Importance of Fundamental Duties
- It seeks to promote a sense of brotherhood and harmony among people of different groups based on religion, caste, language, etc.
- It reminds citizens to fulfill their responsibilities towards their nation.
- These duties help in the development of the country, a classic example is the USA, which has a Citizens’ Almanac which has details about the responsibilities of its citizens. Another example is Singapore which developed a lot in a very short frame of time.
Which Committee Advocated the Fundamental Duties in the Indian Constitution?
Sardar Swaran Singh Committee recommended the Fundamental Duties in the Indian constitution in the year 1976. At the time of adoption, the Indian constitution didn’t have any fundamental duties because the framers of our constitution did not deem it appropriate to add those duties to the Indian constitution when they were formulating it.
There may be a number of reasons for this, some of them are:
- Since ancient times Dharma/ Kartavya is deeply rooted in the people of Indian society and they follow certain duties on their own irrespective of a threat of penalty.
- The concept of duties toward the nation was always uplifted by our leaders like Mahatma Gandhi and Swami Vivekanand, once Vivekanand said that “it is the duty of every person of India to contribute to the development and progress of India”.
- The preamble of the Indian constitution itself gives citizens an idea about their duties towards the nation, not only by including the goals of the nation, but also the assurances of the Constitution. Hence every citizen has to do whatever is required to fulfill these goals.
- Fundamental Rights in the constitution logically give an idea of certain duties that need to be performed for the realization of these rights.
However, after some years it was thought to properly define the duties of citizens towards the nation in the constitution itself. So, in the year 1976 at the time of the national emergency, Indira Gandhi (Prime Minister at that time) constituted a committee under the leadership of Swaran Singh named the Swaran Singh Committee.