Since the constitution came into being, the people of India gradually started to internalize the preambular values. Justice, liberty, equality and fraternity ceased to be only preambular vocabulary, instead they became values to live by, to stand for, and, when necessary, to fight for on the streets. India’s protest culture offers one way of tracing that journey.
Remember opening a school textbook at the beginning of a new session, the uncreased pages and a small anticipation of starting afresh. Among those opening pages were words we learned to recite long before we understood what they asked of us: “We, the People of India, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a SOVEREIGN SOCIALIST SECULAR DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC and to secure to all its citizens.”
On 25 November 1949, Dr. B. R. Ambedkar asked the Constituent Assembly, “Will she maintain her independence or will she lose it again?” The question was not just about protecting India from an external power, but was also about whether a newly independent country, with a vast geography and largely illiterate population, could sustain the institutions and habits that democracy demanded.
Yet, over time, something remarkable happened. The people of India gradually started to internalize the preambular values. Justice, liberty, equality and fraternity ceased to be only preambular vocabulary, instead they became values to live by, to stand for, and, when necessary, to fight for on the streets. India’s protest culture offers one way of tracing that journey. For instance the demand for Social Justice came into prominence during the Mandal protests in 1990s, when Other Backward Classes (OBCs) were given reservation to improve their socio-economic and educational status and address their historical advantages. Similarly the idea of Economic Justice has moved from the pages of the Constitution into the language of the street. One such example was the protest at the Bhatta Parsaul in 2011, where farmers protested land acquisition questioning compensation, ownership and their future. A field held years of labour and the hope of another harvest. Their struggle brought these concerns into wider debates surrounding land rights and reform.
But Justice in a democracy also has a political dimension, the right to be heard, to question power and to participate in determining how one is governed. The Sampoorna Kranti, movement led by Jayaprakash Narayan grew from student protests in Bihar against corruption, rising prices and failures of governance and developed into a wider challenge to political authority. The experience of the Emergency made the stakes even sharper.
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Such movements are not just historical event, rather, they are key examples of how citizens negotiate constitutional promises in public spaces. Like the idea of equality can’t be confined to one dimension. To ensure equality of status in the society, some sections of population have challenged the prevailing discrimination in society on the basis of caste, gender, or sexual identity. Organizations like Dalit Panthers, challenged the caste-based oppression to a great extent. Similarly, in the contemporary era, LGBTQ plus protest has also brought questions of equal rights and recognition for the people belonging to these community. Such struggles are a clear demonstration of constitutional equality extending much more beyond the formal legal guarantees.
Alongside justice and equality, liberty is equally important, for upholding the democratic character of Indian republic. The recent Cockroach Janta Party protest against NEET-paper leak demonstrated how liberty could be articulated not only on the ground but also across digital media. What began as an online satirical movement evolved into street protests, with the GenZ voicing their concerns through the tunes of Azaadi(freedom), witty placards, and meme pages.
Constitutional values rarely arrive on the streets in neat categories. They overlap, collide and sometimes produce competing claims to justice, liberty and equality.
The Preamble was written as a promise, but generations of citizens have repeatedly turned its words into demands and continue to do so.
(Kaushal Pallai is a TRIP intern)