President's message June 2011

Dear friends,



Let the faith of people of the world be restored in democracy for good, where the supreme power lies with the citizens who themselves elect people to represent them; democracy needs to be celebrated and kept alive by all possible means. Father of our Nation Mahatma Gandhi agrees to its value and suggests that actions inspired by tolerance, nonviolence and love could lay stronger foundations of democracy, and a change of heart can possibly be a better device to change the spirit of democracy, if required and desired. Violence is never a weapon of strong and brave people; it can only represent our moral and intellectual bankruptcy, Mahatma opines. The spirit of democracy has to come from within.



Bharat Ratna Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, a strong activist of democracy in the most fundamental sense, said: Fraternity means a sense of common brotherhood of all Indians, all Indians being one people. It is a principle that gives solidarity to social life. It is difficult thing to achieve. It seems to me that there lies a heavy duty to see that democracy does not vanish from the earth as a governing principle of human relationship. If we believe in it, we must both be true and loyal to it. Father of our Constitution, and the first Law Minister of independent India, Dr. Ambedkar believed that social democracy was the need of the hour, and, therefore, he created a socially relevant constitution for the country. He went on to warn us: We must not only be staunch in our faith in democracy but we must resolve to see that whatever we do, we do not help the enemies of democracy to uproot the principles of liberty, equality and fraternity. While presenting the final draft Constitution in the Constituent Assembly in November 1948, he had said: I feel that the Constitution is workable; it is flexible and it is strong enough to hold the country together both in peace time and in war time. Indeed, if I may say so, if things go wrong under the new Constitution, the reason will not be that we had a bad Constitution. What we will have to say is that Man was vile.