A Flag Hoisting Shows it Is Again Time to Heed Ambedkar's Warning

Today, November 26, is Constitution Day.

It is of exceptional importance to recall the warnings of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar that any future parliament elected on the basis of adult franchise would act on a partisan basis and negate the constitution. Those cautionary words were uttered by him on November 4, 1948, while moving the draft constitution in the Constituent Assembly for its consideration. He said so in response to the sharp remarks made by some members that the future parliament elected on universal adult suffrage would be more competent to draft a constitution than the Constituent Assembly which was constituted after its members were elected to its fold based on limited franchise.

Ambedkar’s farsighted vision

An echo of that argument is also heard in some circles specifically among those entities such as the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the Bharatiya Janata Party and Hindutva organisations which could not accept the constitution and from time to time demanded its review through a new Constituent Assembly elected on adult franchise.

Ambedkar with far sighted vision and characteristic brilliance made a distinction between the Constituent Assembly and future parliament on November 4, 1948. He said, “The Constituent Assembly in making a Constitution has no partisan motive. Beyond securing a good and workable constitution it has no axe to grind. In considering the Articles of the Constitution it has no eye on getting through a particular measure. The future Parliament if it met as a Constituent Assembly, its members will be acting as partisans seeking to carry amendments to the Constitution to facilitate the passing of party measures which they have failed to get through Parliament by reason of some Article of the Constitution which has acted as an obstacle in their way. Parliament will have an axe to grind while the Constituent Assembly has none”. 

“That explains,” he asserted, “why the Constituent Assembly though elected on limited franchise can be trusted to pass the Constitution by simple majority and why the Parliament though elected on adult suffrage cannot be trusted with the same power to amend it”.

Those profound remarks of Ambedkar assume far greater significance today than when those were pronounced in the Constituent Assembly in 1948.

Issue of review and change of the constitution

Recall the claim of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s government to review the constitution during 1998 and 1999. On the occasion of the golden jubilee of the constitution in 2000, then President of India K.R. Narayanan sensed a sinister motive behind that intent to review the constitution and asked in his speech, delivered that year, “Today when there is so much talk about revising the Constitution or even writing a new Constitution, we have to consider whether it is the Constitution that has failed us or whether it is we who have failed the Constitution.”

Those remarks had the desired impact on the Vajpayee government which dispensed with the idea of reviewing the constitution and instead appointed a commission to review the working of the constitution.

Twenty years after those wise words were uttered by Narayanan, in 2024 several BJP leaders contesting general elections for securing seats in the Lok Sabha proclaimed that the party after winning “400-plus” seats, would alter the constitution. Such clamour obviously demonstrated a blatantly partisan objective which Ambedkar, as mentioned above, had flagged in 1948.

Thankfully, the high-decibel statement voiced by BJP leaders in 2024 was rejected by people who made the issue of saving the constitution an electoral issue. Specifically those belonging to Dalit and tribal communities and those upholding affirmative action enshrined in the constitution apprehended that BJP’s proclamation for changing it would lead to scrapping reservation facilities, along with equality and equal opportunities for them. 

Modi and the violation of neutrality of state to religion

Ambedkar’s aforementioned words that “parliament will have an axe to grind while the Constituent Assembly has none” resonate in a more pronounced manner in 2025. That is why the non-partisan legislative intent of the Constituent Assembly is being flagged repeatedly to underline the real purpose of the framers for drafting the constitution. One such purpose is the neutrality of the state to religion and it is best reflected in the ideal of secularism which permeates in every aspect of the Constitution and the insertion of the word “secular” in its preamble in 1976 has been held by the Supreme Court recently as constitutionally valid. 

A day before Constitution Day, Prime Minister Narendra Modi violated with impunity the cardinal principle of neutrality of the state towards religion when he – holding a high constitutional post and bound by oath to the constitution – unfurled a saffron flag atop the Ram temple in Ayodhya. In doing so he was abandoning the instruction to hoist the national flag to demonstrate loyalty to the country. He acted in a partisan manner by forsaking the same flag to unfurl a religious flag instead. If a prime minister acts in such a manner, doing away with constitution and constitutional morality on the eve of Constitution Day, then what better is expected from the parliament, especially the Lok Sabha, where BJP, his party, has got majority?

What Modi did in unfurling a religious flag brought out his avowed commitment to a theocratic approach. Ambedkar had described this as a calamity in his book Pakistan or Partition of India and urged people to resist it with all their might. On October 14, 1949, Sardar Vallabhavai Patel while speaking in the Constituent Assembly had stated that there were "immense difficulties of a secular state being governed peacefully….” and urged, "Do not add to our difficulties by creating internal difficulties in which there will be disputes between the communities." 

PM Modi is compounding not just the immense difficulties of peacefully running a secular state, but also endangering it. On Constitution Day, Ambedkar and Sardar Patel’s words can be ignored at our own peril.

S.N. Sahu served as Officer on Special Duty to President of India K.R. Narayanan.

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