‘I want all people to be nothing else but Indians’: Shashi Tharoor on BR Ambedkar’s vision

The very idea of India is of one land embracing many. It is the idea that a nation may accommodate – indeed, celebrate – differences of caste, creed, colour, culture, cuisine, conviction, costume, and custom, and still rally around a democratic consensus. That consensus is around the simple constitutional principle that in a democracy under the rule of law, you do not really need to agree all the time – except on the ground rules of how you will disagree. The reason India has survived all the stresses and strains that have beset it for nearly eight decades, and that led so many to predict its imminent disintegration, is that it maintained consensus on how to manage without consensus. Today, those in positions of power seem to be scorning these ground rules, which are enshrined, alongside the idea of India, in our Constitution. This is why it is imperative, today more than ever, to reaffirm those rules, that idea, and – above all – our Constitution.

The Constitution had to incorporate, in its very essence, this idea of Indian nationhood, which had emerged from the nationalist movement. Nationalism, to my mind, is essentially divisible into those forms that are changeless (like...

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