How the Constitution played a pivotal role in the election
Garibi hatao". Or match up to the machismo of “Ab ki baar 400 paar". Yet somehow the Constitution became the dark horse of the election.
Though the BJP won the election, it came up well shy of its 400 paar boast. When the victorious National Democratic Alliance met to formally choose their leader, Narendra Modi first paid obeisance to the Constitution, bowing before it and then touching the book to his forehead. Meanwhile, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi carried a pocket-sized version around to make his point.
The Constitution is no longer the doughty book that weighed down my civics class. It’s become a piece of performance art. In fact literally so.
This year Hand for Handmade, a network of artists and craft patrons, chose 75 artisans from across the country to create 1x1m pieces, 75 tapestries that paid tribute to the Preamble to the Constitution in its 75th year. The 2024 edition of the Mahatma Gandhi University Arts Festival in Kottayam called itself “We, the People of India", the opening phrase of the Preamble. Right before the pran pratistha or consecration ceremony at the Ram Temple in Ayodhya got underway in January, many celebrities, especially from the Malayalam film industry, shared an image of the Preamble on their social media handles without any commentary.
The Preamble had become not just a pledge that we learnt by rote in school, but also a tool of protest. But it was an amulet as well, a talisman to protect oneself against charges of being branded an anti-national seditious troublemaker. Long before this election, the women protesting against the government’s Citizenship (Amendment) Act in Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh in 2020 marked Republic Day by reading the Preamble of the Constitution at midnight.
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