Akshat Gautam & Alind Gupta

This blog argues that the Preamble itself provides an overlooked guide to interpreting fraternity. Unlike justice, liberty and equality, fraternity is understood not by its constituent elements but by the constitutional ends it must serve. One of those ends, the dignity of the individual, places an important limit on how fraternity may legitimately be invoked.

For the longest time in India’s constitutional discourse, fraternity remained an overlooked value. This was surprising given its explicit invocation in the Preamble alongside justice, liberty, and equality. Multiple reasons have been highlighted for the neglect.

First, it is difficult to place fraternity in an ‘individualistic’ paradigm of constitutional law. Second, unlike the preceding values in the Preamble, fraternity is generally considered to be a sentiment and not a right that can be enforced. Third, while the contours of equality and liberty have been fleshed out through various fundamental rights in the Constitution, fraternity’s meaning and scope remains unclear. Finally, fraternity was added to the Preamble at a belated stage in the framing of the Constitution.

Notwithstanding this, recent years have seen significant discussion around this value. Scholars have emphasized the need to pay greater attention to it (for example, see here, here, and here), while the courts have also repeatedly invoked it in a number of cases. Notably, the judiciary has invoked fraternity across a remarkably diverse range of constitutional matters, from the decriminalization of homosexuality and reservation (see here, here and here) to disability rights, hate speech, and citizenship.

The increased use of fraternity in adjudication is a welcome development. The critical normative question now concerns how fraternity can be understood and invoked in constitutional adjudication.  This question assumes particular significance because, as Part III demonstrates, not all invocations of fraternity have been uncontroversial.

In this light, this article argues that the constitutional understanding of fraternity intricately ties it to individual dignity. This link, besides clarifying the content of fraternity, places an important limit on how it can legitimately be invoked. The argument proceeds in three parts. The first examines the distinctive formulation of fraternity in the Preamble. The second turns to the Constituent Assembly debates to trace the relationship between fraternity and individual dignity. The third looks at three judicial invocations of fraternity and the consequences of overlooking its link with individual dignity.

1. Fraternity’s Unique Place in the Preamble

In order to understand the potential of fraternity in the constitutional landscape, it is useful to look at its unique setting in the Preamble. On a close reading, it becomes apparent that the treatment of fraternity in the Preamble is distinct from other values in two significant ways.

First, while the Preamble seeks to secure justice, liberty, and equality, it aims to promote fraternity. This likely reflects the difficulty of making fraternity justiciable, at least in a manner similar to other values. One reason for this differential treatment is that justice, liberty, and equality lend themselves more readily to institutional protection through rights. Fraternity, on the other hand, resides in the bonds between citizens that the State cannot institutionalize in the same manner.

Second, justice, liberty, and equality are accompanied by their respective facets (for example, ‘justice, social, economic and political’), giving readers some idea of their content. Fraternity, by contrast, is followed by no such internal breakdown. Instead, it is linked to what it seeks to accomplish (‘dignity of the individual and the unity and integrity of the Nation’).

This textual asymmetry suggests that, unlike the other constitutional values, fraternity is understood less by its constituent elements than by its preambular ends. On this reading, the ends specified in the Preamble help illuminate the meaning of fraternity. A conception of fraternity that fails to assure individual dignity (or unity and integrity of the nation) would, therefore, sit uneasily with the constitutional understanding of the value.

1. Individual Dignity: The Heart of Fraternity

The drafting history of fraternity in the Preamble reinforces its critical link with individual dignity. Aakash Singh Rathore’s work on the Preamble showcases how the text on fraternity went through various iterations before taking its final form. Its first expression made the link to caste explicit:

Fraternity, assuring the dignity of every individual without distinction of caste or creed.

However, after meetings of the Drafting Committee, the final formulation took the following shape:

Fraternity, assuring the dignity of the individual and the unity of the Nation.

At this point, one proposed amendment from B. Pattabhi Sitaramayya sought to shift ‘dignity of the individual’ to the last part of the clause. His suggested clause looked like the following:

Fraternity assuring unity of the Nation and the dignity of the individual.

According to Rathore, this ‘did not suit Dr Ambedkar at all’ as it would ‘see individual dignity lose its pole position and take a back seat to the nation’. K.M. Munshi and B.N. Rau further provided distinct arguments to support Dr Ambedkar’s case.

Munshi understood specific mention of ‘dignity of the individual’ to mean ‘an express rejection of the Hegelian theory on which modern totalitarianism is based; namely, that the State is a metaphysical entity, independent of and overshadowing the individual whose only aim was to secure its existence.’ Rau, on the other hand, saw individual dignity as something prerequisite to the unity of the nation.

The rejection of the amendment thus reveals two things. First, it clarifies the close relationship between fraternity and individual dignity. Second, it suggests that although national unity is undoubtedly an end of fraternity, it was not intended to subordinate the dignity of the individual to that collective end.

As the subsequent section demonstrates, however, this relationship between fraternity and individual dignity has not always received due importance in judicial invocations of the value.

1. When Fraternity Consumes the Individual

An illuminating example of how not to engage with the value can be seen in the way the Bombay High Court interpreted it. The writ petition before the High Court challenged the decision of a government company that sought to deduct Rs. 50 from the salary of its employees. The amount was to be transferred to the Prime Minister’s Relief Fund. The petition argued that, in the absence of employees’ consent (required under the relevant statute), the company’s decision was untenable.

The court found the conduct of the petitioners to be ‘destructive of fraternity, unity and integrity of the nation’ and, while ignoring the explicit words of a statute, held:

It is the fundamental duty of every citizen and the employees of the WCL and the Trade Unions to obey the Constitutional mandate about ‘Brotherhood’….. there is a responsibility on them to help the brothers and sisters in other States….

The court effectively reduced fraternity to an instrument for preserving national unity, ignoring that the Preamble simultaneously links fraternity to the dignity of the individual. Had the court given recognition to this fact, it would have found it much more difficult to sweep aside the lack of employees’ consent.

At a foundational level, the emphasis on individual dignity militates against a notion of fraternity that treats individuals as mere means to the project of cultivating brotherhood. The relational character of fraternity necessarily gives greater salience to collective identities or the sense of oneness. Viewed simply in this manner, it is easy to view individual identities as something that can be sacrificed at the altar of collective goals.

One of the judgments in Aishat Shifa v. State of Karnataka (2022) relied on a similar notion of fraternity. On the argument that the impugned Government Order effectively banning Hijab in school violated, among other things, the constitutional value of fraternity, Justice Hemant Gupta saw the expression of individual identities as something in the way of fraternity. According to him:

The concept of fraternity will stand fragmented as the apparent distinction of some of the students wearing headscarf would not form a homogenous group of students in a school where education is to be imparted homogeneously and equally, irrespective of any religious identification mark.

This idea of fraternity was contested in the same case by Justice Dhulia, who treated fraternity as a constitutional commitment ‘to be tolerant, and…. reasonably accommodating, towards the belief and religious practices of others.’

In Subramanian Swamy v. Union of India (2016), the Supreme Court again animated fraternity’s streak of subsuming the individual within the collective:

The individual should have all the rights under the Constitution but simultaneously he has the responsibility to live up to the constitutional values like essential brotherhood – the fraternity – that strengthens the societal interest.

Prof. Farrah Ahmed has pointed out how such an articulation of fraternity suggests ‘that the fulfilment of constitutional duties is a precondition to fully enjoying constitutional rights’ and that ‘individual and collective interests are mutually beneficial.’

Diluting the individual identities in pursuit of collective goals is the easy road to take, but that is the very road blocked by the constitutional end of individual dignity, which informs the content of fraternity.

Conclusion

The significance of this understanding of fraternity extends beyond the cases discussed above. Fraternity undoubtedly seeks to cultivate a sense of common belonging and strengthen the unity and integrity of the nation. But the Preamble does not give a free hand to achieve that collective end. It expressly makes the dignity of the individual an end of fraternity. This means that fraternity cannot be invoked merely because a measure promotes a sense of oneness; the form of oneness it produces must remain consistent with the dignity of those who constitute the collective. This is likely to matter in contemporary debates over legislative measures, including the Uniform Civil Code and the Vande Mataram law, that seek to create a common identity.

A notion of fraternity that is tethered to individual dignity makes the constitutional fraternal project more nuanced. In a profound way, it reminds us that although the goal of creating a collective feeling of oneness is crucial in its own right, at the heart of the Indian Constitution is an individual whose dignity gives the constitutional promise of fraternity its meaning.

Akshat is an Assistant Professor at Manipal Law School, Bengaluru, and a PhD Scholar at the National Law School of India University, Bengaluru. He completed his B.A., LL.B. (Hons.) from NLSIU in 2017 and his LL.M. from the same institution in 2023.

Alind is a PhD Scholar at NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad. He is also an Assistant Professor at the School of Law, UPES, Dehradun, currently on study leave. He completed his B.A., LL.B. (Hons.) from the National Law University, Delhi, in 2021 and his LL.M. from the National Law School of India University, Bengaluru, in 2023. LinkedIn