Dear Editor,
I really liked the statement issued by the CGPI on 23rd January this year, titled “This Republic is an instrument of bourgeois rule.” It has pointed out very sharply that “Life experience over the past 74 years shows that the Indian Republic is in all aspects diametrically opposite to what the Constitution proclaims.” The statement spells this out in detail. On the question of employment, economic development, end to caste ad communal discrimination, women’s equality and rights, secularism, and so on, what we have is the opposite of what is proclaimed or suggested by the Directive Principles.
If the India of today were to be really what the Preamble declares, all of us would not have had to spend a large portion of our life in protests and campaigns! In this matter, election manifestos of various bourgeois parties are no different in spirit: Promise what the people want, but when in government do exactly the opposite, in accordance with what the ruling capitalist class commands!
The big problem is that there is no mechanism to ensure that all these sweet promises are implemented. There is no mechanism to hold our elected “representatives” to account! In cases when the state itself organizes genocide, where is the mechanism to punish the guilty, to punish those in command?
I think that many people who want to defend the Constitution today need to remind themselves that the Constitution actually does not defend them and their right to a dignified human existence! Many anti-people acts of this as well as previous governments are actually sanctioned by the Constitution. This includes the right of the Central Government to declare an Emergency!
As the statement points out, the basic problem is that of sovereignty. Sovereignty, or decision making power, is not in the hands of the people.
The Indian state is essentially the developed version of the state that the British established in our country. At that time it was an instrument in the service of the British ruling class. Today it is an instrument of the ruling capitalist class of India. Whether the BJP gets elected or any other bourgeois party or coalition does, as long as the capitalist class rules, it is its agenda that gets implemented. Our decades of experience teach us that.
The need of the hour is to understand that the upcoming 2024 elections are not going to change the class in power. We must indeed establish a new kind of Republic, whose constitution vests supreme decision making power in the hands of the people, by actually establishing the requisite kind of state!
Yours sincerely,
Sangeeeta,
Mumbai