In this regard, what India has been witnessing over the last one month through mass-scale protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019 (CAA) and the proposed National Register of Citizens (NRC) in most parts of the country, is nothing less than a ‘constitutional revolution’ or a ‘second satyagraha’ –– led, chiefly, by the Muslim community, women from all strata of society, and of course, the students. Mass reading of the Preamble of the Constitution in these spontaneous protests, and the distribution of the Preamble as leaflets, is a lawyer’s dream, and a dictator’s nightmare. The image of 40 lawyers reading out the Preamble at the lawns of the Supreme Court was, though deeply reassuring, a devastating reflection on the state of the country we are in, so much so that the Judiciary has to be reminded of the words of our Constitution-makers and India’s foundational ideals.
