Republic Day: An occasion to celebrate the vibrancy of our democracy & Constitution, writes Prosenjit Nath

Jan. 26: On the occasion of the 73rd Republic Day of India, which is now being celebrated under the aegis of Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav, it is time to recall that it was on this very day – January 26 – in 1950, that post ‘our tryst with destiny’, we gave ourselves an extraordinary gift, the Constitution of India. While wishing you all a very happy Republic Day, I wish to take this opportunity to write about the beauty of our artistically elegant Indian Constitution, the only one of its kind with such an artistic elegance, which has served us very well for all of these years and will continue to do so for eons, notwithstanding our vastly diverse and quite complex nature of our country and its citizens. It is therefore no wonder that the Indian constitution not only intrigues and impresses people across the world but also inspires national and international constitutional experts.

The original Constitution painstakingly hands written in a calligraphy style that is embellished with artworks from the leading artists, which represent the sociocultural diversity of our nation, is now safely and securely stored within a vault-like room in the Library of the Parliament of India in New Delhi. It is housed inside a helium filled case which measures 30x21x9 inches in size. The storage maintains the exacting standards of the climate control, which are used in most museums. The temperature is maintained at 20° C (+/- 2°C) and the relative humidity is maintained at 30%(+/-5%), throughout the year. Inside this climate controlled nitrogen laden case lies our original Indian Constitution which is a 251 pages long manuscript. It weights around 3.75 Kgs.

The Indian constitution with some 90,000 odd words, is the longest constitution of any sovereign nation in the world. The original constitution of India, is made of 22 parts, 395 articles and eight schedules. The beauty of this original constitution is its aesthetics, which is sure to appeal to anyone’s eyes. Each of the letters, quotation marks, parentheses and the numbers are all so perfectly hand written with artistic elegance of calligraphy and not one word is misspelled, and not one blotch of ink is seen anywhere. The perfection of the calligraphy and the italics are so immaculately penned that it is almost impossible to surmise that the constitution has actually been hand written by a man named Prem Behari Narain Raizada (Saxena). Our Constitution is the longest hand written Constitution of any country in the world.

It provides a comprehensive framework for guiding and governing our vast country with much greater diversity. Our constitution has been framed keeping in mind our social, cultural, religious, linguistic and innumerable other diversities, which are integral to India. The opening and last sentences of the preamble of our constitution – “We, the people… adopt, enact and give to ourselves this Constitution” – signify that the power to govern our nation lies in the hands of we the people of this great country. The objectives specified in the preamble constitutes the basic structure of our Constitution, which cannot be amended and therefore we the people of this country will continue to be central to the governance of India.