in India’s then-existing social and political structure by transforming its non-democratic nature into a more actual and radical democratic one. He pushed for rights such as equality, liberty, and justice to be extended to all Indians, regardless of caste, religion, or birth. He hoped that by doing so, he might spread the ethos of democracy across the country. 

The Indian Constitution’s preamble speaks Ambedkar’s language by illuminating his basic philosophy and instilling trust and belief in the masses, particularly the disadvantaged and marginalised, that they are included as equals and free in a just society not only in deed but also in spirit. This is a true tribute to Ambedkar.   

Author – Dr. Mukesh Sablania, Lecturer (Political Science), Andhra Education Society, New Delhi