From the editor's desk India’s Constitution Day celebrated globally

From the editor's desk

India is celebrating Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav commemorating 75th year of India’s independence. In India and across the world the Indian government is organising a series of events to celebrate India’s constitutional and cultural journey over the last 75 years, and it is a great way to share India’s culture and soft power appeal with the wider world and Indian diaspora.

On 26 November, a number of events were celebrated in the Indian Parliament and also around the world, including in Australia. What is so special about 26 November? 26 November is celebrated as the Constitution Day in India because the Constituent Assembly that was formed in 1946, led by Dr Bhim Rao Ambedkar, adopted the Indian constitution to replace the Government of India Act of 1935 and Independence Act of 1947.

The struggle to demand a Constituent Assembly was being made since 1930 by the Indian nationalists and the Indian National Congress, in a protest against the Simon Commission, and the British were convinced that nothing short of granting rights to Indian nationalists to draft the constitution would satisfy them. This is how the constitution was adopted on 26 November 1949 and came into force two months later, on 26 January 1950, which is celebrated as India’s Republic Day.

26 November is also etched in India’s memories and of liberal democracies around the world because on this fateful day in 2008, 10 terrorists of the Lashkar-e-Toiba from Pakistan, unleashed three days of mayhem and bloodshed across the Mumbai city. It was a brazen attack on India’s democracy, freedoms and liberal ethos, killing 175 including 2 Australians, Douglas Markell and Brett Taylor, and injuring 300

others. Ever since, 26 November has also become synonymous with India’s fight against extremism, authoritarianism and cross border terrorism, driven by the perpetrators of an extremist ideology who do not believe in democracy, liberalism and civic freedoms.

Similarly, today the world is also passing through a critical transition, when the liberal democracies realise the need to defend the principles of democracy, freedom and civil liberties to build a stable, secure, transparent and a rule-based world order. The concert of democracies or D10, including the world top 10 democracies have been diligently working during the last couple of years to build a transparent and accountable rule-based order in the Indo- Pacific. It is in this context that the Australia-India Strategic Partnership and QUAD become a game changer critical cog in the region.

It is heartening that India News in conjunction with the Institute for Australia India Engagement (IAIE), Indian High Commission, Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade organised a hybrid event on the “Role of Constitutional Democracies in Shaping the Emerging World Order”. The event featured outstanding panellists: Suneet Mehta, Indian Deputy High Commissioner in Canberra; Ian Biggs, Australian Deputy High Commissioner to India; Michael Feller, Director, India political section, North and South Asia Division, DFAT; Lalitha Kumaramanglam, former Chairperson of National Commission for Women from New Delhi; Yogesh Joshi, Research Fellow, Institute for South Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore; Archana Singh, Honorary Consul Queensland, Government of India; Shaun Star, Director, Centre for India Australia Studies, Jindal Global University; and Ashutosh Misra, CEO, IAIE and Editor in Chief India News and National Chair Sports Australia India Business Council.