I was wondering, as 26th Jan approaches : How many times have we heard those ‘pursuit of happiness‘ lines from the US Declaration of Independence? I always wonder how some of us, Indians, remember those lines and almost none from our own constitution. You could attribute it to the pervasiveness of the former or the over-exposure of our generation to Hollywood movies or even to the rise of capitalism as the overwhelmingly dominant economic policy. Earlier, I used to disagree. Perhaps, some kind of an attraction-quotient that is missing in our constitution .. may be the formation of sentences or may be the ideas put forth therein. Imagine the rock-star voice of Barack Obama proclaiming those immortal words on equality, life, liberty again and I am sure most of us would listen with awe, admiring the flamboyance and we can’t help thinking ‘Yeah!! the great American Spirit and look how they went ahead’. I always thought may be our constitution isn’t so appealing .. until I realized that was not so true. If you are in doubt, check the preamble out again .. boy, our folks can write great too!! (check out the full versions here). I took the pain of reading through a good bit of it. And several of my misconceptions were cleared when I read it with an open mind. The following stuff particularly caught my mind :
‘to develop scientific temper, humanism, spirit of inquiry and reform‘ and ‘to strive towards excellence in all spheres of individual and collective activity, so that the nation constantly rises to higher levels of endeavor and achievement‘
are two of our fundamental duties!! Yeah, I know all of us wrote that as an answer to Social Studies questions as kids!! But now I think ‘OMG .. If only, they had be put that on the top of everything and made it heard everyday, we would have been speeding like a photon’. Back at the time when our constitution was written.. for a country that was lost in a thousand superstitious beliefs, dogmatic practices and plagued by umpteen number of cheating god-men .. getting out of such rut, with the ruthlessness reflected in those two lines above, was probably the most important thing. However the architects of our constitution chose to lay (a well intended) emphasis on socialism, justice, equality etc. I suspect that may have been misunderstood as a license to follow a drag-down-everybody-if-you-cant-go-higher approach among our public. Along with those recipes for non-productivity called non-cooperation, bandhs and hartals which we imported from the freedom struggle, India’s socialistic leanings might have hurt her in a way the architects of our constitution did not expect them to.
I am not denouncing socialism(or any ‘ism’ for that matter) or the practices that it has allowed to creep in to our society. But of late, I am pissed off seeing how common sense does not prevail when people fighting for their so called demands. Recently, Hyderabad came to a stand-still because students went on a bandh (and for 3 days in row) .. And I thought students were supposed to study hard, be productive, do great things and, more than anything, are supposed to be ideal citizens. And they ignore their fundamental duties, spread panic on roads like anarchist groups, break and burn stuff that was the result of another man’s hard toil, intimidate people who dare to offer to work .. far from being productive, they were actually counter-productive and hampered others’ right to be creative. And if that is how well we embrace the teachings of our constitution, no wonder the words from it are never in our memories.
Don’t get me wrong. I am fully for political activism among students. In fact, I encourage it a lot. But such an activism should never devolve in to anarchist attitude that paralyzes the society. No one has a right to hamper the productivity of anyone else. More so, in case of students, who are actually relying on public money for cheap education and haven’t given anything back to the society yet. Refusing to attend lectures and write exams is to throw the tax payers’ money down the drain. Unfortunately, this bandh and hartal plague has found its way deep in to our veins. I remember an instance recently when some Japanese employees registered their ‘protest’ by working an additional hour. And our folks here take the opposite route under the name ‘Pen Down’ or whatever .. teachers who should be inculcating a metronomic work-ethic and discipline, civil servants who should put public convenience above anything else, doctors who should be jumping at the smallest opportunity to save a life .. all refusing to do what is probably their highest obligation (moral, monetary or otherwise) to the society.. what a waste!!
I wonder if we are a country horribly gone wrong, thinking that the only way to make our voice heard is to trouble others and refuse to do justice to our productive abilities (not to mention the society which help us in acquiring those abilities)!! It might work in a world like the one in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged (although, the rebellion there is for a completely different (probably anti-socialist) reason.). There are always people hungrier than us, willing to work harder and longer than us in this world!!. May be we forgot the dragon that works like a clock and is right beside us!! I am waiting for a day when our SC declares any kind of bandh as unconstitutional and punishable under law. Perhaps we should make the same Ayn Rand’s books as supplementary texts in our curriculum and brainwash ourselves day-in day-out till we realize that, even in a socialist state, we do not deserve to ask anything from the society (leave alone paralyzing it) until we give it something back .. THAT is true socialism .. for me!!