IT is indeed a tragedy that we move towards our 67th Republic Day with the country bowing its head in shame and in anguish over the circumstances that have pushed a young bright dalit student to commit suicide in one of our premier central universities. The University of Hyderabad was declared only last year by the president of India who is also the visitor of the University to be the best university in the country. It is in this university that we find such a gruesome incident taking place. This in itself speaks volumes of how far we have regressed from our resolve to implement our constitutional foundations of social justice. (The detailed reports of this incident are published elsewhere in this issue – ed). On the occasion of the Republic Day, it is only natural that the country articulates the resolve to strengthen the foundational pillars of our Republican Constitution. Secular democracy, economic self-reliance, federalism and social justice constitute these pillars on which our modern republic rests. Notwithstanding the usual peroration accompanying the articulation of such a resolve, the reality today is that the country is moving fast away from strengthening these foundational pillars. The current BJP government and PM Modi are pursuing policies that, far from consolidating these objectives, are undermining each one of these. This underlines the need for a stronger people’s resolve to safeguard our republic and to ensure that the fundamental promises made to our people are restored back on the course of being implemented. This BJP government had observed the Constitution Day, as per its own definition, clubbing this observation with the 125th birth anniversary of Dr B R Ambedkar, universally recognised as the architect of the Indian Constitution. The proceedings of this session completely exposed the hypocrisy of PM Modi and his government on this score. While mouthing the reassertion of the resolve to safeguard and strengthen this Constitution, the policies being implemented by this government were undermining these very constitutional guarantees systematically. The Republic Day, is once again, an occasion to recollect the warning Dr Ambedkar had given the country while he was commending the draft Constitution for adoption in the Constituent Assembly on November 25, 1949. "On 26th January 1950, we are going to enter into a life of contradictions. In politics we will have equality and in social and economic life we will have inequality. In politics, we will be recognising the principle of one man-one vote and one vote-one value. In our social and economic life, we shall by reason of our social and economic structure, continue to deny the principle of one man-one value. "How long shall we continue to live this life of contradictions? How long shall we continue to deny equality in our social and economic life? "If we continue to deny it for long, we will do so only by putting our political democracy in peril. We must remove this contradiction at the earliest possible moment or else those who suffer from inequality will blow up the structure of political democracy which this Assembly has laboriously built up”. The situation today has become so alarming that this warning rings resoundingly urging to be heeded by all of us. This, PM Modi led BJP government, apart from following policies that undo the strength of the foundational pillars of our Constitution is also systematically moving in a direction that undermines the fundamental constitutional guarantees which can be encapsulated in the term of promising the Indian people “liberty, equality, fraternity” and granting all our citizens equality “irrespective of caste, creed or sex”. Dr Ambedkar talked of the disconnect between the political structure established by the constitution and the socio-economic reality existing in our country. Even this political structure itself is now coming under severe strain under this government. The centrality of our constitution lies in the ultimate sovereignty being vested with our people. “We the people” exercise this sovereignty through their elected representatives in the parliament. The parliament in turn is mandated to ensure the accountability of the government to it. Thus, the executive’s (government) accountability to the people is ensured by its accountability to the parliament whose members in turn are accountable to the people. This chain is an important element running through the core of our constitution. At every level, this chain is being broken. The democratic choices before the people during elections are being severely distorted by the menacingly growing grip of money and muscle power over our electoral process. Communalism and casteism further distort this process where the people are forced not to exercise their choice on the basis of policies and programmes of political parties and their candidates but on the basis of their caste or religious affiliations. All these distortions, which have been heightened during the 2014 general elections by the campaign conducted by the BJP has imposed severe restrictions on elections reflecting the reasoned democratic choices of our people. The urgency for profound electoral reforms cannot be underscored in a more emphatic manner today. On the other hand, the parliament is increasingly sitting for less than a hundred days in every calendar year. Thus, the ability of the parliament to make the government accountable apart from discharging its duties of legislating (making new laws) and discussing issues of public importance, is getting undermined by the day. In addition, disruptions of parliamentary proceedings, caused both by the government’s obduracy in refusing to submit and be accountable to the parliament, and, at times, the unreasonable demands of sections of the opposition are depriving this supreme legislative body of our people of its potency. Consequently, a relatively unaccountable government can get away with actions that undermine the very foundations of our constitution without much scrutiny. This is what is happening increasingly under this BJP government. This leaves scope and gives the government the opportunity to press ahead with impunity policies that undermine each one of the four foundational principles we mentioned above. During the course of these one and half years, PM Modi and his government have shown that their policies constitute a double whammy attack on our people and on our constitution. Neo-liberal economic policies are being pursued with greater vigour than the previous Congress governments. Rabid sharpening of communal polarisation is taking place. This government, functioning as the political arm of the RSS, patronises this communal agenda and allows these elements to go ahead with their activity of undermining our constitutional foundations. In the economic sphere the exploitation of the vast mass of our people intensifies further widening growing economic inequalities in the country where 100 US dollar Indian multibillionaires today have a combined asset value that is closer to one-half of the country’s GDP. In the immediate context today we see rising distress suicides by our peasantry, growing burdens being imposed by the relentless price rise, growing unemployment and the growing accompanying misery. India has an abysmally low ranking on the global human development index with being home to the world’s largest number of hungry people and the world’s largest number of malnourished children. This BJP government’s economic policies are increasingly providing greater avenues for profit maximisation for international and domestic capital while the people’s miseries mount. As a result of these policies today, our index of industrial production has registered a minus 3.2 percent growth rate; manufacturing minus 4.4 percent and the agricultural sector is slated to register a decline of a minus 2 percent. Such are the realities of the dreams sold by PM Modi. Economic self-reliance therefore appears to be moving farther and farther away. This deprives both our people and the country from realising their true potential. On the score of social justice, take the state of just one parameter to understand the gravity and the worsening situation. The levels of discrimination and attacks against the dalits are growing. Since this BJP government assumed office, atrocities against dalits have gone up by 19 percent. A total of 40,300 cases of atrocities against dalits under SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act were filed during 2014. Cumulatively till 2014, 1,08,659 cases were pending for trial. A conviction rate of 28.8 percent! Such are the realities on Dr Ambedkar’s 125th birth anniversary! Are we anywhere near redeeming our pledges to realise his vision of social justice? Reserved quotas remain increasingly unfilled. Given the focus on privatisation, job reservations in the public sector have drastically reduced. With the massive depletion of public education and growth of private institutions, entry of dalits has sharply fallen. The correct mix of quantity, quality and equity must be ensured in higher education. Statutory status must be provided for SC/ST Sub-Plans. The worst offensive by this BJP-led government comes in the form of undermining secularism and the Indian civilisational ethos. Implementing the RSS vision of transforming our secular democratic republic into their version of a rabidly intolerant fascistic ‘Hindu Rashtra’, this government and PM Modi are seeking to replace Indian history with Hindu mythology and Indian philosophy with Hindu theology. This exercise is an effort to rewrite our syncretic civilisational advance and, instead, to impose a monolithic culture of “Hindutva”, which they claim, is the human essence “since these lands existed”. This negates the universally admired reality that the lands which constitute India today have been and should continue to be the churning crucible of civilisational advance. Amongst many who documented this rich history hear what Rabindranath Tagore had to say: “Aryans and non-Aryans, Dravidians and Chinese, Scythians, Huns, Pathans and Moghuls, all have merged and lost themselves in one body”. And, this body is India today. Four of the six major religious faiths of our people, apart from Christianity and Islam – Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism, Jainism, not to speak of the multiple animistic religions and atheism (as old as Hinduism itself, ie, charvaka) – originated in these lands. Hence emerged the collective wisdom that as different rivers, through different courses reach the oceans, so do individuals live their faiths. Swami Vivekananda, relevant to the RSS/BJP’s offensive against voluntary religious conversions, said: “without the Buddhist revolution what would have delivered the suffering millions of lower classes from the violent tyrannies of the influential higher castes?” (Works, Vol-4, p. 462). Further, “(Mohammedanism) came as a message for the masses….the first message was equality. There is one religion – love. No more question of race, colour, (or) anything else”. (Works, Vol. 1, p. 483) Every one of us needs to reflect his vision: “I see in my mind’s eye the future perfect India arising out of its chaos and strife, glorious and invincible with Vedanta brain and Islam body”. (Works, Vol. 6, p. 416) Even the Bhagwat Gita, which this government wants to be declared as our National Scripture says: “Whatever celestial form a devotee seeks to worship with faith, I stabilise the faith of that particular devotee in that particular form”. (Chapter VII (21). Such collective wisdom is reflected in our constitution (Articles 25 & 26) that provide “Freedom of conscience and free profession, practice and propagation of religion” and “Freedom to manage religious affairs”. Further, the Indian Penal Code (Section 153 A) classifies forcible attempts in the name of religion as a criminal offence. Hence, there is no need for any new law for religious conversions that the Modi government today speaks of. Every Indian “irrespective of caste, creed or sex” has the freedom to choose his/her religious faith. Any forcible attempt to infringe upon this right is a “crime” punishable under law. Such are the times that we live in. Are we to allow these forces to destroy the grandness of India’s civilisational evolution or pursue Swami Vivekananda’s dictum with which he concluded his famous address to the World Parliament of Religions, Chicago on September 11, 1893: “If the Parliament of Religions has shown anything to the world it is this: …that every system has produced men and women of the most exalted character. In the face of this evidence, if anybody dreams of the exclusive survival of his own religion and the destruction of the others, I pity him from the bottom of my heart, and point out to him that upon the banner of every religion will soon be written, in spite of resistance: "Help and not Fight," "Assimilation and not Destruction," "Harmony and Peace and not Dissension." Given this all-round offensive that continues to deepen, the tasks before the vast mass of the Indian people clearly are defined. It is only the united will and the strength of the Indian people through powerful struggles that can prevent this all round attack against our republic. Strengthening such struggles in all dimensions is the need of the hour. Therefore any resolve that we may take to strengthen our constitutional order will have to begin with our resistance to this double whammy attack of aggressive pursuance of neo-liberal economic reforms combined with rabid communal polarisation. Come let us together strengthen our republic, transform our country into a better India and march towards the establishment of a society in our country that is free from economic exploitation and social oppression of any human being by any other.