It was midmorning, and the traffic was quiet and fluent along the Judges Bungalows Road. There was less noise, less garrulous sounds of blaring horns and complaining engines, less hurry for it was a Sunday midmorning. On the footpath were an enfilade of neem trees and on the road divider were well-trimmed lush green basil plants which formed a hedge, of sorts. The Session on Indian Constitution was to be conducted at Janvikas Trust.
Sumit Ganguly, a Research Associate at Centre for Social Justice, and a graduate from NLU, Jodhpur, greeted us with a convivial smile. In the next 3 hours, he was to aid our awareness about the Indian Constitution. Now the first thing which comes to the mind upon hearing the word Constitution is a bulky book in a tattered cover which lays down the Directive Principles and bestows upon “We, the people of India”: the fundamental rights and duties. Not to say it is not that, but the naïve perception falls short of the magnanimity of its manifolds impact.
We started with the Preamble, ‘a brief introductory statement’ considered as the ‘Soul of the Constitution’. It gave us a fair idea of what to expect. It is, in addition to what it is, a piece of semantic workmanship. The subsequent Articles which explain the Right to Equality and Freedom rely on recurring commas and frequently-used transitional phrases to explain connected ideas in never-ending sentences. To read it in one breath was too much to ask for and to read it too slow carried the risk of sounding inarticulate. To comprehend it fully we had to take necessary, if not abrupt pauses and aid it with interpretations, with Sumit calling the shots. He knew exactly where to ask Saloni, who volunteered to read, to stop. He would continue to raise his hand as she went about reading and then signal, just as she would approach a comma or the end of a sub-clause, to pause. He would then go on to highlight and interpret the key points on a soundless slide-over whiteboard(Now, I may be diverting from the topic beforehand, but I have to make this point: I miss the green boards! It is not that I like inhaling calcium dust nor do I miss the awful squeaking of the chalk but rather the thud, the muzzled thud as you lifted the chalk and smacked it right back: occasionally while writing in ALL CAPITALS, but mostly to draw full-stops.)
Now, had the purpose of the blog been information dissemination, I would have accommodated a gist of Articles 14-20 and what they encompass and enshrine,(One can always look them up on the internet, though!) But I rather choose to illuminate the wonderful platform that Sauhard offers and the wonderful community that it is.
Meanwhile, for every clause and sub-clause of the Article, Sumit referred to multiple legal case studies- the remarkable ones, according to him. For me to comprehend how he had memorized them all was painful, to say the least. Like, lawyers ARE supposed to know remarkable cases and the landmark judgements but to actually cite them with impeccable precision was quite a task.
Sumit discussed the sedition laws, drawing a remarkable point: Post-freedom the sedition laws were used against people who doled out hatred against Pakistan, a stark contrast from the recent sedition charges levied against Ramya(Divya Spandana).
We also talked about the Supreme Court verdict scrapping the ‘draconian’ Section 66-A of the IT Act, which was deemed too ambiguous, thereby making it more susceptible to misuse. The session also touched upon the much debated Geospatial Information Regulation Bill, 2015, which disallows wrong depiction of India’s territorial boundaries.
In between, we had Samosas and Kachoris(I mean, what else can one ask for!). And as we set about, discussing and debating and trying to comprehend, over tea, the Right to Equality and Freedom and how those responsible for drafting the Constitution ideated and envisaged the establishment of an egalitarian society, it was easy to deduce why people: the wronged and the wrong-doers, choose to lay their faith in the Constitution.
The Great Perhaps 