The red-and-black pocket edition of the Indian Constitution held up at political rallies and in Parliament is a best seller today. The phone rings non-stop at book shops, and sales people are out of breath in their effort to keep pace with the constant demand for “the book that Rahul Gandhi has”!
Designed and published by the Lucknow based Eastern Book Company (EBC), the latest edition is selling at a cost of Rs. 895. The first edition of the same copy of the Constitution by Gopal Sankaranarayanan was released in 2009 at a cost of Rs 595 mainly for law enthusiasts.
Sankaranarayanan is a senior Supreme Court lawyer who is pleased to see politicians, both who uphold the Constitution and those who denigrate it, share the book with voters. The publishers are pleasantly surprised that the 17th edition released recently has sold like hot cakes.
The Constitution has become popular with the public at large and the demand for more copies is at its shrill best. In the past about 4,000 copies had sold in a year, while the book sold more than 5,000 just between last February and May.
The interest of citizens in the Constitution is the best thing that could have happened to a text that has been written for the people. The coat-pocket edition of the Constitution is different to the copy shown in Parliament by Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Akhilesh Yadav, and his parliamentarian wife Dimple.
Previously numerous books on interpretations and commentaries on the Constitution were sold, but today the text of the Constitution itself is in demand.
The interest in the Constitution is recent, but most welcome. Copies of the Constitution were first pulled out of libraries and classrooms in December 2019.
They were taken to the street as a protest against the government’s plan to amend the Citizenship Act and to introduce a nationwide national registration of citizens.
Azad And The Constitution
One Friday in January 2020 Bhim Army chief Chandrashekhar Azad had walked to Delhi’s Jama Masjid with the Constitution of India in hand. He had made himself comfortable on the steps of the masjid before reading the Preamble to protest the Citizenship Amendment Act.
The Preamble is the soul of the Constitution and allows peaceful protest against all injustice. Azad had also read the Constitution at Delhi’s India Gate along with many students and ordinary citizens, after which he was taken into custody.
Two years later when Congress leader Rahul Gandhi began his Bharat Jodo Yatra, he said that his struggle was to save democracy and the Constitution.
All those who had watched Gandhi, or joined him in the march saw a copy of the Constitution in his hand as he had walked from Kanyakumari in the south to Kashmir in the north. When he arrived in Mhow in Madhya Pradesh Gandhi had made a promise to protect the Constitution.
Mhow is the birthplace of Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, father of the Indian Constitution. In his second journey from east to the west, Gandhi had ended the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra in Mumbai by reading the Preamble that is a reflection of the core constitutional values embodied in the Constitution declaring India to be a sovereign, socialist, secular, democratic republic committed to justice, equality and liberty for the people.
The opening and last sentences of the Preamble read, “We the people…adopt, enact and give to ourselves this Constitution signifying the power that is vested in the hands of the people”.
The Constitution emerged as the star campaigner in the last Lok Sabha elections. Inspired by the political leadership of the day that has dusted the Constitution out of the archives and aired it in public places, students across the state now want a copy of their own. However at a cost affordable to them.
A Congressman told The Citizen that a bulk order for the book has been sent to the publisher from the office of the Congress Party.
The Importance Of Prayagraj
When Congress leader Rahul Gandhi attends the Save the Constitution meet in Prayagraj on August 24, he will carry a pocket-size copy of the Constitution with him. This is a gesture to remind the people of the power of their rights, and Prayagraj as a place of many revolutionary deeds in the past.
Apart from its importance as a place of pilgrimage, Prayagraj is at the heart of the agrarian plains of Uttar Pradesh (UP). The British nursed the city as an administrative centre by building a high court, a police headquarters and a public service commission soon after the colonialists had recovered from a near defeat in the war of rebellion in 1857.
It was Maulvi Liaquat Ali who had led the revolt against the British in 1857 when Prayagraj saw the massacre of a large number of Europeans.
Prayagraj, then called Allahabad, was made capital of UP for two decades till 1920. Later the capital was moved to Lucknow. Throughout colonial rule Prayagraj was populated with a large number of Europeans, a fact that catapulted the city to become a centre of revolutionary activities.
Nityanand Chatterji had hurled a bomb at a European club here and in Alfred Park in 1931, Chandrashekhar Azad had died when surrounded by British police.
The city had hosted the 1888 session of the Indian National Congress and the Nehru family homes of Anand Bhavan and Swaraj Bhavan were centres of the freedom struggle. The city was an intellectual hub that gave birth to countless satyagrahis led by the likes of Purushttam Das Tandon and Bishambhar Nath Pande as well as poets like Firaq Gorakhpuri.
The Word And The Spirit
Now that the word of the Constitution is out in the open, the challenge is to imbibe the spirit and to get citizens to practise the values and vision of the text. Citizens need to be empowered to be able to challenge any force that is opposed to the principles of equality, fraternity and injustice.
It has to be tirelessly repeated that an individual’s worth is not based on the accident of their birth but on their creative contribution to society. Society needs to learn to value citizens for what they do and not for where they are born.
The role of the Constitution is still not understood. Its role in having made the country achieve whatever it has since independence is still not appreciated.
It is that connection between the way the Constitution has allowed the country to remain free and relatively fair that needs to be understood and appreciated by citizens after which it will be a breeze to take on the most difficult government in the present as well as in the future.