Our legal system is part of the Constitutional scheme which we adopted about 72 years back, and is still working with all its weaknesses and strengths. It is based on a composite value system which has various ideologies as its parts. However, some ideologies are deemed not part of this composite value-system since they are completely inconsistent with it but are at the same time competing with it and trying to supplant it.The Savarkarite-Golwalkarite one may be an example in point. This clash of ideologies or value-systems, and one group’s attempt to pretend as the only successor or pedigree of the real and genuine Indian heritage and tradition, had been active even during the freedom struggle.In the name of Indianization, this group wanted to perpetuate the hegemony of the anti-women and anti-people value-systems prevalent from ancient times, sometimes weak and at other times strong. These voices echoed even in the Constituent Assembly. Countering them, Dr B.R. Ambedkar had to warn the Constituent Assembly that constitutional morality is to be cultivated, and that adopting the beneficial colonial structures and legislations may be necessary to cultivate this morality among the Indian masses.While introducing the draft Constitution on November 4, 1948 in the Constituent Assembly and stressing the necessity to inculcate constitutional morality in the people of India, Dr Ambedkar had famously said, “Democracy in India is only a top-dressing on an Indian soil, which is essentially undemocratic.”He had to specifically counter the attack, similar to the recent attacks on the ‘colonial psyche’, on the draft Constitution in its relying on a good part of the Government of India Act, 1935. This view of Babasaheb was contested in the Assembly itself by some like Alladi Krishnaswami Ayyar and Vishwambhar Dayal Tripathi. However, on May 17, 1949 Jawaharlal Nehru spoke of our Indian traditions in a more realistic manner, warning against the false pride of considering India as a world-teacher in the matter of democracy and legal systems.He said: “We are all, I am afraid, in the habit of considering ourselves or our friends as angel and others the reverse of angels. We are all apt to think that we stand for the forces of progress and democracy and others do not. I must confess that in spite of my own pride in India and her people, I have grown more humble about talking in terms of our being in the vanguard of progress or democracy.” In his final speech on November 25, 1949, Dr Ambedkar himself had acknowledged about the Indian roots of democratic government and reiterated that those traditions had been lost and there is yet a danger of again losing it. He was categorical throughout that the ancient legal systems had strayed away from the sound heritage which survived only in the Buddhist traditions, the various movements of the so-called low-castes and tribal communities.The Indianisation which survived through the legal systems of Manu, Kautilya, Yajnavalkya and others had made Indian village republics responsible for the ruination of India by decimating the dignity of the individual, and making communities, varnas and castes as absolutist power centres and sources of ruination of India.
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