PREAMBLE

PREAMBLE

   October 22, 2020       Ankur Jangra

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Preamble basically is a short summary of our big book. Since the big book is way too technical and can't be easily understood by every individual, Preamble helps us understand what the constitution of India means, and what its basic principles are.

Before you begin, I request you to go through some lines shown in the image above. Read at least twice. For those who aren't still aware, those are the same lines that we have gone through in our school days. Yes, it is the Preamble. I still remember, while going through the index page of my NCERTs, I used to see these big bold lines. I never actually paid much attention to it. Thought these were just a few lines meant to increase the number of pages in tiny NCERTs. Fortunately, now that I have been able to understand the essence of preamble a little, I would like to enlighten you through the same. But before that, I request you to read my previous blog on "Indian Constitution: The Big Book" to relate it better.  

The preamble was based on the objectives resolution developed by our first prime minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. Originally, the words SOCIALIST, SECULAR, and INTEGRITY were not part of our preamble. These were added in 1976 during the era of emergency. In my previous blog, I had mentioned that preamble is a part of our constitution. Now one might think, what was the need of having it given that we already had such a bulky constitution. So Preamble basically is a short summary of our big book. Since the big book is way too technical and can't be easily understood by every individual, Preamble helps us understand what the constitution of India means, and what its basic principles are. 

The preamble tells us the true owners of our constitution i.e WE, THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. It's we the people from which our constitution derives its authority. WE, THE PEOPLE includes every single individual who is a citizen of India irrespective of sex, caste, race, or religion. In India, multiple welfare schemes have been running since independence. The nature of the Indian government, which is of a welfare state, demarcates the SOCIALIST tilt of our country. Since a major portion of our population is poor, the state i.e the government(both centre and state) comes ahead to provide a helping hand. In times of COVID, you might have seen many governments providing free meals, free shelters, very low-interest credits to migrants or poor workers, all this shows that either its the time of crisis or not, the government will always be present so that the poor aren't under looked. And Yes, there exist multiple aspects under socialism other than the welfare state concept too (which would be covered in future blogs). Moving on to religion, as per our constitution, we are a SECULAR state which means the state does not have a religion and the state shouldn't discriminate between religions. We also have separate laws governing different religions. 

There are few principles on which our constitution is based. And those are Justice, Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. And these are the four keywords that are holistically implemented by the Fundamental Rights, Directive principles of state policies, and the Fundamental Duties. Justice is an important concept in a society especially in a diverse one like India(since Ek Ghar me jyada bartan honge to obviously bajne ki awaz to ayegi hi). Liberty plays a major role in the development of an individual. Just think if you do not have the liberty of either thought, expression, belief, faith, or worship, your development would be incomplete. Similarly, it's important to maintain Equality in society so that there is no discrimination especially to those which belong to the weaker section. And lastly, Fraternity is included to maintain a sense of brotherhood in our multi-diverse country. 

A Real-life application of preamble:

Elections. While exercising our Universal Adult Franchise, everyone must do a critical analysis of all the political parties. This critical analysis can be done using the principles of the preamble. You can consider parameters like Religious harmony, is Justice(social, economic, political) prevailing, Equality exists or there is more division, are our liberal thoughts, expressions, faith or beliefs getting compromised, and so on. If every individual voter ponders over these parameters before casting their votes, indeed we will be true to ourselves as well as our democracy. 

Lastly, in a country like India where we have the largest number of malnourished children, millions of unemployed, a rising number of crimes, and environmental conditions getting degraded day by day, it is important for us to contribute to the development of our society. If we are true to ourselves and lead our lives on the principles of preamble, we indeed will be able to shape India into a true SOVEREIGN, SOCIALIST, SECULAR, and DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC.