‘Flag of freedom’ should fly ‘not only for ourselves’: Gaza and India’s constitutional responsibility

On August 15, 1947, India made a pledge that it would use its freedom to promote justice, humanity and, of course, freedom everywhere. Has the country's attitude towards Gaza dishonoured this pledge?

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AS we stand on the threshold of the 78th Independence Day of India, how do we mark it? What sense does it make to go back in time to 'a moment' which Jawaharlal Nehru memorably described as coming "but rarely in history when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends and the soul of a nation long suppressed finds utterance"?

Can an active remembering of our past become a way to shape the future? In the famous 'A tryst with Destiny', one of the themes Nehru brilliantly essayed was the idea that the pledge of service taken on August 15, 1947 was not just for "India and her people", but the "still larger cause of humanity".

The Objectives Resolution, which is the foundational document that shapes both the Preamble and the Constitution, pledges that when "this ancient land attains its rightful and honoured place in the world" it will "make its full and willing contribution to the promotion of world peace and the welfare of mankind".

This theme of India in the world pervades the very idea of India as imagined and brought forth in the Constituent Assembly. When Nehru moved the flag resolution he stated that "this flag that I have the honour to present to you is not, I hope and trust, a flag of [an] empire, a flag of imperialism, a flag of domination over anybody, but a flag of freedom not only for ourselves but a symbol of freedom to all people who may see it".