Preamble #8: Nation Building

During the discussions and debates on the key directions of the Constitution, the leftists wanted the words “socialist” and “secular” in the Preamble. Others bemoaned the absence of Gandhian principles. And another set asked why a reference to a godhead was absent. Ambedkar opposed all of these. (“Socialist” and “secular” would be inserted decades later in 1976 via an amendment).

 

Part of the reason for opposing the above was that Ambedkar was sceptical on the idea of India even being a nation! Here is his statement on the matter:

“In believing we are a nation, we are cherishing great delusion. How can people divided into thousands of castes be a nation?”

It was a worry shared by many others, though they would replace “castes” with “languages” and other regional differences. Therefore, believed Ambedkar, we needed a Constitution for a state, the groundwork to establish a nation. Only then could we hope that we would evolve into a nation someday.

“The sooner we realize that we are not as yet a nation in the social and psychological sense of the word, the better for us. For then only we shall realize the necessity of becoming a nation and seriously think of ways and means of realizing the goal.”

 

Ambedkar truly believed that to build a nation, you first needed dignity. Without dignity for all, there could be no unity. And without unity, how could there be a nation? He was uber-pragmatic on such matters. Totally unlike what the likes of Yuval Noah Harari would propound decades later – that nations are created by shared myths and stories. No, argued Ambedkar, you don’t start with things like cherished literature, majority language, primary language or the values of the dominant community to create a nation. Letting any one of those dictate the structure of the state would be imprudent, unwise and unjust, he asserted. With that view, he felt that using the glories of the past (real or imagined) was not the way to build a nation:

“I do not think we need to bring the historians here; we ought to be wary of historians.”

 

At the same time, Ambedkar’s ultra-rational mind could see a danger with all ideas of nationhood, including the one he advocated. He said:

“This national feeling is a double-edged feeling. It is at once a feeling of fellowship for one's own kith and kin and an anti-feeling for those who are not one's own kith and kin.”

 

In the first blog in this series, I had quoted the author’s reason for writing a book on just the preamble:

“The ideas and principles behind a clause can be more important than the mere mechanics of the clause itself.”

I would say that with this book, Rathore can say, “Mission accomplished”.

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