1.0 What This Chapter Will Teach You

This entire textbook is about the working of the Indian Constitution^?. Before we look at elections, parliaments, presidents and prime ministers, we must first understand a simpler truth: every institution of government in India draws its powers, its limits and its very existence from one document — the Constitution of India. By the end of this chapter you will be able to answer four basic questions:

1.1 Why Do We Need a Constitution?

Imagine you belong to a fairly large group of people. The members of this group are diverse in many ways — some Hindu, some Muslim, some Christian, some without any religious affiliation. They follow different professions, have different tastes in films and books, different abilities, different hobbies. Some are wealthy and some live in poverty; some are old, some young.

Now imagine the kinds of disputes such a group is likely to have. How much property should one person be allowed to own? Should every child be required to go to school, or should parents decide? How much should the group spend on safety and security, and how much on parks and gardens? Should the group be allowed to discriminate against some of its members? Each question will throw up many different answers from many different people. And yet, for all their diversity, this group must live together. They depend on each other. They need each other’s cooperation. What enables such a group to live together peacefully?

1.2 Function 1 — Coordination and Assurance

The members of any large group can live together only if they can agree on some basic rules. Why are such rules necessary? Think of what would happen without them. Every individual would be insecure, simply because they would not know what others might do, or who could claim what. To achieve even a minimal degree of coordination^?, any group needs basic rules that are publicly announced and known to everyone.

But knowing the rules is not enough. The rules must also be enforceable. If citizens have no assurance that others will follow the rules, they themselves will have no reason to follow them. By making the rules legally enforceable, the constitution gives an assurance to everybody: if others break the rules, they will face consequences. Each person can therefore safely follow the rules, knowing that others will too.

1.3 Function 2 — Specification of Decision-Making Powers

A constitution is a body of fundamental principles by which a state is constituted or governed. But what should these fundamental rules be? And what makes them ‘fundamental’ in the first place? Before deciding what the rules should be, you have to decide who gets to decide. You may want rule X, others may want rule Y; how do we settle this?

The constitution provides the answer. It specifies the basic allocation of power in a society. It decides who has the authority to make laws. In a monarchical constitution, the monarch decides. In some constitutions like that of the old Soviet Union, a single party held the power to decide. But in democratic constitutions, broadly speaking, the people decide.

Even saying “the people decide” raises further questions: should everyone agree to every law? Should citizens vote directly on each matter, as the ancient Greeks did? Or should they vote through elected representatives? If through representatives, how should they be elected, and how many should there be?

In the Indian Constitution, for instance, it is laid down that in most cases Parliament^? makes the laws and policies, and that Parliament itself must be organised in a particular manner. Before identifying what the law in any society is, we have to identify who has the authority to make it. If Parliament has the authority to enact laws, there must be a higher law that gave Parliament that authority in the first place. That higher law is the constitution.

1.4 Function 3 — Limitations on the Power of Government

Even after we have decided who has the authority to make decisions, the story is not complete. Suppose this authority passed laws that were patently unfair. Suppose it banned you from practising your religion, prohibited clothes of a certain colour, forbade certain songs, or declared that members of a particular caste or community must always serve others. Suppose it said the government may arbitrarily arrest anyone, or that only people of a certain skin colour could draw water from public wells. Even though these laws were passed by a properly constituted government, you would feel something obviously unjust was happening.

So a third function emerges: to set limits on what a government may do to its citizens. These limits are fundamental in the strict sense — the government may never cross them. The most common way of doing this is to specify certain fundamental rights^? that all citizens possess and that no government can violate.

The exact list of rights varies from one constitution to another, but most modern constitutions protect a basic cluster: protection from arbitrary arrest, freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, freedom of association, freedom to carry on a trade or business. Many constitutions, including India’s, also specify the narrow circumstances (such as a national emergency) in which some of these rights may be temporarily withdrawn.

1.5 Function 4 — Aspirations and Goals of a Society

Most older constitutions limited themselves to allocating decision-making power and setting limits on it. But many twentieth-century constitutions — of which the Indian Constitution is the finest example — do something more. They provide an enabling framework for the government to do positive things, to give voice to the aspirations and goals of the society it governs. The Indian Constitution was particularly innovative in this respect.

Societies with deep-rooted inequalities cannot simply restrain government; they must also empower government to take positive measures to overcome inequality and deprivation. India aspires to be a society free of caste discrimination — so the government must be enabled to take all necessary steps towards that goal. South Africa, with its history of racial discrimination, had to design a constitution that empowered government to dismantle apartheid^?.

1.6 Function 5 — Fundamental Identity of a People

Finally — and perhaps most importantly — a constitution expresses the fundamental identity of a people. The people, as a collective entity, come into being only through the basic constitution. By agreeing to a basic set of norms about how they will be governed and who will be governed, a group of individuals constitutes itself as a political community.

You possess many identities even before any constitution exists — you are a son, a daughter, a Bengali, a Tamil, a member of a religion, a member of a profession. But by agreeing to certain basic norms, you also acquire a political identity. Constitutional norms become the overarching framework within which you pursue individual aspirations and freedoms. The constitution sets authoritative limits on what may or may not be done. So the constitution also gives you a moral identity. Many basic political and moral values are now shared across different constitutional traditions worldwide.

Constitutions differ in the way they embody conceptions of national identity. Most nations are an amalgamation of complex historical traditions, weaving together diverse groups in different ways. For example, German identity was originally constituted by being ethnically German — the constitution gave expression to that identity. The Indian Constitution, by contrast, does not make ethnic identity a criterion for citizenship. Different nations embody different conceptions of the relationship between regions and the central government, and that relationship in turn becomes part of national identity.

1.7 The Five Functions at a Glance

Pulling together what we have learnt so far, here is a concept-map of the five core functions every modern constitution performs:

1.8 Constitutions in Different Societies — A Quick Tour

Modern written constitutions began with the United States in 1787. Since then, almost every country has adopted one. Each constitution carries the imprint of the society that created it — its history, its struggles, and its hopes for the future.

1.9 Monarchies, Republics and Single-Party States

The same tool — a constitution — can serve very different political philosophies, depending on the answer it gives to the question “who decides?”

1.10 The Political Philosophy Behind Constitution-Making

Why do constitution-makers spend years arguing over a single document? Because every clause embodies a moral choice. The framers must answer: What kind of people do we want to be? The cartoons in the original NCERT chapter capture this beautifully: in one, Nehru is shown trying to balance very different visions and ideologies during the Constituent Assembly debates of December 1949; in another, the European Union’s attempt to write a single constitution is shown collapsing under disagreement; in a third, the Iraqi Constitution is drawn as a fragile castle of cards.

1.11 Constitution as a ‘Living’ Document

A good constitution is neither too rigid nor too flexible. Too rigid a constitution will break under the pressure of changing circumstances. Too flexible a constitution will give no security, predictability or identity to a people. Successful constitutions strike the right balance — preserving core values while allowing them to be re-interpreted for new circumstances. The Indian Constitution is often described as a living document^?: it has changed through amendments and judicial interpretation, yet its core values have remained intact.

This balance also matters because constitutions can be subverted — not always by the people, but often by small groups who want to grab more power. A well-crafted constitution fragments power intelligently. The Indian Constitution, for example, horizontally divides power across the Legislature, the Executive and the Judiciary, and even places independent statutory bodies like the Election Commission^? outside the control of any one organ. So even if one institution tries to subvert the Constitution, others can check its excesses. This system of checks and balances has been central to the success of the Indian Constitution.