The two-day parliamentary debate on 75 years of the Constitution skirted around a question that has been hanging in the air: What’s Indian about the Indian Constitution? This may have been an uncomfortable question for benches on both sides. Having burnt its fingers in the Lok Sabha elections, the ruling party must have found it politically imprudent to raise the question at this stage. So the BJP reined its ideological impulse, left the job of questioning the Constitution to its minions and fellow-travellers outside Parliament, as the PM enacted the farce of being the principal defender of this Constitution. The Opposition must have found it ideologically difficult and culturally tricky, best to skip. Rahul Gandhi’s reference to Savarkar brought him face to face with this question, but only momentarily. The debate degenerated into the usual political slanging match.

Yet, this question won’t go away. Let us not delude ourselves with the BJP’s new found love for the Constitution. We are in the midst of an assault on constitutional republic. Questioning the legitimacy of the Constitution is imperative for this assault. And questioning its Indianness is the most potent ideological weapon in the armoury of the attackers. Let us acknowledge that it is a serious question. Our Constitution was written, thought and deliberated mostly in the language of the colonial masters. The entire exercise of the making of the Indian Constitution used the received alphabet of modern Western constitutionalism. Let us not forget that the question of the Constitution being “alien” and “foreign” was raised in the Constituent Assembly itself.

Let us also admit that modernist-universalist hubris is no answer to this question. “Why does modern India’s Constitution need to be Indian?” is a bad retort to the question. Every constitution must pass the test of cultural authenticity in its own context. The modernist response is also counter-productive, as it strengthens the suspicion of cultural........

© Indian Express