The constitution matters

Teaching about politics at any level, one has to inevitably talk about the constitution of a country.

And when you are teaching students who are majoring in Political Science, the expectation is that they would have a reasonably clear understanding of what the constitution is. But if personal experience is anything to go by, this is hardly the case.

Many students in Pakistan, including some of those studying politics, have little knowledge about what the constitution actually is and how to distinguish it from the law in general. However, the ignorance of what the constitution is and what it entails is not even the most frustrating part of it.

The more frustrating part is the expressed belief of many students that the constitution does not matter. The constitution, one learns from these mostly young students, has little bearing on the lives of the people. On digging a little deeper, one finds that at the heart of this cynicism is the notion that social life, and even practical politics, do not follow what may be enshrined in the constitution.

Such pessimism is obviously troublesome but not surprising. Over the years, our state has been run on the often-explicit reasoning that the constitution is time and again a hurdle to effectively running the state. What other evidence would one need for this assertion than the fact that during our relatively brief national history, we have abrogated two constitutions and have suspended the current constitution as many times. And each time, except for maybe in the case of the 1962 constitution, the rationale for doing so has been that the constitution and the democratic principles it enshrines are a hurdle to the effective running of the state.

The constitution of a state, if framed through a judiciously inclusive and deliberative process such as followed for Pakistan’s constitution of 1973, is at its essence the articulation of the social contract between the various peoples, communities and regions in a state.

At the practical level, a constitution basically defines two types of relations: one, the relationship between the state and its citizens who the constitution might also view as members of the various communities that are part of the state. Two, the constitution also describes the role of various institutions in a state and the relationships between these institutions.

To my original point, the cynicism regarding the constitution is often due to our failure as a nation to uphold either of these relations in accordance with the constitution. Talking of the former relationship, claiming and demanding the basic fundamental rights that are clearly enunciated in the constitution sounds like a radical concept.

Over the years, the belief that basic individual liberties should be limited by the considerations of the state’s insecurities has come to be widely accepted. Whereas one can try to debate and rationalize this belief and the inherent insecurities that drive it, my contention here is that doing so has undermined the importance of the constitution as the document that is central to the relationship between the state and individuals and to the relationships between the various communities that together hold the federation.

The latter type of relationships between the institutions of the state and the roles that each of these institutions is supposed to perform in the state has also been undercut by an unbalanced institutional growth and prioritization of the security functions of the state over other responsibilities. The conviction that seems to push an outsized role of some institutions seems to be that the functions that they perform are so vital that their role cannot be limited to the one assigned to them by law and constitution. Such a logic of the system runs contrary to the formative logic of the constitution of 1973. This assumption belittles the status of the constitution as the supreme law of the land.

There can be different views on how to most efficiently run the affairs of a state. There tends to always be a difference of opinion on how to deal with the challenges of a state and on how to use the resources most efficiently towards the common good. However, where we can always differ on the details, at the broadest possible levels, the constitution has settled these questions. As an expression of the general will of the people, the constitution is fundamental to the idea of the state.

Repeated deviations from the constitution by undermining individual liberties and disregard for set institutional roles diminish the status of the constitution in the eyes of the citizenry. Such an approach that might seem practical, even prudent, in the short term, can and does weaken the very foundations of the state that rest on this social contract.

The writer is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Peshawar.

Email: aameraza@gmail.com