❈ ❈ ❈

Dr. Ambedkar and the Fraternity Clause within the Preamble

Aakash Singh Rathore

[Note: This essay is an extract from the Chapter Four of the Aakash Singh Rathore’s book, Ambedkar’s Preamble, titled ‘Fraternity: Affection for Everyone, Hatred for None’.]

The Preamble finalised by the Drafting Committee below the Chairmanship of Dr. Ambedkar on 21 February 1948 was a lot debated within the Constituent Meeting, because it had modified Nehru’s Aims Decision that had been unanimously and solemnly handed by it on 22 January 1947. Nevertheless, there was one evident exception: the ‘fraternity’ clause.

The ‘fraternity’ clause elicited common and effusive reward from the Constituent Meeting. It was a topic of debate in every of the Meeting’s three readings, from the second it was launched to the world in February 1948 proper till Dr Ambedkar’s well-known last speech on 25 November 1949 that led to the Meeting’s vote to undertake the Structure the subsequent day. Constituent Meeting member Thakur Das Bhargava (from East Punjab), whom Dr Ambedkar later recognized in his well-known last speech as one of many always-contrarian ‘rebels’ who saved him on his toes all through the drafting course of, had this to say throughout his speech on 6 November 1948:

I feel, Sir, that the soul of this Structure is contained within the Preamble and I’m glad to precise my sense of gratitude to Dr. Ambedkar for having added the phrase ‘fraternity’ to the Preamble.

J.B. Kripalani commented:

Once more I come to the good doctrine of fraternity which is allied with democracy. It signifies that we’re all sons of the identical God, because the spiritual would say, however because the mystic would say, that there’s one life pulsating by way of us all, or because the Bible says, ‘We’re one in all one other’. There will be no fraternity with out this. So I need this Home to keep in mind that what we’ve got enunciated will not be merely authorized, constitutional and formal ideas, however ethical ideas; and ethical ideas have gotten to be lived in life. They need to be lived all through. These items, we’ve got to recollect if our Structure is to succeed.

Dr. Ambedkar’s Addition

The fraternity clause had been personally added by Dr Ambedkar to the Preamble on the morning of 6 February 1948. All earlier drafts of the Preamble didn’t point out it.

The Congress Working Committee’s (CWC) Knowledgeable Committee ‘declaration’ of July 1946 didn’t point out the phrase ‘fraternity’. Nehru’s Aims Decision handed on 22 January 1947 didn’t point out it. B.N. Rau’s preliminary draft Structure, which shaped the premise of what the Drafting Committee was meant to work with, didn’t point out it. Certainly, in each supply doc that was influential, both when it comes to borrowed clauses and articles, or when it comes to historic significance, the time period ‘fraternity’ was absent. This included the 1930 Indian Nationwide Congress’ well-known ‘Declaration of Purna Swaraj’, which influenced the date the Structure of India was adopted, and the 1935 Authorities of India Act from which our Structure liberally borrowed.

The phrase ‘fraternity’ didn’t even function in any of the unofficial various constitutions that have been being drafted by varied outliers, minority events and rivals to the Congress. For instance, The Gandhian Structure of Free India that was printed in 1946 by Shriman Narayan Agarwal and included a foreword by M.Okay. Gandhi. Then there was M.N. Roy’s Structure of Free India: A Draft, printed in 1944 below the auspices of the Radical Democratic Get together. Once more, in March 1948, proper within the midst of the Constituent Meeting and the drafting of our Structure, the Socialist Get together of India ready its personal draft entitled Draft Structure of the Indian Republic, with a foreword by Jayprakash Narayan. It included a preamble, ‘elementary rights’, and even ‘Directive Rules of State Coverage’. However what it didn’t embody, like its rivals from among the many Gandhians or M.N. Roy, or anyone else for that matter, was the time period ‘fraternity’.

Want ‘By no means Larger than Now’

On 21 February 1948, Dr Ambedkar packed up the working draft Structure created by the Drafting Committee because it first met on 30 August 1947. Sending the finished draft to the president of the Constituent Meeting, Dr Ambedkar enclosed an vital cowl be aware explaining the Drafting Committee’s strategies and selections, and a transparent and forthright confession of its departure from the Aims Decision, together with its justification. That be aware learn partially:

The committee has added a clause about fraternity within the Preamble though it doesn’t happen within the Aims Decision. The committee felt that the necessity for fraternal harmony and goodwill in India was by no means larger than now and that this specific intention of the brand new Structure needs to be emphasised by particular point out within the Preamble.

In different respects the Committee has tried to embody within the Preamble the spirit and, so far as potential, the language of the Aims Decision.

This was the fitting determination and would show to be universally acknowledged as such. The ‘fraternity’ clause was met with enthusiasm throughout all of the spectrums represented within the Constituent Meeting, and because the clear brainchild of Dr Ambedkar it actually performed a job—augmented by his formidable charisma, oratorial ability, dexterous wit and encyclopedic information—in constructing upon his already enhanced fame and profile throughout the Constituent Meeting itself.

Dr Ambedkar’s be aware to the president of the Constituent Meeting talked about that the necessity for fraternal harmony was by no means larger than now, an apparent allusion to the continued tragedies within the wake of Partition. However there was one other underlying discord in Dr Ambedkar’s thoughts as he wrote this be aware: the contentious and divisive omnipresence of caste. And given the battery of assaults on Brahmanism and Brahmanical patriarchy that have been inscribed into the physique of the enclosed Structure, in addition to being unleashed within the type of the Hindu Code Invoice, now being rewritten by Dr Ambedkar, ‘the necessity for fraternal harmony and goodwill in India was by no means larger than now’.

Fraternity in Ambedkar’s Thought

This was not the primary time that Dr Ambedkar had spoken of fraternity. It had been continuously referred to in Dr Ambedkar’s personal writings and speeches.

The centrality of the thought of fraternity to Dr Ambedkar’s thought can’t be overestimated. He not solely appealed to it within the Drafting Committee and the Constitutional Meeting Debates, or roughly the interval from 1947–50, the place Dr Ambedkar took recourse to ‘fraternity’, he made even handed use of the time period even in Annihilation of Caste (1936) and thru essays like ‘The Philosophy of Hinduism’ and the ‘Hindu Social Order’, most likely written in the course of the interval that he started engaged on the Hindu Code Invoice (1947–51). It additionally appeared in books like Riddles in Hinduism (composed someplace between 1951–53), a later vital interview (on All India Radio in 1954) and a late speech on ‘Buddha and Karl Marx’ (an indirect reference, talking of ‘love and justice’ in 1956), proper as much as his last, posthumously printed masterpiece, The Buddha and His Dhamma (written between 1953 and 1956, printed in 1957 after his dying).

With such frequent use in so many alternative contexts, it’s troublesome to pin down one particular definition of the time period that Dr Ambedkar persistently used over the twenty years that he took recourse to it. Its personal that means appeared to alter, together with the synonyms that he employed whereas describing it. However in a really basic method, there was a sample to the evolution of the idea in his thought over the many years, which is broadly discernible and never too contentious.

Dr Ambedkar’s earliest main reference to the three ideas of liberty, equality and fraternity will be present in Annihilation of Caste, the place Dr Ambedkar referred to them because the foundations of an excellent society. He didn’t check with Buddhism on this context, as a substitute he selected to check with the French Revolution. Thus, at this stage Dr Ambedkar was treating these ideas as occasioned by the French Revolution. Even at a later stage, when he wrote ‘The Hindu Social Order: Its Important Rules’, Dr Ambedkar mentioned the ideas within the context of the French Revolution. So, even right here he didn’t check with Buddhism because the supply of those ideas.

However in 1954, throughout an All India Radio interview, Dr Ambedkar appeared to have utterly modified his perspective:

My social philosophy could also be mentioned to be enshrined in three phrases: liberty, equality and fraternity. Let nobody, nevertheless, say that I’ve borrowed my philosophy from the French Revolution. I’ve not. My philosophy has roots in faith and never in political science. I’ve derived them from the teachings of my grasp, the Buddha.

One among India’s best modern philosophers, Pradeep P. Gokhale, has reasoned that when Dr Ambedkar mentioned he derived his philosophy, which was enshrined within the three ideas, from the teachings of the Buddha, his assertion was to not be taken actually. As a substitute, it was to be interpreted within the context of the would-be Buddhist section. What Gokhale aimed to indicate was that although Dr Ambedkar initially accepted these socio-political ideas from the context of the French Revolution, he progressively reinterpreted them as ethico-religious ideas. Thus, when Dr Ambedkar got here to the conclusion that Buddhism was the perfect faith, in direction of the top of his life, he reappropriated this ‘trio of ideas’ as being rooted within the Buddha’s instructing, his dhamma.

Though the specificities of Gokhale’s story could also be contentious, his reconstruction of Dr Ambedkar’s ‘trio of ideas’ teaches an important lesson. That lesson is that we have to perceive Dr Ambedkar’s thought not as a static or fixed viewpoint, however as a dynamic circulate as a substitute. I consider that his concepts advanced in accordance with new info that got here in: new info, momentous occasions, discovery of latest literature. This was one of many virtues of his pragmatic philosophy that he realized from John Dewey.

The Affect of Deweyan Pragmatism

Certainly, Dewey’s work, and even his phrases, have been woven in all through Dr Ambedkar’s Annihilation of Caste, the place he first spoke of fraternity at size:

I might not be stunned if a few of you could have grown weary listening to this tiresome story of the unhappy results which caste has produced. There may be nothing new in it. I’ll subsequently flip to the constructive aspect of the issue. What’s your preferrred society if you do not need caste is a query that’s sure to be requested of you? In case you ask me, my preferrred could be a society primarily based on Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. And why not? What objection can there be to Fraternity? I can’t think about any. A perfect society needs to be cellular, needs to be stuffed with channels for conveying a change happening in a single half to different components. In an excellent society there needs to be many pursuits consciously communicated and shared. There needs to be assorted and free factors of contact with different modes of affiliation. In different phrases, there should be social endosmosis. That is fraternity, which is barely one other identify for democracy. Democracy will not be merely a type of Authorities. It’s primarily a mode of related dwelling, of conjoint communicated expertise. It’s primarily an angle of respect and reverence in direction of fellow males.

This passage has nice many concepts packed into it, Deweyan and in any other case. One among them is the stunning comment about fraternity, that it ‘is barely one other identify for democracy’. This then is a callback to an analogous comment of his about justice; that it ‘is solely one other identify for liberty, equality, and fraternity’. Clearly, Dr Ambedkar had an natural view about how the political, social and juridical realms are associated. And certainly the financial and the ethico-spiritual too, as his long-standing ideological battle on two simultaneous fronts attested—that’s, one battle utilizing Buddhism in opposition to the Hindu orthodoxy on the fitting; and the opposite utilizing Buddhism in opposition to the Indian Marxists on the left.

Justice and democracy have been imperilled by each of those faulty ideologies in response to him. The left one sacrificed political liberty for the sake of financial equality, and had the specter of totalitarianism always looming over it. The appropriate one exploited freedom (political liberty) to maintain social inequality. We now have seen Dr Ambedkar’s complete life as a sequence of overlapping, advanced and evolving, however perennial, struggles not simply to beat however to really remedy the dilemma of false alternate options on provide to India by the votaries of its left and proper. This was exemplified by way of how he lived justly, personally working tirelessly in a democratic spirit. At the very least so long as he lived the ideas of justice, he might maintain and protect them, till the time got here when this subjective method of being might be institutionalized. To institutionalize a subjective or personally practised preferrred is to make it goal. To make Dr Ambedkar’s subjective way of life justly an goal factor, it should tackle authorized, political and social actuality. So far as Dr Ambedkar noticed it, it might be made goal by way of a democratic Structure that proactively assured each liberty and equality in equal measure.

Therefore, Dr Ambedkar perceived at the moment the necessity to devise a greater various to the dominant type of freedom, which he characterised as non-inclusive Swaraj. This idea meant freedom from the exterior bondage of the British, however a freedom that afforded license for the inner bondage of the Dalit-bahujan and minority communities by an unfettered Hindu majority, which for millennia had been seeped within the ideology of Brahmanism by way of its huge philosophy and literature.

And therefore, Dr Ambedkar additionally perceived the necessity to devise a greater various to the towering leftist ideological critique of inequality. The leftist critique targeted solely on class battle. However for Dr Ambedkar, caste, not class, was the primordial battle all through India’s lengthy historical past of inequality, an inequality that was graded and thus largely resistant to the revolutionary impulse because the leftist ideology understood it.

Fraternity as Goodwill

For all these antinomies, these unimaginable dilemmas—the failure of justice to be realized until date on Indian soil, the false or incomplete liberty on provide by the nationalist motion, the misguided appraisal of the causes and cures of inequality by the leftists—the way in which by way of, the one method by way of, was by interesting to fraternity, that too in its extra genuine understanding, as metta. Or pushing it even additional, not simply fraternity understood as metta, however—as Dr Ambedkar acknowledged throughout an impromptu 1956 speech earlier than a Buddhist gathering, simply fifteen days earlier than his dying—metta understood as love, justice and goodwill. Dr Ambedkar’s use of the phrase ‘goodwill’ in his 1956 speech is vital; for, recall from 1948 that it was the pressing want for ‘goodwill’ that, in response to Dr Ambedkar, justified the inclusion of the brand new ‘fraternity’ clause into the Preamble. In 1956, goodwill was supplemented with love.

However make no mistake, Dr Ambedkar was no beatnik, no Dharma Bum, no hippie—you want love, however love will not be all you want. As logicians say, it’s a needed however not a enough situation. Sufficiency begins to be glad after we usher in justice, liberty, equality, dignity, nation, all taking goal kind by way of institutionalization. Love (metta, fraternity) is what permits these establishments to circulate and to operate within the spirit of democracy. And this explains why Dr Ambedkar added ‘fraternity’ to the Preamble.

However that is just one a part of the reason.

The Incommensurability Drawback

Dr Ambedkar was not the one political thinker who discovered himself combating the issues of reconciling the completely different calls for of democratic ideas like liberty and equality. The entire historical past of Western political philosophy has grappled with it, and quite a lot of options have been thrown up by quite a lot of authors, be it philosophers or statesmen.

Reconciling freedom and equality specifically has confirmed an intractable problem, as a rise in a single appears to suggest a lower within the different, and but each appear needed in equal measure. There are in fact factions who simply come down in assist of 1 over the opposite, corresponding to libertarians, who champion liberty come what might, or hard-core egalitarians, who prioritize equality as a substitute.

Dr Ambedkar sought recourse to ‘fraternity’ in an effort to deal with the commensurability downside between liberty and equality. We see this in varied writings of his the place he depicted fraternity as the fundamental precept which sustains each equality and liberty:

With out fraternity, liberty would destroy equality and equality would destroy liberty. If in Democracy liberty doesn’t destroy equality and equality doesn’t destroy liberty, it’s as a result of on the foundation of each there’s fraternity. Fraternity is subsequently the basis of Democracy.

A lot for the conceptual downside of reconciling the democratic ideas. In spite of everything, there was not a lot at stake there aside from to apprehend intellectually that it might be executed. However what concerning the sensible issues? Dr Ambedkar nicely understood that the conceptual downside was the simplest downside that he confronted. Way more severe was the institutional downside. That’s, harmonizing individuals, given what they have been, to the democratic establishments that embodied the constitutional ideas. What he slowly found, and it took time, was that the commensurability downside existed solely on one airplane, whereas the sensible downside entailed within the institutionalization of democratic ideas existed at two interrelated planes concurrently.

Constitutional Morality

On 4 November 1948, with the ink on the Preamble not but dry, Dr Ambedkar launched the Drafting Committee’s new draft Structure together with his well-known enchantment for ‘constitutional morality’:

Whereas all people acknowledges the need of the diffusion of Constitutional morality for the peaceable working of a democratic Structure, there are two issues interconnected with it which aren’t, sadly, usually acknowledged. One is that the type of administration has an in depth reference to the type of the Structure. The type of the administration should be acceptable to and in the identical sense because the type of the Structure. The opposite is that it’s completely potential to pervert the Structure, with out altering its kind by merely altering the type of the administration and to make it inconsistent and against the spirit of the Structure. It follows that it’s only the place persons are saturated with Constitutional morality such because the one described by Grote the historian that one can take the chance of omitting from the Structure particulars of administration and leaving it for the Legislature to prescribe them. The query is, can we presume such a diffusion of Constitutional morality? Constitutional morality will not be a pure sentiment. It needs to be cultivated. We should understand that our folks have but to be taught it. Democracy in India is barely a top-dressing on an Indian soil, which is actually undemocratic.

The trope to be aware of is ‘top-dressing on an Indian soil’. This was the articulation of an incommensurability between establishments—Parliament and paperwork specifically—and individuals as social beings. And whereas the overwhelming majority of commentary and celebratory evocation of Dr Ambedkar’s notion of ‘constitutional morality’ that we discover in newspapers, journal articles and books point out that constitutional morality is one thing that we as Indians ought to aspire to, this was not what Dr Ambedkar was saying. He had found, within the Constituent Meeting, a brand new airplane the place the strain between a person individual and democratic establishment did, and would proceed lengthy into the longer term, to play out: within the assemblies, legislatures, ministries and judiciaries of an impartial and sovereign democratic republic. Constitutional morality was the decision for public officers and public servants to transcend the values and ideas that that they had been imbrued with in Indian social life, and undertake the values and ideas laid out earlier than them ever-so succinctly within the Preamble.

Public Conscience

What about the remainder of us who will not be public officers? About this downside, Dr Ambedkar had already been considering lengthy and laborious ever since Annihilation of Caste, the place he first spoke of ‘fraternity’. ‘Public conscience’ was the time period that Dr Ambedkar employed to seize the concepts surrounding the people who represent our social life extra usually. By public conscience, he referred to ‘conscience which turns into agitated at each fallacious, regardless of who’s the sufferer’ and ‘leads a person to hitch the battle to take away that fallacious’. Public conscience was conditioned upon ‘fellow feeling’, the phrase that Dr Ambedkar had used to explain ‘fraternity’.

In his essay on ‘The Hindu Social Order’, Dr Ambedkar had commented extensively on the contradictions not between liberty and equality as such, however between our espoused democratic ideas (‘top-dressing’) and our precise social practices (‘Indian soil’). Caste lay on the crux of this contradiction. The democratic precept we stand for is equality; however because of caste, the social precept we observe is graded inequality. The democratic precept we stand for is liberty; however because of caste, the social precept we observe is fastened occupation. Therefore, Dr Ambedkar wrote:

Caste has killed public spirit. Caste has destroyed the sense of public charity. Caste has made public opinion unimaginable. A Hindu’s public is his caste. His accountability is barely to his caste.

At work, then, are two overlapping contradictions, each concerning the incommensurability of our democratic establishments championing liberty and equality—and our undemocratic social milieu, the place caste dictates the practices reverse to our democratic ideas. And for each of those, in addition to for the prior purely conceptual downside of incommensurability, ‘fraternity’ should bear the manifold burdens; it does so on the stage of the establishments themselves within the type of constitutional morality, and it does so on the purely social stage within the type of public conscience.

Fraternity as Maitree (Metta)

In direction of the top of his life, Ambedkar realised that even fraternity was insufficient. As he wrote in Riddles in Hinduism,

… what sustains equality and liberty is fellow feeling, what the French Revolutionists known as fraternity. The phrase fraternity will not be an enough expression. The right time period is what the Buddha known as Maitree.

What fraternity might do, metta / maitree might do too. What fraternity couldn’t do, metta might try this too. This was superbly captured in a number of the final phrases ever written by Dr Ambedkar (in his treatise, The Buddha and His Dhamma:

Love will not be sufficient; what’s required is Maitri. It’s wider than love. It means fellowship not merely with human beings however with all dwelling beings. It isn’t confined to human beings. Shouldn’t be such Maitri needed? What else may give to all dwelling beings the identical happiness which one seeks for one’s personal self, to maintain the thoughts neutral, open to all, with affection for each one and hatred for none?

[For references to the quotations, see the original book available online. This is an extract from Aakash Rathore’s book, Ambedkar’s Preamble, published by Penguin Books, 2020. Aakash Singh Rathore is a public intellectual of international repute, author of nine books, has taught Politics, Philosophy and Law at Jawaharlal Nehru University and the University of Delhi, and has also held many international professorships.]

❈ ❈ ❈

We, the Folks: Why Fraternity is the Soul of the Indian Structure

John Kurien

November 26 is Structure Day.

On November 26, 1949, we, the folks of India, gave ourselves a Structure. Its Preamble, that majestic opening assertion, is greater than a preface. It’s the ethical compass of our Republic.

We regularly focus, rightly, on its guarantees of justice – social, financial, and political; liberty of thought, expression, perception, religion, and worship; and equality of standing and of alternative. These are the foundational pillars of our democracy.

But, standing alongside these three, is a fourth preferrred that’s much less celebrated however, in some ways, essentially the most profound: fraternity, assuring the dignity of the person and the unity and integrity of the nation.

On this Structure Day, it’s time we recognise fraternity not as a supplementary preferrred, however because the very soul with out which the opposite three can’t breathe.

A significant distinction

A structure is the authorized blueprint for a state. It creates establishments – parliament, the judiciary, the chief – that may ship justice and assure liberty. The state bestows upon its residents political equality, the elemental proper of “one individual, one vote”.

This was India’s revolutionary step, wiping away centuries of feudal and colonial hierarchy in a single, authorized stroke.

However a nation will not be constructed by authorized statutes alone. A nation is a shared creativeness, a sense of “we-ness”, a standard belonging. This can’t be legislated into existence. You possibly can decree rights – not solidarity. You possibly can implement legal guidelines – not sisterhood and brotherhood.

That is the place fraternity enters, not as a political idea however as a social and non secular one. It’s the bridge between the state that the Structure created, and the nation we’re perpetually within the means of turning into.

Ambedkar’s radical interpretation

The time period “fraternity” has its roots within the French Revolution’s cry of “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité.” However for BR Ambedkar, who launched the time period fraternity into the preamble, its inspiration was far deeper and extra common. He infused the European time period, however with the profound spirit of Buddhist maitri or metta.

The French “fraternité” was largely a secular bond between residents in a republic. Ambedkar’s fraternity, impressed by maitri, was one thing extra radical: an unconditional affection for all and hatred for none. Maitri will not be restricted by citizenship; it extends to all dwelling beings. It’s an energetic, empathetic love, a acutely aware breaking down of the internal obstacles of prejudice and ill-will that separate human beings.

For the person who had spent a lifetime battling the entrenched hatred of the caste system, this was not a sentimental preferrred. It was a needed social medication. The state might outlaw untouchability, however solely a metamorphosis of the human coronary heart – a cultivation of real fraternity – might eradicate the contempt that underpinned it. “Hatred for none” was the energetic antidote to the poison of caste.

An Indian basis

This idea of common love will not be unique to Buddhism. It finds a robust echo within the life and teachings of Mahatma Gandhi, whom we commemorated simply weeks in the past. The parable of the Good Samaritan, which Jesus informed, is a lesson in fraternity – defining one’s “neighbour” past all tribal and non secular traces. And Jesus’s phrases on the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they have no idea what they’re doing” are the final word embodiment of “affection for everybody and hatred for none”.

Ambedkar was, subsequently, anchoring the Indian Republic in a timeless, common ethic. He was saying that for India to outlive and thrive, its residents should aspire to this highest ethical precept. Justice and liberty present the skeleton of our democracy, however Fraternity is its beating coronary heart.

An aspirational undertaking

This brings us to essentially the most important operate of fraternity: it’s the drive that makes the opening phrases of our Preamble – “We the Folks of India” – a actuality.

With out fraternity, “We the Folks” is a authorized fiction, susceptible to fracturing, as we see in the present day, into “We the Majority” and “You the Minorities” or “We the Higher Castes” and “You the Decrease Castes”.

In occasions of safety crises, as occurred in New Delhi, and heated political contests, as in Bihar, fraternity is examined most severely. Throughout such occasions the unity and integrity of the nation, then, is maintained by drive of regulation, not by the bond of shared belonging.

Fraternity is what transforms the “I” of particular person rights into the “We” of collective future. It’s what ensures that my liberty doesn’t turn out to be a licence to dominate you, and that your justice is not only a verdict in a court docket, however a dignity honoured in my on a regular basis conduct in direction of you. It’s the social and emotional infrastructure that makes political equality a lived expertise, not only a theoretical proper.

As I had explored in a earlier article on Gandhi Jayanti, the privileged have a job to play as “trustees” of this fraternity. However this trusteeship will not be a paternalistic idea. It’s an energetic, humble apply of dismantling partitions of privilege and increasing the hand of solidarity, recognising that our dignity is interwoven.

On this Structure Day, allow us to re-read the preamble. Allow us to see fraternity for what it’s: Ambedkar’s most profound present to the nation. It’s the name to maneuver past the courtroom and the parliament into the human coronary heart. It’s the enduring problem to construct, by way of acutely aware compassion, the nation we have been all the time meant to be: a nation not simply in regulation, however in spirit.

[John Kurien is a reflective development practitioner. He lives in Kozhikode. Courtesy: Scroll.in, an Indian digital news publication, whose English edition is edited by Naresh Fernandes.]