It is the strength of the Indian Constitution that allowed someone like Mr. Narendra Modi who was born into a poor tea-selling family to become the Prime Minister of India. This is possible because the Constitution gives equal rights to everyone and allows every person to grow according to their abilities. The power of a single vote, which every Indian citizen holds, makes it possible for even the poorest person to dream of reaching the highest positions in the country. This is the biggest beauty of Indian democracy: one vote can bring a common person into power. That is why the value of one vote cannot be measured. But this is just one side of the story. The other side is that the equality given by the Constitution makes it possible for someone born in a small hut to stand on equal ground with people born in palaces. A good example of this comes from the 1971 Lok Sabha elections, where ordinary people defeated wealthy industrialists, former kings, and princes. No matter which party these rich or royal candidates belonged to, they were still defeated by common citizens. In these elections, the late K.K. Birla of the Birla Group lost from the Jhunjhunu seat in Rajasthan. A leader from the Tata Group lost in Mumbai, and H.P. Nanda, owner of Escorts Tractors, lost in Faridabad. Even Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi, the Nawab of Pataudi and a famous cricketer, lost his election in Gurgaon and did not even get enough votes to keep his security deposit.
Maharaja Brijendra Singh of Bharatpur lost the election to a former employee of his estate. Similarly, in the 1977 general elections, Maharaja Martand Ju Singh Deo of Rewa, Madhya Pradesh, was defeated by a blind candidate, the late K.K. Shastri. All this was possible only under Indian democracy, because its Constitution weighs all citizens on the same scale. Furthermore, if we examine the history of Indian industrialists, we will find that many small-scale entrepreneurs eventually became renowned industrialists. Among these, the late Ramakrishna Dalmia and Kirloskar are among them. But the most important aspect of the Constitution is that it is the first document in India’s five-thousand-year-old culture that does not categorize people into different categories of high and low, but rather treats every individual as equal on the basis of humanity and grants everyone equal rights. Neither religion nor caste is a factor in this. Based on humanity, every individual has the right to equal justice. The entire country celebrates Constitution Day on November 26th. On this day in 1949, Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar, the architect of the Constitution, submitted it to the Constituent Assembly. Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar, himself a descendant of the lowest strata of society, was keenly aware of the contradictions within Indian society. Therefore, he incorporated the philosophies of Saint Kabir and Guru Nanak into the Constitution, viewing all Indians through a human perspective. The President of India is considered the guardian of this Constitution, and therefore, on Constitution Day, he conveyed the message that our Constitution is a powerful document that can free Indians from a slave mentality. This is because India was under British rule for two hundred years, which had ingrained a slave mentality among its people. Mahatma Gandhi launched the freedom movement to eradicate this slave mentality, with the common citizen of India at its core. Bapu wanted to instill a sense of self-respect and self-esteem in the common Indian. In 1928, he announced that in independent India, every adult citizen would be granted a single vote, the power to form and change governments. Through this single vote, the Indian citizen would become self-sufficient, forcing even the most powerful to bow before him. That’s why today, we see that every five years, during elections, even the most prominent politicians bow down to ordinary citizens.
In fact, Gandhi decided that in a democracy, a king would not be born from the womb of a queen, but from the ballot boxes cast by the people. This philosophy was later elaborated by socialist leader Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia. The Constitution entrusts the independent judiciary with the responsibility of protecting citizens’ rights. The fundamental framework for which the judiciary addresses citizens’ rights is citizens’ rights, which are considered the most sacred in a democracy. It is because of these rights that governments formed by the people strive to eliminate inequality among them. The Modi government’s claim to have lifted 250 million people above the poverty line in the last few years has been made possible through various provisions of the Constitution. Therefore, the Indian Constitution clearly bears the sway for establishing an egalitarian society.
