ENGAGING those young people -- about 10-12 college-going boys and girls -- in a conversation about the Constitution of India was a revealing experience, from many angles. In a way, it was also a troubling experience since many of those young people had no idea about the Constitution. Those who happened to know something were also almost equally ill-informed about the great document that offers one of the definitions of what India is or should be. Though many of those young people knew that Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar ‘wrote’ the Constitution, they knew nothing about the Constituent Assembly. Only one boy said that he had read about the Constituent Assembly, but could not explain how the body functioned and when. But if that is the case with young people around 20 years of age, then many adults, too, did not fare much better -- as a casual survey last week by loud-thinker revealed.

 

The loud-thinker engaged about 20-22 adult men and women in casual conversations about the Constitution of India, and their responses offered enough reasons to be sorry about absence of basic and general awareness about such a critical issue. The overall experience -- of talking with young as well as older adults -- was truly saddening. It is no wonder, the loud-thinker felt, that an intentionally distorted political narrative about the Constitution by some political parties during the Lok Sabha elections could create such a massive disinformation about the country’s most critical statute. Of course, a small sample can never represent the larger truth. So, the loud-thinker is conscious of the pitfalls of such surveys. One cannot really come to any definitive conclusion about the lack of general knowledge of the society about the Constitution on the basis of such a small survey. Yet, the fact about this little exploration was that most people interviewed belonged to ‘educated’ classes of the larger society -- having gone to good schools and colleges. Yet, their information base about the Constitution was pathetically poor. Obviously, these people -- younger or older -- had not been alert enough to have learned at least the basic information about the Constitution. Though a general picture cannot be drawn on the basis of such a small sample, suffice it is to infer that many educated people in our midst may not be conscious of what the Constitution may mean to the society in a true sense.

 

THE loud-thinker felt really, really sad about this revelation. He remembered the reprimand he got from his medical doctor father decades ago for not knowing about the Constituent Assembly that gave birth to the Constitution of India -- in proper detail. The loud-thinker was a student of Political Science, and yet could not answer a few questions put forth to him by his father. The outcome was obvious -- a serious and no-nonsense reprimand. Possibly, such a reprimand does not surface in the family conversations, these days, as the loud-thinker feels tempted to surmise. In other words, the elders in the families (representing an important segment of the larger society) may not feel the need to insist upon everybody to be prepared with basic awareness about the Constitution. This is certainly not a welcome picture. Such a picture needs to be changed for the better. How ? The loud-thinker leaves to the society elders to find out ways to tackle the challenge.