INDIA | SOCIETY | POLITICS

The Constitution of India

or: how to celebrate an idea when you don’t know

Members of the Drafting Committee of the Constituent Assembly of India. (Sitting from left) N. Madhava Rao; Saiyid Muhammad Saadulla; B.R. Ambedkar; Alladi Krishnaswami Ayyar and B.N. Rao. (Standing from left) S.N. Mukerjee, Jugal Kishore Khanna and Kewal Krishan. — photo credit: The Hindu Archives

Republic Day is a public holiday in India. The country marks and celebrates the date on which the Constitution of India came into effect on 26 January 1950.

The Indian Constitution, drafted by a Constituent Assembly and a Drafting Committee under the masterly chairmanship of Bhimrao Ambedkar, is a truly remarkable, enlightened and uniquely progressive document. The Indian Constitution is one of the greatest specimen of legislative literature in the history of humankind.

Every year for as far as I can remember, January 26 has been a festive day, a moment of reflective confidence, with a sense of profound collective achievement — where millions celebrate the creation, resilience, and endurance of an idea of justice, law, and a secular state, based on equal rights for one united people, across communities, religions, languages, regional cultures, and a large variety of ethnicities.

I will never forget my first January 26 in India. I was a young student, combining diligent daily study with a fair bit of being on the road. That first year, I was slow-walking from Lumbini to Kashi, as if in the mindsteps of Vinoba Bhave.