‘Nehru has long argued, as Britain’s Laborites now do, that socialism is feasible without full nationalization. But Nehru favors controls over private enterprise. “An army,” he explained, “does not occupy a country by placing a soldier in every nook and cranny: a gun mounted on a hill enables an army to control surrounding areas effectively.”
One of Nehru’s weapons is a constitutional amendment passed last spring. It empowered the government to seize needed agricultural and slum property without paying full compensation, for, otherwise, as Nehru saw it, “the haves will remain haves and the have-nots will remain havenots.”’

Though I have not read it, I am sure the Indian constitution does say that people have a right to religion,speech etc etc because India was founded on secular, democratic principles. What has become of those principles is a different matter, but at least that was the basis.

The difference is that the American public is better educated, have better access to media and overall are in a financial situation where they can think about the state of the country and how it is being run. The poor in India are probably too busy thinking about where their next meal comes from, never mind bringing political leaders to task. Since there are so many of these poor, illiterate lot, Indian politicians can blatantly use topics like religion, caste, community etc to gather votes and stay in power. In the US, they need to be a bit more sophisticated.

America has a very strong religion christian lobby as mentioned in this article and they can have quite major effects on political policy as mentioned in this article. In this example, the resulting policies may have done some good, but it would be naive to think that that would always be the case. If there is a strong lobby, I think it would be foolish to assume it would not be milked by someone or the other.

Another good example is the Patriot act which gives the government such HUGE powers over the individual. Uncovering of CIA redition flights and systems such as the FBI’s ,a href=”http://news.zdnet.co.uk/emergingtech/0,1000000183,2080108,00.htm”>Carnivore proves that the US government is no great friend of the public. It tolerates it as long as it behaves, but then thats nothing special. Since a lot of the Americans will not swallow a religious bait, they are currently using a “war on terror” one instead.

The way I see it, there will be two kinds of people in the population. One would be the well off ones, who would probably raise a hue and cry if you tell them that even an inch of their civil liberties are being forsaken. The second are the poor, who have more important things to think about and don’t care two hoots for civil liberties. In India, we have more of the second type and the politics is in the open, in the US, the first category is prevalent and the politicians need to be more subtle. At the end of the day, politicians do what is required to try and stay in power. Sometimes it appears/is packaged as palatable, sometimes not. But it will always exist.

I agree the US government has done good by not interfering in things the way India’s socialist government did. I also admire the americans for some of their achievements, especially in technology and education. But I don’t think the country is as rosy as you paint it to be.

I do firmly believe in the freedom of expression. The US First Amendment is indeed truly beautiful and though I have no doubt the Indian Drafting Committee would have wanted the same, somewhere in history we slipped.

However, I must add that the US is truly unique, even in the west, in how strongly this freedom is upheld. Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Australia and even the Netherlands have laws that ban hate speech to some extent. India is not alone.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/06/11/america/hate.php

- Sandipan

The fact that we do not have it, has diminished the value of the individual and increased the value of groups or mobs. Then we should not complain when we have mobocracy.

Good post, but it seems like an apples to oranges comparison… you started out with the pretense of comparing the US & Indian constitutions… and I expected an objective comparative analysis of the two.

Instead, this post really compares US Constitution and Indian Politicians… you can compare US & Indian politicians or US & Indian constitutions, but going across just seems strange to me.

In any case, I do think that the Indian constitution has some major issues, and really ought to be trashed for a newer constitution that easier to “update”… but the American constitution has it’s issues also.

For example, Bush & buddies could lie through their teeth to congress saying they have “concrete evidence” when they had none… they can also pass laws like the patriot act and LEGALLY lock people up indefinitely without habius corpus [or trials, for that matter].

Also, Bush can “pardon” all his buddies for any crime saying that the punishment was “excessive”… if you want to talk about politicians, you have to talk about these people…

Look, there’s stupid politicians everywhere… India, US, Pakistan, Egypt… and each country’s constitution has positives and negatives. Unless you’re posting just to “flame”, you have to provide some sort of balanced analysis.

You said that you’ve read the entire Indian constitution… why don’t you cite examples of the disparity?

It’s obviously a careful balancing act – make the time/place/manner restrictions too harsh, and you’re basically eliminating the right (“you can only gather on Tuesdays with a full moon in this field”), but make it too loose, and you end up with idiots infringing on the rights of others. Cases go to the courts fairly often, and normally the restrictions are extremely lax.

For instance, there’s a crazy anti-gay church/nutjobs group that regularly protests funerals of anyone slightly connected to gay rights (Heath Ledger for Brokeback Mountain, military for “don’t ask, don’t tell”, Amish girls killed by mass shooter for lord know what connection, etc). They shout the most horrific, hateful things while families try to bury their dead. I think the latest court ruling is that they must hold their protests at least 50 ft away from the cemetery, and can’t protest during the interval of one hour before burial to one hour afterwards. So, yeah, really lax even for some pretty horrible hate speech.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-869183917758574879&q=stephen+colbert&ei=1FJRSILjGITErwLf8sDDDA&hl=en

I’m not also surprised that some of those who questioned 9/11 investigations have vanished without a trace.

lurker#1: you amuse me

I’m an Indian who is a student at USA.

You have mentioned in your blog post this- “It cannot force an American from speaking his mind or expressing himself in any form”.

In that case, you might want to watch this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7Qef8oPmag

Also read the comments and read the story from the campus newspaper. http://www.alligator.org/articles/2007/09/18/news/campus/arrest.txt

One one hand he believes that lack of freedom is cause of India’s ills. On the other hand he proposes paternalistic dictatorship of Lee Kuan as answer to India’s problems. There he would argue that he prefers economic freedom over political freedom because that alone can solve our problems.

The full argument is this: I want first ammendment for myself because I value my freedom. However for the ignorant masses I prefer paternalistic dictatorship because I know what is best for them and I do not want any objections from them against thrusting my remedy down their throats.