India’s founding document sparked a social revolution
Social movements played a crucial role in shaping the constitutional discourse, laying down the foundations of equality, dignity, social justice
The Constitution of India is an embodiment of the aspirations of its citizens. These aspirations were also reflected in the long and painstaking process through which the Constitution came into being. This process, however, didn’t begin on December 9, 1946, when the first session of the Constituent Assembly was gavelled into existence.
Debates and discussions on what should be incorporated into the Constitution started in the 19th century itself. Social movements played a crucial role in shaping the constitutional discourse, laying down the foundations of equality, dignity, social justice, and equal opportunity for any future document to govern a yet-to-be-born republic. The movements, led by Jyotiba Phule and Dr. BR Ambedkar, respectively, in different periods of history are representative of the direct impact of social movements on the framing of the Constitution.
Phule’s constitutional project took inspiration from the 13th Amendment (1865) to the American Constitution, which abolished the slavery of African Americans. In 1873, Phule wrote a seminal book, titled Gulamgiri (translated as slavery), with a dedication to “the good people of the United States as a token of admiration for their sublime disinterested and self-sacrificing devotion in the cause” of slavery. Phule also hoped that the oppressor communities in India would follow a similar track in abolishing untouchability and emancipating the oppressed castes. Gulamgiri was a sharp critique of India’s caste system and oppression.
In the same year, Phule also started the Satyashodhak Samaj (the truth seekers’ society) movement to unite the oppressed castes, promote their education, and build an alternative vision of an equal society. He further advocated before the British government for free and compulsory education for all. In 1882, he submitted to the Hunter Commission a document that asked the administration to “be kind enough to sanction measures for the spread of female primary education”.
Dr. Ambedkar built further on Phule’s legacy in demanding constitutional rights for the oppressed castes. Before the Southborough Committee in 1919, Dr Ambedkar insisted on universal adult franchise (voting rights) for all Indians. Rejecting the contention that “franchise should be given to those only who can be expected to make an intelligent use of it’, he argued that franchise would promote the political awakening of the marginalised communities, who had long been excluded from politics and the social mainstream.
The two Mahad Satyagraha led by Dr Ambedkar in 1927 established the groundwork for the non-discrimination principle and broadened the constitutional imagination of rights. The Satyagraha was a challenge to the age-old practice of restricting Dalits from accessing water from a public source used by oppressor castes. Dr Ambedkar regarded the access to public places and water resources as a fundamental civil right.
In March 1927, thousands of oppressed castes walked several kilometres, under the leadership of Dr. Ambedkar, to drink water from the Chavdar tank, which was made open to everyone by the Mahad municipality in Maharashtra. However, after the gathering drank water from the tank, it was attacked by a large crowd of people from the oppressor castes, who came with sticks and stones. Later, the oppressor castes performed purification of the water tank by chanting hymns, while taking out the water from the tank in pots. This was seen by Dr Ambedkar as an effort to demoralise the Dalits in demanding their rights.
Dr Ambedkar then launched a second Satyagraha in Mahad in December 1927. During this gathering, he presented certain resolutions prepared by him beforehand. These resolutions highlighted the principles that all human beings were born equal; the use of public roads, public schools, public water sources and temples is open to all; and that the “law should be equally applicable to all”. These are the modern principles of equality before law and equal protection of laws, and non-discrimination, which were later incorporated in Articles 14 and 15 of the Constitution. The second Mahad Satyagraha also rejected the authority of “Manusmriti” as Dr Ambedkar publicly burnt it.
During the Round Table conferences in London in the early 1930s, Dr Ambedkar presented a clause on non-discrimination and equal access to public places, which were inspired not only by Mahad Satyagraha, but the words of the American Civil Rights Act of 1875. His negotiations at the Conference, and later with Mahatma Gandhi, led to the reservation of seats for Dalits in Parliament and state assemblies. This framework was expanded later in the Constitution by providing for the reservation of seats for backward classes, including the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes, in government services and educational institutions.
Around this time, Dr. Ambedkar also wrote a landmark lecture titled “Annihilation of Caste” as part of his advocacy against caste oppression, but refused to deliver it after the organisers asked him to tone down his content. Later published as a book in 1936, it conceptualised “a society based on liberty, equality and fraternity”. As he elaboarated in this treatise, fraternity was “only another name for democracy”.
These ideas garnered through the anti-caste social movements were brought by Dr Ambedkar to the Constituent Assembly. Similarly, other members of the assembly carried forward the demands from anti-colonial struggle, women’s movements, Adivasi movements, and peasant movements. In effect, social movements were instrumental in deciding the fate of the final text of several constitutional provisions such as equality, free speech, freedom of conscience and social reform, universal adult franchise, constitutional remedies, and even the Preamble.
The broader principles embedded in the Constitution, influenced by earlier pre-independence social movements, were invoked by subsequent movements to advocate for enhanced constitutional safeguards and rights for citizens. Post-independence social movements have led to the enactment of laws to prohibit and prevent atrocities against Dalits and Adivasis, outlaw manual scavenging, and provide adequate quotas in educational institutions for other backward classes. Several pieces of legislation, such as the law providing the right to information, have been passed due to the efforts of civil society-led movements.
These vignettes hint at why the Indian Constitution is a unique document – one that lays the legal foundation of a republic but more importantly creates a just and equitable social landscape for that republic to stand and thrive on. This is why pioneering American constitutionalist Granville Austin called the Constitution primarily a social document, one that he described as the cornerstone of a nation.
Anurag Bhaskar is the author of The Foresighted Ambedkar: Ideas That Shaped Indian Constitution Discourse. The views expressed are personal.
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