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The Indian Constitution: A Living Argument
Some documents are meant to be framed and forgotten. Others are meant to be argued with. Yet others are used for reference when need arises. The Indian Constitution belongs to the second and third categories. It doesn’t sit quietly on a shelf. It interrupts conversations, unsettles certainties, and refuses to let us get comfortable with regard to certain issues.
That became clear during a recent session with Rajiv Kapoor, a retired 1983-batch IAS officer. What stayed with me wasn’t just the content of the lecture, but its tone. Kapoor didn’t treat the Constitution like a holy text that must be revered without question, nor did he treat it like a failed project to be casually dismissed. He spoke of it as something far more demanding: a framework built by people with different backgrounds and having different views on different aspects, under nearly impossible conditions, for a future they could not fully see.
That framing changed how I look at constitutional criticism itself.
1. Context Before Critique
We often judge public policy as if it were designed in a lab. Kapoor demonstrates otherwise by pulling us back into history.
In 1947, India didn’t emerge from a clear, decisive revolution like that in France or in Russia. It carried baggage dating back several centuries. We inherited colonial institutions, deep social hierarchies, mass poverty, and the near-impossible task of integrating hundreds of princely states. Expecting a minimalist state, therefore, in that moment would have been an ideological fantasy, and not that leading to good governance.
Many provisions of the Constitution that may appear excessive or over-centralized today were, in truth, responses to fear. For instance, fear of fragmentation, fear of inequality hardening into permanence, fear of the state collapsing before it had even learned to walk. Kapoor’s point wasn’t that the framers were always right.
It was sharper than that: critique without context isn’t courage; it’s convenience.
2. The Constitution as a Social Contract
Beyond the legal jargon, the Constitution is a binding promise with the power to be backed up through legislation and jurisprudence.
It turns citizens into principals and the state into an agent. It organizes institutions, distributes authority, restrains excesses, and quietly reminds us that rights only survive when responsibility travels with rights.
The perception amongst a section of society is that the Constituent Assembly was elite. Although that criticism may not be wrongly perceived, the Constitution by itself does not have an elite bias. What struck me during the session was a subtler idea: the Constitution was never meant to reflect society as it was. It was meant to create the conditions for society to become something better. It didn’t emerge from a mass uprising; rather it was designed carefully to allow peaceful transformation, although that may be its most underrated feature.
3. A Constitution That Chooses Sides
The Indian Constitution is not neutral. It picks a side, and that side is social reform.
The framers understood that political freedom without social and economic correction would ring hollow. This is why Fundamental Rights sit alongside Directive Principles, and why welfare is not an afterthought but a constitutional commitment.
We also discussed the unresolved tension between Gandhi’s vision of decentralized village republics and the Congress leadership’s preference for a strong Centralised State. The decision to centralize power wasn’t accidental; it was strategic. Industrialization, national unity, and administrative coherence demanded it.
4. Equality Is Not Sameness
Few ideas sound simpler than equality. Few are messier in practice.
Articles 14, 15, and 16 don’t promise identical treatment. They allow what courts have called intelligent differentiation, the uncomfortable but necessary idea that treating people differently may be the only way to make outcomes fair.
Cases like Indra Sawhney and ongoing debates around the creamy layer expose the real tension: how far can corrective justice go before it becomes counterproductive? And where should the judiciary draw the line between protection and overreach? This case of 1992 was a landmark Supreme Court of India judgment that established key principles for reservations (affirmative action) for Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in government jobs, upholding the 27% OBC quota but at the same time introducing crucial limits such as the 50% reservation cap. Besides the verdict was on exclusion of the “creamy layer” (affluent OBC members) from benefits.
Kapoor’s session didn’t give us clear answers, rather it gave us better questions. Honestly, that felt more appropriate.
5. Freedom of Speech: The Cracks Are Showing
The conversation ended on a note that can make one feel uncomfortable.
Kapoor warned that freedom of speech may sometimes feel thinner than the framers imagined. Democracies don’t die only through coups or constitutions being torn up. Sometimes they erode quietly, through self-censorship, outrage cycles, and a growing fear of disagreement.
To sum up, the Indian Constitution balances liberty with equality, authority with accountability, and unity with diversity. These values may sometimes be perceived to be colliding but the law makers and the judiciary know very well that the Constitution hosts them to provide equilibrium.