FUNDAMENTAL DUTIES (PART IV-A)

What are fundamental duties?

As the name indicates, fundamental duties are those basic duties or obligation which citizens owe to the state, society and fellow citizens so that a democratic balance between rights and duties could be ensured. After all, rights and duties go hand in hand; they are the two sides of the same coin.

Having only rights without corresponding duties would generate a selfish behavior among the citizens that is a recipe for anarchy.

This is why it is argued that a civilized society always works on the principle that “ he who gets, gives and he who gives, gets.”

The justification for these fundamental duties is even more highlighted in the glorious words of J.F Kennedy, the former US President who once said:

“Don’t ever ask what your country can do for you, always ask what you can do for your country.”

In short, these duties seek to embody those obligations which the citizens must perform towards the nation state which has nurtured them, protected them from war and external aggression or from any pandemic for that matter. These duties as such may range from rendering compulsory military service to even dying for in defense of one’s nation.

Carried away by this thinking, these fundamental duties were laid down in the constitution in spite of the fact that there was no mention of these duties in the original constitution. It was also to fulfill the solemn pledge which citizens of India seek to undertake in the glorious words of the Preamble.

Entry of fundamental duties into the Constitution:

The Fundamental Duties are eleven in number and are contained in Art. 51-A of the constitution. This Article was inserted into the Constitution by the 42nd Amendment Act 1976.In such countries the duties of citizens are governed by common or civil law and Judicial decisions. The Indian Constitution has borrowed the concept of Fundamental Duties from the Constitutions of Socialist countries. But, unlike the Indian Constitution, the constitutions of socialist countries guaranteed the right to work to their citizens whereas in the Constitution of India, right to work person, who is in need of basics of life, may not be able to discharge his duties properly.

The duties enumerated in Art. 51-A are statutory duties and are enforceable by law. Violation of the duties can be met with punishment. But the Constitution does not impose penalty for the violation of the duties. It is left to the Legislatures to prescribe penalty for the violation of specific duties. The Constitution imposes upon the citizen’s definite duties towards the society and towards the State. The eleven duties are as under: -

a.      To abide by the constitution and respect its ideals and institutions, the National flag and the national anthem;

b.      To cherish and follow the bold ideals which inspired our national struggle for freedom;

c.      To uphold and protect the sovereignty, unity and integrity of India;

d.      To defend the country and render national service when called upon to do so;

e.      To promote harmony and the spirit of common brotherhood amongst all the people of India transcending religious, linguistic and regional or sectional diversities; to renounce practices derogatory to the dignity of women;

f.       To value and preserve the rich heritage or out composite, culture;

g.      To protect and improve the natural environment including forest, lakes, rivers and wild life, and to have compassion for living creatures;

h.      To develop scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of inquiry and reform;

i.       To safeguard public property and to abjure violence;

j         To strive towards excellence in all spheres of individual and collective activity so that the nation constantly rises to higher levels of   achievement.

k.      who is a present or guardian to provide opportunities for education to his child or, as the case may be, ward between the age of six and fourteen years. (Eighty Sixth Amendment, 2002)

Recommendation for Fundamental Duties

The recommendation for the inclusion of fundamental duties in the Constitution was made by Sardar Swaran Singh Committee in 1976 following the resolution of All India Congress Committee passed on May 29, 1976 at its meeting  held in New Delhi. The non-inclusion of Fundamental Duties in the Constitution was declared as a historical mistake.

The Swaran Singh Committee recommended for the inclusion of eight fundamental duties. However, the 42^nd Amendment Act, 1976 added ten fundamental duties. These duties are included in Part IVA of the Constitution. Therefore, these duties are also non-justiciable like Directive Principles of State Policy. However, these duties can be enforced by enacting appropriate law for that purpose.

Justice verma committee on teaching fundamental duties to citizens (1998)

The Government constituted the Committee in July 1998 under the Chairmanship of Justice J.S. Verma, former Chief Justice of India to operationalise the suggestions to teach fundamental duties to the citizens of the country.

The operationalisation strategy was based on the maxim that to discharge fundamental duties the onus is on every citizen and there is no one with higher credentials or superior authority to teach fundamental duties to others who alone may be required to imbibe these values and perform the duties. It must be remembered that education is a sub system of the total social system and it is in this context that the recommendations stated in this report should be viewed. Of course a long term strategy for developing a value based society can come only through the instrumentality of education and training.

The salient recommendations include

a)         generating awareness and consciousness,

b)      optimising benefits from existing schemes and programmes,

c)      protection and improvement of environment,

d)      re-orienting approaches to school curriculum,

e)      elimination of gender bias,

f)       re-orienting teachers’ education programmes,

g) incorporating fundamental duties in higher and professional education,

h)      people’s representatives from Panchayat to Parliament,

i)       public administration and civil servants,

j)       administration of justice,

k)      business and industry,

l)       and Media.

The committee has dwelt at length all these salient features to operationalise the suggestions to teach fundamental duties to the citizens of the country.

Can Fundamental Duties be made binding on citizens?

Before this question can be answered satisfactorily, let’s first of all zero in on the fact that why any such provision like fundamental duties was not provided by the Constitution makers in the original Constitution and why was a need felt later on to insert this provision in the Constitution.

To answer the first question, it can be argued though, it was not discussed anywhere in the Constituent Assembly, but still a reasonable thinking can be alluded to the makers that the Indian citizens would not be expected to have gained that much maturity after having remained for so long under the spell of a colonial rule that had deprived them of not only education, but also a training in the civic culture and democratic values. Therefore, expecting from them an observance of such duties would be expecting too much from them at this stage.

Secondly, yet more importantly, what must have gone down well in the thinking of the Constitution makers in this regard, could be the reason that Indian people have had always performed such duties rather having made it an integral part and parcel of their lives ever since the dawn of Indian civilization. Because, whatever has been delineated under fundamental duties in the present days constitution is nothing more than the codification of those tasks that have always remained central to Indian way of life. Say for example, the duty that a citizen should protect the security, sovereignty and integrity of the country or for that matter, to promote common brotherhood transcending cultural, regional or linguistic diversities or to protect the natural environment, lakes, forests and wild life with a compassion for living creatures etc, all have had been exhibited by Indian people in ample amount throughout the civilizational history of India and why to question or so called belittle Indian character by exhorting on something called as fundamental duties, the makers could have concurred with.

At the same time, it can also be argued that the Constitution makers were more concerned with the fundamental rights which they wanted to secure through the Constitution for the people of this country, the worth of which they themselves had acknowledged during the colonial rule and thus wanted to have no dilution in their content or scope by providing any countervailing provision like fundamental duties in the Constitution.

Having said that the significance of fundamental duties was felt as pointed out by the Swaran Singh committee appointed for the purpose during Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s regime that in order to inculcate a sense of ownership for the country besides promoting the educative values of civility, morality and ethicality among the citizens of this country, it was desired that the citizens should be made to abide by some of such civic and moral duties so that India could also stand out as a progressive and civilized nation in the comity of nations and could be viewed as such from the international perspective.

Nevertheless, above all, the main consideration behind the insertion of these duties in the Constitution by 42^nd C.A was to broadly educate the Indian masses from the view point that being citizens they should not merely care about their rights against the state, but should also be cognizant of the fact that they do owe certain duties towards the country, to the society and towards the fellow citizens.

In this sense, it was not intended even by the concerned Constitutional Amendment that these duties would carry along a character of enforceability instead, what was envisaged was to make these duties as a part of educational process of the country to inculcate a sense of realization among the Indian citizenry. This is also corroborated by their being placed in the Constitution just after the directive principles in a newly created part called part-IV-A under Article 51-A, for the directive principles are also not legally enforceable.

Having said that, a question may still be asked, can fundamental duties be made enforceable though, from the very scheme of the Constitution, it does not appear to be.

In this regard, one can reasonably say that they can be, for it has been a well established proposition of law that every right has a corresponding and correlative duty; without a duty, a right becomes a license to do whatever on the part of a right holder thereby, denuding others of their right. Such a situation would produce a chaos in the society where “might is right” becomes a norm and hence, democratic order would be thrown to winds. Therefore, in order to balance or smooth out the rights of the individuals in a society, the duties can be and should be made enforceable on the part of the citizens.

A similar line of arguments has had been taken by the Supreme Court in a catena of cases so much so that the Apex Court has even went on to assert that these duties are even binding on the state itself on the reasoning that the collective duties of the citizens constitute a duty of the state after all, a state comes into being and exists by virtue of its citizens. Simultaneously, on a citizen’s part, the court held that a citizen should think twice before coming to us for the enforcement of his right if he fails to observe his duty after all, being a part of the Constitution, an equal importance has to be paid to this Constitutional provision as well. 

Secondly, the Parliament is competent to make a law seeking to implement a fundamental duty and as the Courts have held, it shall be considered as a reasonable restriction on the enjoyment of a fundamental rights and the Courts would not adjudge such a law as unconstitutional merely on the ground that it seeks to infringe or abridge a fundamental right. This reasoning of the Court can be appreciated from the view point that no fundamental right can be absolute in any democratic society and when it comes to collective rights, individual rights are bound to become subservient.

Thirdly, we cannot loose sight of the fact that a number of laws still exist in the Indian legal system which already seek to enforce some of these duties although indirectly as pointed out by Verma Committee that was set up for this very purpose in the year 1999. For example, there are laws under the Penal Code that penalize any activity disrupting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the country. Many environmental laws exist that seek to penalize any environment or wild life disrupting activity and so on.

However, the dominant question remains to be unanswered that whether all fundamental duties laid down in the Constitution could be made enforceable or just a few of them.

Having a plain reading of the mentioned duties, we can discern that there are some duties which appear to be legally unenforceable by virtue of their being imprecise and vague and thus do not convey any definite idea or ideals worth implementing or legal enforcement.  For example, a duty calling upon citizens to cherish and follow the noble ideals which inspired our national struggle for freedom or for that matter, anotherduty that calls upon a citizen to develop the scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of enquiry and reform etc. could hardly be legally enforced.

Thus, it can fairly be concluded that not all, but some of the fundamental duties can be made binding legally on the citizens and those which cannot be made as such should be promoted through Constitutional means in a manner that these be disseminated as moral percepts through mass media or curricular text books so that these may be imbibed by one and all to be reflected in every Indian’s thoughts and actions…

Key terms

Directive Principles: The Directive Principles of State Policy are not justiciable in Indian Constitution. Directive Principles of State Policy are contained in Part IV of the Constitution and declares the aim and objectives to be taken by the State in the Governance of the country. This part compels the states to implement this policy.

Uniform Civil code: A common code that applies to all people of India irrespective of their religious denominations especially for matrimonial matters. Article 44 of the Constitution specifically provides for the same and obligates every State to secure a uniform civil code.

Political Democracy: Freedom in respect of all political matters as is secured by the provision of fundamental rights in our Constitution.

Social and Economic democracy: An ideal that is being sought to be achieved by the directive principles of state policy that will ensure not only a social parity among the Indians, but income parity as well.

Privy purses:  The concentration of wealth in the hands of the former Princes or rulers.