New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi Sunday said that ‘Ram Rajya‘, or a state governed according to the rules and principles of the Hindu deity Ram, had acted as a source of inspiration for the makers of the Indian Constitution, turning the spotlight, twice within a week, on artworks contained in the original calligraphed copy of the document kept in the Parliament museum.
On 22 January, the PM had made a similar assertion during his televised address at the consecration ceremony of the Ram lalla idol placed at the new temple in Ayodhya, underscoring that “despite the existence in the Constitution, there was a legal battle over the existence of Lord Ram for decades”.
During his Mann Ki Baat radio address Sunday, Modi pointed out that in the beginning of part-three of the original copy of the Constitution (dealing with Fundamental Rights), the makers of the Constitution had allotted “due space” to the pictures of Ram, Sita and Lakshman.
“The rule of prabhu Ram was also a source of inspiration for the makers of our Constitution and that is why on January 22 in Ayodhya, I had talked about ‘Dev se Desh’ [a country linked to God]… I had referred to ‘Ram se Rashtra’ [Ram to country],” Modi said, drawing a wide arc, linking constitutional principles to Hindu beliefs.
Modi, however, is not the first one to draw such a link.
Over the years, the Hindu Right (including other leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party currently in power at the Centre], has time and again projected the presence of these artworks in the Constitution, as evidence that the “living document” did not mark a break from India’s cultural past, but stood for its continuity. The artworks also feature Mughal emperor Akbar and Muslim ruler Tipu Sultan
While participating in a TV debate in 2018, then law minister and BJP leader Ravi Shankar Prasad had said that had such illustrations (of Ram-Sita) been incorporated in the Constitution today, it would have sparked an outcry about “how India is turning saffron”.
He made it a point to underline that while the original manuscript of the Constitution contained pictures of Akbar, there were no pictures of the Mughal emperors Aurangzeb or Babur.
The Constitution is divided into multiple parts and each part of the original copy begins with horizontal line drawings on top of the page. The text of the Constitution was handwritten by calligrapher Prem Behari Narain Raizada, and the artwork was done by artist Nandalal Bose, along with his team.
In fact, these artworks have also figured in judicial pronouncements in the past. A division bench of the Allahabad High Court had in 1993, while allowing visits and rituals in the erstwhile makeshift Ram temple in Ayodhya, referred to these artworks to argue that Ram was a “constitutional entity, admittedly a reality of our national culture and fabric and not a myth”.
Constitutional experts and academics, however, advocate the need to guard against such sweeping interpretations relying on the presence of the artworks.
“The depictions of these icons drawn from a capacious historical spectrum serve to both juxtapose and harmonise the past with the present. It doesn’t necessarily suggest any linear continuity with the past. The Constitution as a text is distinctive. It marks a disjuncture in the present to rearticulate the relationship with the past. The relationship that the Constitution professes with history is different since it looks at the future,” Jawaharlal Nehru University professor Anupama Roy, who specialises in constitutionalism among other things, told ThePrint.
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‘A pictorial representation of India’s history’
According to former Lok Sabha secretary general P.D.T. Achary, the idea behind the illustrations “was to depict Indian history in all its phases, starting from the Indus Valley to the freedom struggle”.
He told ThePrint that this was the reason why the first part of the document begins with the bull seal of the Indus Valley civilisation.
The team led by Bose also incorporated artworks depicting Lord Buddha, Lord Mahavira, Ashoka, Akbar, Tipu Sultan, Ram, Sita, Lakshman, and Rani Lakshmibai in the document. Achary pointed out that the epics Mahabharata and Ramayana find representation in the Constitution.
“The idea was not to give any special importance or not to lay any special emphasis on anybody. It was a pictorial representation of India’s history, down the ages, and all the important historical and mythological characters were depicted,” he explained.
Achary also said the artists also wanted to include a picture of Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister, in the Constitution but he turned down the suggestion.
According to Achary, the illustrations have nothing to do with the text of the Constitution. As for Modi’s claim that Lord Ram’s rule was the source of inspiration for the makers of the Constitution, Achary said he had not come across any such passage in the Constituent Assembly debates.
“There was no occasion for any member of the Constituent Assembly to speak about divine inspiration. The illustrations included Lord Krishna and Arjun in the context of the Gita, Lord Ram, Sita and Lakshman returning from Lanka, Lord Buddha, Vardhaman Mahavira, Tipu Sultan, Akbar, Rani Lakshmibhai and many other historical figures,” he added.
‘No authentic research on Ram Rajya’
Constitutional expert Faizan Mustafa, vice-chancellor of Patna’s Chanakya National Law University, asserted that the paintings in the Constitution are “a narration of our history and civilisational story”.
He told ThePrint that the framers of the Indian Constitution must have had an idea of an “ideal nation”, and that this idea “must have been influenced by some idea of the ideal state and its relationship with people”.
“Even (Mahatma) Gandhiji did use the term Ram Rajya,” he said. Mustafa then explained that since there isn’t “authentic research on the details of Ram Rajya”, the framers thought of universal principles like justice, equality, liberty, and dignity of individuals.
“We do know how an erroneous opinion of even one washerman was given importance by Lord Ram though modern feminists would disagree with him. The lesson is that dissent of even one individual in the state is to be considered by the state. Ram Rajya was certainly like the modern welfare state and therefore the Directive Principles were incorporated,” he added.
Mustafa, therefore, believes that Ram Rajya as a concept must have been in the minds of the makers of the Constitution, and that in order to bring that ideal state to life, they adopted the best ideas from across the world to incorporate in the book.
“For example, Ram Rajya was a monarchy, it was not a democracy. So they incorporated the idea of democracy,” he said, explaining that while their visualisation of an ideal state may have interacted with their vague idea of how great the Ram Rajya must have been, the framers of the Constitution also incorporated modern ideas of democracy, judicial review, fundamental rights and constitutionalism in it.
However, he added, “in interpreting the Constitution, you may not even be able to rely on them”.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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