Make a class -11 political science project topic- Fundamental duties and DPSP or Freedom please help me.
Answers
At the height of the Emergency, Indira Gandhi’s government enacted sweeping changes to the Constitution, through the 42nd Amendment. These changes were intended to entrench the supremacy of the government, permanently muzzle the courts, and weaken the constitutional system of checks and balances which was designed to avoid concentration and abuse of power. And in the Amendment’s Statement of Objects and Reasons, one line stands out: “... it is also proposed to specify the fundamental duties of the citizens and make special provisions for dealing with anti-national activities.”
“Fundamental duties” and “anti-national activities” came into the world fused at the hip. And while Indira Gandhi’s Emergency regime has long been consigned to the dustbin of history, its legacies endure. “Anti-national” has become a boundlessly manipulable word, that, in the spirit of Humpty Dumpty, can mean whatever those in power want it to mean. “Fundamental duties” have been making a comeback as well: at an International Judicial Conference 2020 this weekend, the Chief Justice of India, S.A. Bobde, drew attention to the Constitution’s Fundamental Duties chapter. He then went further, and citing Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj, observed that “real rights are a result of [the] performance of duty.”
There is, of course, an intuitive plausibility to the CJI’s words. They conjure up the image of the ungrateful and selfish citizen, happy to pluck the fruits of civilisation, but unwilling to do their bit to water the tree. Nonetheless, despite its plausibility, this conflation of rights and duties ought to be resisted.
It is only after a guarantee of the sum of all promised by the Constitution that citizens can be asked to do their duty
At the height of the Emergency, Indira Gandhi’s government enacted sweeping changes to the Constitution, through the 42nd Amendment. These changes were intended to entrench the supremacy of the government, permanently muzzle the courts, and weaken the constitutional system of checks and balances which was designed to avoid concentration and abuse of power. And in the Amendment’s Statement of Objects and Reasons, one line stands out: “... it is also proposed to specify the fundamental duties of the citizens and make special provisions for dealing with anti-national activities.”
“Fundamental duties” and “anti-national activities” came into the world fused at the hip. And while Indira Gandhi’s Emergency regime has long been consigned to the dustbin of history, its legacies endure. “Anti-national” has become a boundlessly manipulable word, that, in the spirit of Humpty Dumpty, can mean whatever those in power want it to mean. “Fundamental duties” have been making a comeback as well: at an International Judicial Conference 2020 this weekend, the Chief Justice of India, S.A. Bobde, drew attention to the Constitution’s Fundamental Duties chapter. He then went further, and citing Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj, observed that “real rights are a result of [the] performance of duty.”
There is, of course, an intuitive plausibility to the CJI’s words. They conjure up the image of the ungrateful and selfish citizen, happy to pluck the fruits of civilisation, but unwilling to do their bit to water the tree. Nonetheless, despite its plausibility, this conflation of rights and duties ought to be resisted.