Every individual is born endowed with natural and inviolable human rights. The state or any authority has no power to grant or withhold these natural and universally held rights, which are part of their natural being. Nor does anyone have any legal authority to diminish them or outrage their human dignity. A civilised state fundamentally rests upon the observance and guarantee of this principle.
The Constitution of Bangladesh powerfully asserts this idea through its simple but forceful declarations: “All powers in the Republic belong to the people,” Article 7(1). “The Constitution shall be the supreme law of the Republic and any law inconsistent with the Constitution shall, to the extent of the inconsistency, be void.” Article 7(2). It carries the most fundamental implication – the state exists for the people and not the people for the state. This is not just a legal doctrine but the very foundation of democracy, justice and popular sovereignty. Tagore’s assertion: “We are all kings in the kingdom of our king” expresses the same idea in a poetic sense, while the Constitution declares it in a formal, legal language. Sovereignty is not the property of political rulers or the military or bureaucrats and certainly not that of influential clouts, but strictly of the people.
Many citizens remain oblivious of this constitutional ownership of the republic, which sets them in a perilous unequal relation with those who wield state power. This often fosters a syndrome of not only loss of confidence in one’s own dignified status and freedom but also in one’s innate sense of power over the state apparatus, paving the way to an erosion of democracy in favour of authoritarianism. It is the social contract which establishes a dynamic relation between the citizens and the state, between the ruler and the ruled.
Its effectiveness or success cannot depend solely upon legalistic enforcement, but rather crucially upon the level of awareness of its citizens on the nature of their rights, responsibilities and their relation to the state itself. The plight of most of the developing democracies has been largely the lack of a culture that calls rulers to account, that holds state power, rather than the governed, to be subservient. Many believe that we should at best tremble before power, but not to challenge it, nor to remind the holders of such power that they are at our service.
In a true republic, no parliamentarian, president, general or institution is a proprietor or owner of the state; instead, they are, or ought to be, trustees of the delegated sovereign authority of the people. If indeed all powers belong to the people, then it logically follows that every instrument of state, be it legislature, executive, judiciary, bureaucracy or the defence forces, is an agent or servant of the people, created to serve their interests. Even any amendment to the Constitution must be consistent with this cardinal principle of popular sovereignty which does not allow any deviation from the people’s will.
For a person to be truly and fully free and self-respecting, who recognises and is fully aware of his or her dignity as a sovereign citizen of the state, who feels confident in asserting such status, and is less inclined to passively accept injustice, discrimination, abuse of rights or the erosion of freedoms at the hands of the powerful. The loss of awareness over constitutional rights can lead to an all-pervading sense of helplessness and timidity, and an unhealthy readiness to accept political manipulation or oppression without question, rendering democracy merely a mockery. The abuse of rights and authority, whether through arbitrary arrest and detention, political persecution, discrimination and harassment, or violation of freedom of expression, is possible in conditions of prevalent lack of public consciousness about constitutional rights and protection.
Indeed, mere existence of an electoral mechanism does not signify a democratic nationhood; we need citizens informed, awake and conscious of their stature. That is why there is an urgent need to create mass consciousness on constitutional rights. The knowledge of the Constitution ought not be a prerogative of the lawyers and judges alone, but it needs to reach the common people, workers, peasants, students, women, and the countryside.
The media, educational institutions, civil society organisations and indeed public intellectuals have a pivotal role in this regard. Public dialogue should centre around constitutionalism, democratic values and rights. This also needs a culture of responsible citizenship where people understand and exercise rights not just but responsibilities too, where mutual respect, toleration and civil responsibility constitute the bulwarks of citizenship. One’s rights depend on respect for others’ dignity. A society characterised by intolerance, hate and divisiveness will be unable to foster or sustain constitutional citizenship and respect for human dignity.
History tells us that no nation progresses in which people live in unawareness and apathy about their collective rights and power. History also tells us that every social revolution has primarily been an outbreak of public consciousness against unjust power. Our freedom is not of the present to remain so, forever. It has to be perpetually protected by conscious actions on the part of the people. Citizens must get themselves out of the mindset of dependency and helplessness and recognize the fact that the republic is ‘theirs’ that their voices, rights, and dignity are not favours bestowed by rulers but are a sacred, enshrined and inherent privilege rooted in their status as a sovereign people of the land.
A country is not truly democratic if it merely has elections and political structures but its people have failed to internalised the belief in their inherent dignity and constitutional ownership of the republic; if people truly believed in that truth, they would undoubtedly ensure a fully democratic polity where sovereignty always remains in their hands.
The writer is a columnist and political analyst
