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Chapter 10: The Philosophy of the Constitution principled distance, a rather complex idea that allows the state to be distant from all religions so that it can intervene or abstain 231 frominterference,dependinguponwhichofthesetwowouldbetter promote liberty, equality and social justice.   We have hitherto mentioned three core features — these can also be seen as the achievements — of our Constitution. – First, our Constitution reinforces and reinvents forms of liberal individualism. This is an important achievement because this is done in the backdrop of a society where community values are often indifferent or hostile to individual autonomy. – Second, our Constitution upholds the principle of social justice without compromising on individual liberties. The constitutional commitment to caste-based affirmative action programme shows how much ahead India was compared to other nations. Can one forget that affirmative action programmes in the U.S. were begun after the 1964 Civil Rights Act, almost two decades after they were constitutionally entrenched in India? – Third, against the backgr ound of inter-communal strife, the Constitution upholds its commitment to group rights (the right to the expression of cultural particularity). This indicates that the framers of the Constitution were more than willing to face the challenges of what more than four decades later has come to be known as multiculturalism. Universal franchise Two other core features may also be regarded as achievements. First, it is no mean achievement to commit oneself to universal franchise, specially when there is widespread belief that traditional hierarchies in India are congealed and more or less impossible to eliminate, and when the right to vote has only recently been extended to women and to the working class in stable, Western democracies. Once the idea of a nation took root among the elite, the idea of democratic self-government followed. Thus, Indian nationalism always conceived of a political order based on the will of every single member of society. The idea of universal franchise lay securely within the heart of nationalism. As early as the Constitution of India Bill (1895), the first non-official attempt at drafting a constitution for India, the author declared that every citizen, i.e., anyone born in Reprint 2026-27