Today, on November 26, 2019 India is celebrating its Constitution Day. The Constitution of India- viz. the supreme legal document of the country was drafted after a tedious process that lasted for 2 years, 11 months and 18 days. Over a period of time we have grown increasingly conscious about the Constitutional provisions concerning us directly as citizens. The entire citizenry today is well aware of its Fundamental Rights. The Constitution of India is a living document capable of adapting to the changing social circumstances, and therefore the ambit of Fundamental Rights themselves has grown in a big way over the past seven decades.
However, while we have grown increasingly aware about our Fundamental Rights, the Fundamental Duties that is again a part of the Constitution which immediately concerns the citizens of the country have been somewhat neglected over all these years. A particular set of citizens, which claims to be the intelligentsia of the country, has been the biggest reason behind this imbalance whereby the Fundamental Rights are though correctly seen as an inalienable part of the Constitution, the Fundamental Duties- an equally important part of the Constitution of India is neglected in an abrupt manner.
A number of controversies over the past few years have shown how Fundamental Rights, especially the Right to Freedom of Speech and Expression are claimed in isolation with utter disregard for the Fundamental Duties. Take for example, the 2016 JNU sedition episode when anti-national slogans directly threatening to disintegrate India were raised. When the government decided to crack down over this issue, it was being claimed that government’s actions were in violation of free speech. However, it was not at all pointed out that Article 51A (c) casts a duty upon every citizen to “uphold and protect the sovereignty, unity and integrity of India.” Slogans like “Bharat tere tukde tukde honge inshallah inshallah” cannot really be reconciled with the Fundamental Duty to uphold and protect the sovereignty, unity and integrity of India.
There was also a major controversy regarding a Supreme Court direction making it mandatory for cinema halls to play the National Anthem before the screening of movies. It was again being argued by the self-acclaimed intellectuals that the Supreme Court Order was in violation of the Fundamental Right to free speech. However, this argument too was in complete ignorance of Part IV-A of the Constitution, viz. the Fundamental Duties. Article 51A (a), inter alia, makes it a duty of every citizen to respect the National Anthem.
The above two countries are just prominent illustrations of how the Fundamental Duties have been given a cold shoulder over the past few years. The Constitution is a composite document, all its provisions bear a close interrelationship and none of the Parts, including the Fundamental Rights, can be read in isolation from the rest of the document. Therefore, complete ignorance of Fundamental Duties creates a misleading picture of the actual Constitutional position and this practice of reading Fundamental Rights to the exclusion of Fundamental Duties is not line with the Constitutional values of the country.
Now, it seems that the Modi government is making efforts to correct this societal imbalance and in a welcome step, an official release has quoted the President as telling the Governors, “He (President Ram Nath Kovind) said that campaign will be launched to create awareness about fundamental duties among the citizens on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of our Constitution on November 26.” In fact, PM Modi has been very vocal about this issue in the past highlighting the Modi government’s efforts to spread awareness about the Fundamental Duties and their importance.
Last year, PM Modi had said that asserting one’s own rights without rendering duties is against the fundamental value of the Constitution. Even in the year 2015, PM Modi had said, “There is a lot of discussion on fundamental rights and there should be. But there is very little discussion on fundamental duties. Our constitution gives importance to duties as well.” A few days ago, the Ministry of Human Resource Development also issued a circular directing all higher educational institutions to administer a pledge to all its students on November 26, that is, the Constitution Day to follow the Fundamental Duties, as a part of the Modi government’s planned celebrations of the 70th Constitution Day.
The fundamental duties noted in the constitution are as follows:
It shall be the duty of every citizen of India —
- To abide by the Constitution and respect its ideals and institutions, the National Flag and the National Anthem;
- To cherish and follow the noble ideals which inspired our national struggle for freedom;
- To uphold and protect the sovereignty, unity and integrity of India;
- To defend the country and render national service when called upon to do so;
- To promote harmony and the spirit of common brotherhood amongst all the people of India transcending religious, linguistic and regional or sectional diversities; to renounce practices derogatory to the dignity of women;
- To value and preserve the rich heritage of our composite culture;
- To protect and improve the natural environment including forests, lakes, rivers, wildlife and to have compassion for living creatures;
- To develop the scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of inquiry and reform;
- To safeguard public property and to abjure violence;
- To strive towards excellence in all spheres of individual and collective activity so that the nation constantly rises to higher levels of endeavour and achievement;
- Who is a parent or guardian, to provide opportunities for education to his child, or as the case may be, ward between the age of six to fourteen years.
It is true that the Fundamental Duties are not enforceable before the Courts, unlike the Fundamental Rights, the violation of which affords an efficacious remedy in the form of the writ jurisdiction of the Constitutional courts of the country. However, this should not be taken to mean that Part IVA of the Constitution of India is a dead letter. In fact, in AIIMS Students’ Union v AIIMS, AIR 2001 SC 3262, Majumdar, J. had opined Fundamental duties, as defined in Article 51A, are not made enforceable by a writ of court just as the fundamental rights are, but it cannot be lost sight of that duties in Part IVA – Article 51A are prefixed by the same word fundamental which was prefixed by the founding fathers of the Constitution to rights in Part III. In yet another case, Government of India v George Philip, AIR 2007 SC 705, the Supreme Court also observed that the Courts should not pass such orders that do not achieve the underlying spirit and object of Part-IVA of the Constitution, but have a tendency to negate or destroy the same.
It is true that the Fundamental Duties were not a part of the original Constitution and were incorporated later through a Constitutional Amendment. However, we must not lose sight of the fact that it is a part of the larger Constitutional philosophy, which every citizen of the country is obligated to uphold. Even when these duties were not enacted explicitly, they were implicit in the very scheme of the Constitution of India. With this thought in mind and the will to uphold Constitutional values, the Modi government seems to be going ahead with its idea of making the society conscious about the existence and importance of the Fundamental Duties.