• Fraternity means assuring the dignity of the individual and the unity and integrity of the Nation.
• Indian constitution has borrowed it from French Revolution.
• The principle and emotion of Fraternity can be seen in the preamble of the constitution as well as in Article 51A(e).
• However, It is difficult to achieve fraternity in India due to its diversity.

Indian Constitution and Fraternity

• Idea of the Constitution of India was initially proposed in December 1934 by M.N. Roy.
• He is a pioneer of the Communist movement in India and an advocate of radical democracy.
• In 1935, it became an official demand of the Indian National Congress (INC).
• It was officially adopted in the Lucknow session in April 1936.
• Session was presided by Jawaharlal Nehru.
• Jawaharlal Nehru also drafted the Objectives Resolution.
• Drafting Committee was presided over by B.R. Ambedkar.

B.R Ambedkar on Fraternity:

• Drafting Committee was presided over by B.R. Ambedkar.
• Fraternity means a sense of common brotherhood among all Indians if Indians being one people.
• It is the principle that gives unity and solidarity to social life.
• Without fraternity, equality and liberty will be no deeper than coats of paint.
• The idea of fraternity is linked to that of social solidarity, which is impossible to accomplish without public empathy.
• Along with liberty, equality, and justice, the fraternity was added to the principles in the Preamble.
• French Revolution gave the message of the 1792 Edict of Fraternity (‘All governments are our enemies, all people our friends’).

Acharya Kripalani:

• He pointed out that the content of the Preamble also had a moral, spiritual and mystical content.
• If India wants to use democracy as only a legal, constitutional and formal device, the whole country should understand the moral, spiritual the mystic implication of the word democracy.

Fraternity as Fundamental Duty

Article 51A of the Constitution:

• It was added by the 42nd Amendment in 1976.
• It further amended by 86th Amendment in 2010.

Article 51A(e):

• It referred to the duty of every citizen ‘to promote harmony and the spirit of common brotherhood amongst all the people of India’.

Sir Ernest Barker:

• Fraternity is used to denote both emotion and principle.
• But it is generally used to denote emotion rather than principle.
• The emotion of loyalty to the state and the emotion of nationalism for national society are, or should be, controlled emotions.

Conditions and Challenges for Successful Democracy

Conditions Precedent for the Successful Working of Democracy:

• Democracy is prone to change form and purpose and its purpose in our times ‘is not so much to put a curb on an autocratic king as to bring about welfare of the people’.
• It is a method of government by the discussion that brings about revolutionary changes in the economic and social life of people without bloodshed.
• There must not be glaring inequalities in society, there must also be an opposition, equality in law as well as equal protection of law, and administration and observance of constitutional morality.
• There must be no tyranny of the majority over the minority.
• A functioning moral order in society and a public conscience are essential.

Challenges to Democracy:

• Inequalities continue to persist and so do those emanate from the caste system.
• Democratic opposition has progressively declined in substance.
• Equality in law does not necessarily mean equal protection of the law.
• Little regard is paid to constitutional morality.
• Each of Gandhiji’s Seven Social Sins seem to hold good in the functioning of the polity.

Looking ahead:

• India’s existential reality is one of immense diversity.
• There is also an unfortunate legacy of violence at birth that persists and takes different forms.
• This necessitates the functioning in practice of these principles in all their diversity and in individual and collective terms.
• Without imputing infallibility, a sense of fraternity as an essential virtue is thus unavoidable.
• This cannot be merely in formal terms and has to be imbibed individually and collectively.

There is a need to excavate the moral values embedded in the Constitution. It needs to be at both individual and collective levels. A failure to do so would expose to the threat of fragmentation of democracy.