A false conflation between duties and rights

• Fundamental Rights and Fundamental duties are correlative and inseparable. Also, the original constitution contained only the fundamental rights and not the fundamental duties.
• The fundamental duties of citizens were added in the Constitution later in 1976 on the recommendation of Swaran Singh Committee. In 2002, one more Fundamental Duty was added.
• Although both, Fundamental Rights and Fundamental Duties, are inseparable, there are certain differences between them.

Duties and Rights debate:

• On Constitution Day last month, many Union Ministers used the occasion to underline this proposal.
• The Minister of Law and Justice, claimed that our country can be made great only “if we create a balance between fundamental duties and fundamental rights.”
• The Minister for Culture, took this thought further still, today, on Constitution Day, it is important that we emphasize our fundamental duties for the growth and progress of our country.
• If deeper roots have to be established in a diverse and democratic country such as India, citizens will have to converge their inalienable fundamental rights with their fundamental duties.
• What is more, the link between fundamental rights and duties, according to him, was not merely a constitutional debate but a “civilisation discussion” — whatever that might mean.
• In recent times, there has been something of a constant refrain of the governing class to advocate an integration of duty with right.
• By duty here they do not mean the concomitant obligations that spring out of constitutional promises, but a set of ideals that were written into the Constitution during the acme of the Indira Gandhi-imposed Emergency.
• In their belief, these otherwise non-binding obligations — the “fundamental duties” as Article 51A describes them ought to be treated on a par with, if not superior to, the various fundamental rights that the Constitution guarantees.
• In an inversion of the well-known dictum, they see duties, and not rights, as trumps.

Constituent Assembly deliberations on Rights and Duties:

• The Constituent Assembly was clear in its belief that the Constitution’s emphasis must always rest on individual dignity.
• That is, the Constitution’s chief purpose must be to preserve and guarantee basic human rights, to equality, to autonomy, and to liberty, among others.
• To the framers, the very idea of deliberating over whether these rights ought to be provisional, and on whether these rights ought to be made subject to the performance of some alien duty, was repugnant to the republic’s vision.
• But the importance placed on every person’s ethical independence did not mean that rights were seen as absolute warrants.
• After all, Part III of the Constitution, in which our fundamental rights are nestled, contains within it a set of limitations.
• However, none of those restrictions places a burden on citizens to perform duties as a condition for the enforcement of rights.
• The Constitution’s framers saw the placing of mandates on individual responsibilities as nothing more than a legislative prerogative.
• Any such imposition would have to conform to the language of fundamental rights, but Parliament was otherwise free to dictate personal behaviour.
• For example, the legislature could impose a duty on individuals to pay a tax on their income, and this duty could be enforced in a variety of ways.
• If the tax imposed and the sanctions prescribed were reasonable, the obligations placed on the citizen will be constitutionally valid.