Inspired by the Government of India Act of 1935, our Constitution is based on a faulty Westminster system and exploitative colonial institutions. The Constitution, in essence, states that we, the people of India, assign all our resources to the state and national governments, authorise our elected servants to take all decisions, keep them secret from us, and appoint an overbearing bureaucracy not accountable to us to rule over us at the local level. We, the people of India, may be poor and illiterate but would have to be morons to give to ourselves, such an anti-people Constitution. We never gave it to ourselves. It was imposed on us and authenticated in our name in criminal breach of trust.

Such authentication is similar to an attorney usurping all the property of a client by obtaining his thumb impression. The client can seek relief from the courts by establishing that the thumb impression had been fraudulently obtained.

The members of the Constituent Assembly were all national leaders of high integrity. The Constitution adopted by them in the name of the people however lacks legal and ethical legitimacy.

The Parliament can make amendments but does not have the power to institute a new constitution. There is also no legal method by which another constituent assembly can be convened. Only the sovereign people can do so through referendum. In fact, it is now a legal and ethical necessity that a legitimate Constitution based on the wishes and aspirations of the people is instituted through referendum. If this were not so, it would imply that a Frankenstein in the form of an anti-people Constitution that can destroy its creator, the people, had been instituted, and the sovereign people can do nothing about it. A law that makes the sovereign impotent is a bad law.

It is most unfortunate that former judges and senior lawyers avoid expressing legal opinion in regard to this obvious fraud on the people of India. Senior Advocate Fali Nariman said in a lawyers’ meet "Constitution Assembly" that we should be grateful to the almighty that we have the present Constitution. His statement provides little solace to the suffering rural women and to the impoverished rural children migrating to cities to be abused.

The people of India shall always be grateful to Shri PA Sangma, MP, a lawyer by profession, who as Lok Sabha Speaker shared our concern for good governance by circulating our document for consideration in the historic golden jubilee special session of parliament. Of special significance are the views of Justice MN Venkatachaliah in a message on the right of the people to referendum. The reflections of Digvijay Singh, Chief Minister, Madhya Pradesh, Arun Jaitley, Union Law Minister, and Maneka Gandhi, Minister Social Justice, with whom we interacted, strengthened our convictions.

The legal profession as a whole has however shown crass lack of professional ethics. We request former judges and senior advocates, especially the Attorney General of India, to either endorse our logic or refute it in writing on sound legal grounds.

Global Rejuvenation in 21st Century

Science and technology have, in the twentieth century, opened frontiers capable of unprecedented good to the society. They have also unleashed tools that can destroy the world. The forces generated by capitalism, centralised socialism, pseudo democracies, neo fascism, dictatorships and ethnic conflicts have set the world on the course of self-destruction. All contemporary dialogue on sustainability is superficial and ineffective.

All religions have advocated an egalitarian society founded on empowered grassroots democracy. The sages of India instituted such religion-enriched egalitarian society since last 4000 years, symbolised in the rule of the epic monarch Ram, called "Ram Rajya". Such governance was advocated by sages of most faiths and forcefully reiterated by Mahatma Gandhi in the twentieth century. Unfortunately human greed and abuse sidelined such wise advice.

The solution for global sustainability lies in nurturing a religion-enriched egalitarian society through true grassroots empowerment, that is, village and urban neighbourhood parliaments consisting of all adult men and women control local resources and decision-making, under the coordination of district, county or municipal governments. They devolve a stipulated percentage of their resources to the state and national governments for providing higher level infrastructure and coordination under effective transparency mechanisms.

All social issues including religion are thus in grassroots jurisdiction, coordinated within the local level. The world will then become a confederation of peace-loving, self-reliant, sustainable local governments.

People First has launched a campaign for organising opinion polls along with forthcoming local and state elections on the present system versus Gram Swaraj, followed by reforms through referendum.

For more information, visit our website: www.peoplefirstindia.org or contact: people@sdalt.ernet.in