The Constitution in ideology and utopia: A Survey of ‘75 year’ commentaries on Constitution and the Supreme Court | Foreword

ON THE SEVENTY-FIVE YEARS of the Constitution of India, The Leaflet has undertaken a commendable survey of contemporary constitutional discourse spanning articles, panel discussions and books. This synthesis examines the ongoing attempts by Hindu traditionalists to reshape the Constitution's liberal philosophy toward Hindutva ideology, and assesses how constitutional governance has functioned over seven and a half decades.

The post-truth conundrum

We are navigating what has been called the "post-truth" era. The erosion of shared political reality has made democratic discourse increasingly difficult as there is no common factual premise to debate. This raises an uncomfortable question: are we back to Nietzsche's philosophy that there is no truth, only constructed perspective? 

In the Indian constitutional context, this erosion takes a dangerous form. Claims that secularism is colonial, constitutional morality alien, and the Constitution in need of “decolonisation” now circulate as historical truth. If the demolition of truth contributes to polarization and the normalization of misinformation, the result is a road to authoritarianism. Democratic deliberation cannot survive when citizens no longer share basic agreement about observable reality. 

The strategies of constitutional transformation

The inquiry begins with the ongoing Hindutva-isation of the Constitution. The ‘soft-liners’ of Hindutva aim, unjustifiably and contrary to the vision of the Constitution's founders, to refashion the document as a ‘Raja Sutra’ rooted in the theistic part of Indic philosophy developed in ancient Bharat. This project proceeds without explicitly challenging Bentham's positivist theory of law; instead, they reinterpret constitutional morality through the cultural past of Bharat.

What emerges from this body of commentary is not a frontal rejection of the Constitution, but a sustained attempt to reinterpret it from within. The Constitution, in this reading, is not being displaced, but re-scripted contrary to the vision of founding fathers and mothers shaped by the freedom movement.

Conversely, the ‘hard-liners’ aim for a constitutional coup under the catchy word of “decolonisation”. This faction is the successor to those who didn't recognize the Constitution for decades. However, this school lacks clarity on which specific provisions it proposes to rewrite to align with the Dharmashastras. If the goal is merely to redraft the Constitution as Samvidhan—similar to the recent renaming of criminal laws with Sanskrit titles while retaining English common law—then this movement is perverse and in any case untruthful to itself.

The Supreme Court's institutional journey

The Constitution's history has been one of ups and downs. A series of amendments demonstrates that grounding normative orders within a social cycle is easier said than done. The Supreme Court, as the "guardian of the Constitution" and protector of fundamental rights retained by the people, has always sat at the center of constitutional tension.

In the first 25 years, the Supreme Court was charge-sheeted as a protector of property rights. The judges eventually redeemed themselves through Public Interest Litigation, promoting welfarism and human dignity. Today, the Apex Court faces a second challenge: criticism for failing to protect liberty in what many call an era of undeclared emergency.

Will the Court reclaim its legacy? Hopefully, it may.