The main goal of the fundamental duties in the Indian Constitution is to generate civic responsibility among the citizen. Explain. (2023, 15 Marks)
Civic responsibility is the disposition to act for the common good and to honour in others the rights one claims for oneself. Article 51A, added by the 42nd Amendment (1976) and extended by the 86th (2002), is the Constitution’s attempt to cultivate it: it treats the citizen as a member with obligations, not merely a holder of claims against the State.
The Theory Behind the Duties
- Correlativity. For Thomas Hill Green, rights exist because society recognises them as serving a common good; Harold Joseph Laski (A Grammar of Politics, 1925) tied a person’s rights to the function he performs for society. A right claimed without its matching duty dissolves the ground on which it stands.
- Civic republicanism. From Aristotle to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, freedom is sustained by citizens who take part in, and care for, the common life. Giuseppe Mazzini‘s The Duties of Man (1860) argued that rights are secured only through duty to country and humanity.
- Gandhi’s inversion. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi held that rights flow from duties well performed, so that a society of dutiful citizens would find its rights secured without struggle.
How Article 51A Builds Civic Responsibility
| Civic virtue | Clauses |
|---|---|
| Allegiance to the political community | (a) Constitution, Flag, Anthem; (b) ideals of the freedom struggle; (c) sovereignty and unity; (d) defence of the country |
| Fraternity across difference | (e) common brotherhood, dignity of women; (f) composite culture |
| Stewardship | (g) environment and living creatures; (i) public property, abjuring violence |
| Self-cultivation | (h) scientific temper; (j) excellence; (k) schooling one’s child |
- The clauses on fraternity give content to the Preamble’s promise of fraternity, which B. R. Ambedkar called the principle that gives unity and solidarity to social life.
- Three channels carry the duties into conduct: education (the Justice J. S. Verma Committee, 1999, urged teaching them in schools; the National Education Policy 2020 and Constitution Day observances continue this); ordinary law, such as the Prevention of Damage to Public Property Act 1984; and interpretation, as in AIIMS Students Union v. AIIMS (2001), where the Court read duties into the reasonableness of rules.
Limits of the Claim
- Other motives. Inserted during the Emergency, the duties also served a politics of discipline; the Swaran Singh Committee had wanted them made punishable.
- Text does not make virtue. Robert D. Putnam‘s Making Democracy Work (1993) traced civic life to associational networks, not to charters, and liberal democracies without duty chapters are no less civic. Half a century on, there is little evidence that Article 51A has changed behaviour.
- Compulsion defeats the aim. The 2016 order making the Anthem mandatory in cinemas, softened to optional in January 2018, showed that enforced display is not responsibility.
- Reciprocity. Duty-talk rings hollow when the State neglects its own Part IV obligations.
Conclusion
Generating civic responsibility is indeed the core purpose of Part IVA, as its content and non-penal form show. But a constitution can name civic virtue without producing it; the duties bear fruit only through schooling, association and a State that visibly keeps its own obligations.