By Justice Markandey Katju
After paltu ram Nitish Kumar's somersault in Bihar and the pran pratishtha in the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya, Indian politics has gone down to its lowest level. Our politicians are only interested in power and pelf, and to hell with the country.
Babasaheb Ambedkar, the Chairman of the committee which drafted the Indian Constitution promulgated in 1950, said that the principles of the Indian Constitution are the principles of the great French Revolution of 1789, which proclaimed liberty, equality and fraternity.
But that Constitution has been torn to shreds, and is now only a scarecrow and a piece of paper.
When I was a teacher in a village school in 1968-70 I used to sing this song every morning at prayer time along with the boys
But how can I sing it now? Can we truthfully say today '' Hind desh ke niwasi sabhi jan ek hain '', when India has been converted from a dejure secular to a defacto Hindu country, and minorities are oppressed and discriminated against?
Can we say it today when a handful of very rich people are getting richer, while there is massive poverty, unemployment, child malnutrition, lack of proper healthcare for the masses, etc?
Some kind of French Revolution is inevitably approaching in India, but it will take time
(Justice Katju is a retired judge of the Supreme Court of India. These are his personal views.)
