Fundamental Duties in our Constitution - A dream left unfulfilled

I mostly tend to stay away from religion and politics and I have firmly believed a person’s faith, religious and political opinions are extremely personal to him/her. Unfortunately, most people cannot accept this simple fact and try to educate and/or save-others-from-hell and/or try to impose their own opinions on others. I believe this is the root reason for most of the problems we have nowadays. Along these lines, I also observe common folk, intellectuals and pseudo-intellectuals* throw around the Fundamental Rights that the Constitution of India gives them. But most often they don’t mention about the attached Fundamental Duties.

One of the reasons for Fundamental Rights being considered more important compared to Fundamental duties is because of the different nature of their implementation as prescribed by the constitution-writers. While Fundamental Rights are binding for all and protected by law the Fundamental Duties are mentioned as non-binding by law and only as recommendations that all citizens may or may not follow. Actually, these duties are also very subjective in nature and enforcing these might be up to the interpretation or in most cases misinterpretation of the enforcers. Also, unfortunately, this ‘may or may not’ clause might work in a developed country; but for a developing country like ours where each has to struggle or compete with so many of our own people, this clause wouldn’t work. We either interpret the duties according to our benefit or stay silent and forget the Fundamental duties as has been going on. To a large extent, the Fundamental Duties have been only a dream which has been left unfulfilled.

But even if it is just a dream it may be important for all of us to remember the dream as these are actually advises of our great forefathers who fought for our nation’s freedom. At least we can try our best to follow these pieces of advice on our own and maybe one day all of us will also discharge these duties. Such a golden day it will be when all of us follow these duties/ advice that the people who got us freedom and wrote the constitution. Let’s go through these Fundamental duties together just for remembrance sake.

FUNDAMENTAL DUTIES
Part 51A: Fundamental duties.—it shall be the duty of every citizen of India—

(a) To abide by the Constitution and respect its ideals and institutions, the National Flag and the National Anthem;

Note: This is not difficult to follow. Although standing up for the National Anthem has been lately termed ‘lame’ or ‘un-cool’ or ‘cheesy’. Many pseudo-intellectuals confuse jingoism with patriotism and hence say that patriotism should be introvert and not shown off. But patriotism is all about pride for one’s country and if we cannot give the above token respect to our country then we should stop calling us a part of this country

(b) To cherish and follow the noble ideals which inspired our national struggle for freedom;

Note: If only we would have cared even a little for those struggles. I can’t even imagine showing my face to our forefathers for the shame of what we all have become and what we have made of the country they fought to free. Those brave freedom fighters would be weeping and mourning the death of their dreams/ideas for India. But we ignorantly go on leading the same atrocious lifestyle shamelessly.

(c) To uphold and protect the sovereignty, unity and integrity of India;

(d) To promote harmony and the spirit of common brotherhood amongst all the people of India transcending religious, linguistic and regional or sectional diversities; to renounce practices derogatory to the dignity of women;

(e) To value and preserve the rich heritage of our composite culture;

Note for c , d and e: What sovereignty are we talking about when all that foreign powers have to do is bribe a few corrupt politicians and they can influence the nation’s decisions?  Our spineless governments trudge on in a dreary stupor not even noticing the breeding evil of intolerance all around moving towards the festering doom. What Unity and integrity are we speaking about? For us we are Hindi or Muslim first; we are Hindi or Tamil or Bengali or Marathi first; we are Brahmin or Jat or Rajpoot or Gujjar first. Many of us are ashamed to say we are Indians outside of the country and if not because of our skin complexion the same would love to claim to be belonging to some other country. But the shame is on the country not on them; the kind of shameless activities that many of them are doing abroad the whole country’s name is being tarnished. These people have to remember that they are representing the country abroad and at least think of the pride of the nation and what their actions would do to that pride before they do anything. I say we all should be ashamed because it is all of our responsibility. I don’t even want to get started on respect for women. No morals, no ideals no goals we are just termites eating away the very hands that fed us. Shame on all of us for doing, encouraging or turning a blind eye towards all these atrocities!!!

(f) To defend the country and render national service when called upon to do so;

Note: The sad facts is for most of us the country comes much low in our priority list. The list goes on like – Self, Family, Friend, people of the same caste, people of same religion, people of the same language, people of the same state, and at last comes to Nation. Who cares about defending the nation we have other more important things to defend right??

(g) to protect and improve the natural environment including forests, lakes, rivers and wildlife, and to have compassion for living creatures;

(h) to safeguard public property and to abjure violence;

Note g and h: The caricatures and lewd remarks engraved on our national monuments are enough proof of how rigorously we are following the above duty. Hunting animals for fun, destroying monuments and places of National importance is best past time of all of us. It is as if we have taken an oath of defecating and desecrate all that is holy to India. The very existence of the people who indulge in and who encourage such activities is meaningless.

(i) To develop the scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of inquiry and reform;

Note: Scientific temper and spirit of inquiry – what foresight our forefathers had to write this in the constitution in 1949. But most of us are still uneducated or wrongly-educated*. We still believe in old and decadent superstitions and blindly follow even more wrongly-educated leaders. If only we had even 10 % of the population sharing the same ideals as the constitution-writers of 1949.

(j) To strive towards excellence in all spheres of individual and collective activity so that the nation constantly rises to higher levels of endeavour and achievement;

Note: We have excelled in corruption and vandalism is our speciality in collective activity. With this, we have forced the nation to rise in the negative directions at an outstanding pace. With our endeavour and hard work, we are discovering newer lows of disgrace and shamelessness.

(k) Who is a parent or guardian to provide opportunities for education to his child or, as the case may be, ward between the age of six and fourteen years?

Note: This is the only duty that all of us follow. If only equal importance was given to the other points, India would be already developed and a much better place.

So wonderful and noble were the dreams and ideals the constitution-writers had envisioned and what we have made of those. When will we forget the petty conflicts based on language, religion, state, faith etc and begin to think collectively as Indians? When will we proudly say and act as an Indian? Many would lose hope but I would not. I will try my best to follow the above ideals to the best of my abilities and ensure that everyone follows the same at least with or near me. I would like to urge the PM through #BlogToPM campaign if the government could do more make the public more aware of these duties. I sincerely believe all of us want India to do great and would do our best provided we knew what our duties are. This remains for me a dream unfulfilled.

*Pseudo-intellectuals are normal people like you or me who have absolutely no idea about the topic of discussion and argue like experts with facts available on local news channels, Google and/or heard from some other pseudo-intellectual friend. For e.g. most of our usual discussion on Crickets or movies etc. would belong to this particular category. I believe all of us have at some point or the other have or will belong to this category too so we need not be embarrassed and must acknowledge the presence of the ‘pseudo-intellectuals’

*Wrongly-educated are the people who are worse that educated. No education is better than little education. Because when little education mixes with a lot of superstitions and a twisted mind; we get influential leaders who are the worst evil on planet earth. These leaders are responsible for brainwash innocent youth and through them spreading evil throughout the world.

Declaration: This is not an expert opinion on the constitution or law so what is written below are solely the writers own personal interpretations and may not be taken as citable references. This is solely a personal blog and any ‘over-smart’ or ‘over-intelligent’ misinterpretation or misconstruction of below-given Article is absolutely no responsibility of the writer.