SO Musings: Nature of the Constitution
We cannot remind ourselves often enough that the constitution is intended not merely to provide for the exigencies of the moment but to endure through a long lapse of years; and that it was meant to impart such a momentum to the living spirit of the rul..
By Spontaneous Order
We cannot remind ourselves often enough that the constitution is intended not merely to provide for the exigencies of the moment but to endure through a long lapse of years; and that it was meant to impart such a momentum to the living spirit of the rule of law that democracy and freedom may survive in India beyond our own times and in the days when our place will know us no more.
Further, constitutional developments in India are not a matter of concern to our people alone. We constitute one-sixth of the human race and our choice between the two roads that diverge into the wood will have an imponderable impact on the cause of democracy throughout the world.
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First Published in Illustrated Weekly of India, Jan 1976, p.4–10
More essays and speeches by Nani Palkhivala can be accessed at Indian Liberals, an open, multilingual digital archive committed to preserving liberal voices in the Indian public sphere.
Read more: https://spontaneousorder.in/5623-2/
About Spontaneous Order
A peep into modern Indian history by some of the finest liberal minds, who sought to shred the banality of pseudo-socialism in Independent India. In a country dominated by false political values, which had, in fact, no basis of existence neither in the independence movement or the native soil, SO brings out the dynamics of a political order that could have changed the country forever.