On Constitution Day, recalling Ambedkar’s 3 warnings about India’s future, which echo today

Ambedkar, the Father of India’s Constitution, had stressed several times that the efficacy and impact of the Constitution would depend on those implementing it.

Constitution Day: At a joint sitting of Parliament to mark 75 years of the adoption of the Indian constitution on Tuesday (November 26), Vice-President Jagdeep Dhankhar quoted Dr BR Ambedkar to say that politicians should “keep country over creed”.

Ambedkar, the Father of India’s Constitution, had stressed several times that the efficacy and impact of the Constitution would depend on those implementing it. “…however good a Constitution may be, it is sure to turn out bad because those who are called to work it, happen to be a bad lot,” he had said.

The statement Dhankhar quoted is from Ambedkar’s concluding remarks in the Constituent Assembly on November 25, 1949, in which he voiced several fears regarding the future of the country. Today, as the Constitution is frequently invoked by both sides amid an increasingly acrimonious political discourse, echoes can be heard of many of Ambedkar’s fears. We list three.

“Will history repeat itself? It is this thought which fills me with anxiety. This anxiety is deepened by the realisation of the fact that in addition to our old enemies in the form of castes and creeds we are going to have many political parties with diverse and opposing political creeds. Will Indians place the country above their creed or will they place creed above country? I do not know. But this much is certain that if the parties place creed above country, our independence will be put in jeopardy a second time and probably be lost for ever,” Ambedkar said.