Republic Day honours the date on which the Constitution of India came into effect on January 26, 1950, replacing the Government of India Act as the governing document of India. At present, its preamble is being read out loudly mostly to reminisce the principles enshrined in the country’s basic book.
It has been seventy years since we acquired the Constitution, thereby paving a just way to govern the people. But, what ails us is the sundering of the spirit of secularism these turbulent times. Whether it is a western concept or not, our Constitution is highly suited to our great democratic country.
What politicians try to promote in the name of poli-tricks (read politics) is not even worth acceptance to the common man, which we can see through various public reactions. Concocting rash attention-seeking conclusions on matters related to the defined set of secular values need not be taken up for the good of one and all.
The whole broad essence of our social fabric falls asunder as a result and dangerous manners reflecting anarchy start to dominate ultimately. We need to strictly get to the level which we seemed to have calculatedly abandoned in all these decades. What is rationally proposed by saner minds for us is to hold on to a fellow-feeling and unity. This, in order to proceed and follow what is written in the first few pages of the Constitution so that substantial confusion do not rule us.
Side by side, we must develop an approach to have a few flexible and persistent views that could motivate us positively when we happen to not be realising enlightenment with grit and determination. Should we not seek what John Peter Berger, an art critic, writes, “The choice of what one eats or wears or drives takes the place of significant political choice. Publicity helps to mask and compensate for all that is undemocratic within society. And it also masks what is happening in the rest of the world”?
Here, another writer and philosopher Aldous Huxley’s words also need to be mentioned, “There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and it’s your own self.”