FUNDAMENTAL DUTIES
The Fundamental Duties of citizens were added
to the Constitution by the 42nd Amendment in 1976, upon the recommendations of
the Swaran Singh Committee that was constituted by the
government earlier that year.
Originally ten in number, the Fundamental Duties were increased to eleven by
the 86th Amendment in 2002, which added a duty on every parent or guardian to ensure
that their child or ward was provided opportunities for education between the
ages of six and fourteen years. The other Fundamental Duties obligate all
citizens to respect the national symbols of India, including the Constitution,
to cherish its heritage, preserve its composite culture and assist in its defense. They also obligate all Indians to promote the
spirit of common brotherhood, protect the environment and public property,
develop scientific temper, abjure violence, and strive towards
excellence in all spheres of life. Citizens are morally obligated by the
Constitution to perform these duties. However, like the Directive Principles,
these are non-justifiable, without any legal sanction in case of their
violation or non-compliance. [98] [100]There is reference to such duties in international
instruments such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights, and Article 51A
brings the Indian Constitution into conformity with these treaties.
Fundamental Duties of
citizens serve a useful purpose. In particular, no democratic polity can ever
succeed where the citizens are not willing to be active participants in the
process of governance by assuming responsibilities and discharging citizenship
duties and coming forward to give their
best to the country. Some of the fundamental duties enshrined in article 51A
have been incorporated in separate laws.
For
instance, the first duty includes respect for the National Flag and the
National Anthem. Disrespect is punishable by law. To value and preserve the
rich heritage of the mosaic that is India should help to weld our people into
one nation but much more than article 51A will be needed to treat all human
beings equally, to respect each religion and to confine it to the private
sphere and not make it a bone of contention between different communities of
this land. In sum, the Commission believes that article 51A has travelled a
great distance since it was introduced in the Forty-second Amendment and further
consideration should be given to ways and means to popularise the knowledge and
content of the Fundamental Duties and effectuate them.
The
most important task before us is to reconcile the claims of the individual
citizen and those of the civic society. To achieve this, it is important to
orient the individual citizen to be conscious of his social and citizenship
responsibilities and so shape the society that we all become solicitous and
considerate of the inalienable rights of our fellow citizens. Therefore,
awareness of our citizenship duties is as important as awareness of our rights.
Every right implies a corresponding duty but every duty does not imply a
corresponding right. Man does not live for himself alone. He lives for the good
of others as well as of himself.
It
is this knowledge of what is right and wrong that makes a man responsible to
himself and to the society and this knowledge is inculcated by imbibing and
clearly understanding one’s citizenship duties. The fundamental duties are the
foundations of human dignity and national character. If every citizen performs
his duties irrespective of considerations of caste, creed, colour and language,
most of the malaise of the present day polity could be contained, if not
eradicated, and the society as a whole uplifted. Rich or poor, in power or out
of power, obedience to citizenship duty, at all costs and risks, is the essence
of civilized life.
Spirit of Harmony and Dignity of Women Some further thought needs to be given
to clauses (e) and (f) of article 51A. Article 51A(e) desires
the promotion of harmony and the spirit of common brotherhood among all the
people of India transcending religious, linguistic and regional or sectional
diversities and renunciation of practices derogatory to the dignity of women.
It is couched in broad terms but it should be clear that attacks on minority
communities or minority opinions are frowned upon. Respect for both are
essential and the wording lends support to a broad humanism to cover such
differences as may exist or better still, co-exist.
Two
thoughts can be distilled. The first is that the objective will not be reached
unless there is a determined effort to restrict religious practices to the home
on the justified premise that one’s religion is a personal matter and is not
conducive to mass assertiveness. The other is the status of women.
Lip
service is being paid to the doctrine of gender equality. The fact remains that
generally women are still regarded as inferior both home and workplace although
the Commission has noticed an improvement, however dissatisfied it may be with
the degree of the at improvement. It is necessary to separate religious
precepts from civil law. Civil law as the name implies is a matter for society
not for religious leaders and it would seem to us to be axiomatic that in
matters of civil rights, laws of property and inheritance and marriage and
divorce, although practices may differ, legal rights that accrue must be the
same. For example, a marriage may be solemnised according to religious or
social custom but the rights of a woman in the case of divorce must be the same
no matter what her religion is.
Clause
(e) of article 51A also seems to cover the need to regard all human beings
equally. In this connection, it is necessary to consider the question of the
upliftment of the Scheduled Castes and other disadvantaged sections of our
society. The scourge must be eradicated. The Constitution gave us ten years to
do the job; the provision has been extended to fifty years and we are in our
sixth ten-year period but we are no nearer the goal. The discrimination is
two-fold. It is economic-condemning whole sections of our society numbering
millions to menial jobs as part of the evil of treating them as sub-human. We
have provided for reservation of jobs to these people, we have even given them
separate constituencies to represent them. It has created a vested interest in
backwardness. The other adverse result is that it has had no effect on their
status in society, which continues to be determined by birth and not human
worth and human personality. It is this social stigma which still plagues our
people and the struggle to restore to them basic human dignity has made no
significant progress. While the Commission appreciates the context in which
affirmative action became necessary, it feels that reservation of jobs and
seats in the legislatures will not help this aspect of the matter.
It
is quite clear to the Commission that the disease of considering human beings
as high or low based on the accident of birth is a disease rooted in the mind
and it is in the mind that the defences of a society based on human dignity and
equality must be constructed. Logically this leads directly to the conclusion
that the key lies in education. The time to begin training our young people to
respect the National flag and sing the National anthem, to respect women, to
hold all religions equal and deserving of as much respect as one’s own, to
accept that all human beings are born equal and are entitled to equal treatment
are among principles best taught by examples when the child is too young to
understand but not too young to obey. The focus must, therefore, shift to
education which has suffered from serious neglect. Schools restrict admissions
on unacceptable criteria, teachers themselves are untrained and often
politicised, as is the curriculum. Despite these hardships, many of our young
people have done well.
COMPOSITE CULTURE
Clause (f) of
article 51A requires us to value and preserve the rich heritage of our
composite culture. It follows that we may not break each other’s places of
worship, set fire to religious texts, or beat up one another’s priests or
obstruct those who exercise their Fundamental Right under article 25 to
profess, practice and propagate religion. Composite culture means culture
drawn from many strands. Here again education in its broadest and best sense
can provide the corrective to the aberrations that have occurred. Education
is not confined only to the time spent in schools and colleges. Education
begins at birth in the subconscious and continues till death. Anyone who says
that he has nothing more to learn is already brain-dead.
It follows that the
influences that play on a child at home are of great importance. Parents
should understand that education begins at home, the examples they set, the
environment of enlightenment and tolerance that is necessary to produce good
citizens cannot be sub-contracted to formal schooling important though this
is. Schemes should, therefore, be framed that include parents in social
activities that have as their objective the country’s age-old traditions, its
welcome to the persecuted of every faith, its virtues of tolerance of and
respect for all religions and a certain pride in belonging to this land and
in being considered as Indian. The highest office in our democracy is the
office of citizen; this is not only a platitude, it must translate into
reality.
The distinction is
not illusory. This country has given far too much indulgence to an attitude
of mind that acts on the question - what is there in it for me? Education and
the process of inculcating unselfishness and a sense of obligation to one’s
fellowmen should inspire the question – where does my duty lie? The
transformation has the potential to make our nation strong, invincible and
able to command the respect of the world.
(i) The Commission
recommends that the first and foremost step required by the Union and State
Governments is to sensitise the people and to create a general awareness of
the provisions of fundamental duties amongst the citizens on the lines
recommended by the Justice Verma Committee on the subject. Consideration
should be given to the ways and means by which Fundamental Duties could be
popularized and made effective;
(ii) right to
freedom of religion and other freedoms must be jealously guarded and rights
of minorities and fellow citizens respected;
(iii) reform of the
whole process of education is an immediate but immense need, as is the need
to free it from governmental or political control; it is only through
education that will power to adhere to our Fundamental Duties as citizens can
be inculcated; and
(iv) duty to vote at
elections, actively participate in the democratic process of governance and
to pay taxes should be included in article 51A. The Commission fully endorses
the other recommendations of the Justice Verma Committee on
operationalisation of Fundamental Duties of Citizens and strongly suggests
their early implementation.
The Commission also
recommends that the following should be incorporated as fundamental duties in
article 51A of the Constitution -
.To fosters a spirit
of family values and responsible parenthood in the matter of education,
physical and moral well-being of children.
. Duty of industrial
organizations to provide education to children of their employees
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