Kadhambari

Constitutionalism and the Quest for Social Equality in Modern India. Content Warning.

India’s modern constitutionalism, I do call myself a dalit feminist but there can be no feminism without constitutionalism and no constitutionalism without feminism. They are bound to each other like twins and therefore to even begin about women without constitutionalism. Import limitations on state power that’s what it really in its dealing, with its citizens endowed with fundamental rights which the state cannot be violated. Today we notice that there is a demand to put an end to constitutionalism and the demand in certain terms is why do we need codification. Somehow the debate is revolving around the issue of codification and the demand is why having a code, custom, practice and usage is enough. Custom practice and usage we had in this country for centuries and that is what governs us. What exactly is the demand that is there in the country today as its contemporary relevance, now the Judiciary of course is meant to be the guardian of these rights that we possess and I think it’s time to do a reckoning. They really been the Guardians of the rights which have been endowed to us by the Constitution? The other implication of constitutionalism is that the constitution is a binding norm today. We are often in a state of mind that the Constitution as mere guidelines we don’t need to treat it as a binding norm. We need to remind ourselves that constitutionalism means that the constitution is a binding norm binding on our citizens binding also on those who hold positions of constitutional power. It’s also a call to accountability to citizens in their interaction with each other as also of state organs, of course we all know what the Constitution promises it promises social economic and political justice in its directive principles, they are supposed to be binding on. In the matter of lawmaking we must ask ourselves the question that the Constitution adequately address the question of the suffering and compassion and do we fully share that responsibility for such suffering as being a human species among all sentient beings we humans alone have Free Will and the capability of making change, the change that we wish to see and therefore we must take complete responsibility for building the nation we wish to see.