Every schoolchild can recite the Preamble to the Constitution: Justice, liberty, equality and fraternity. The first three have generated debate in courts, politics and academia. The fourth, however, has passed almost unnoticed. Yet fraternity may be the most consequential of all the constitutional values because it is the one value that law alone cannot create.

The neglect is curious because the Constitution does not treat fraternity as an afterthought. It appears in the same sentence as the other three, carrying equal constitutional weight. The framers placed it there deliberately. The question is why we have spent 75 years largely ignoring it, and what that neglect has cost us.

The answer begins with a distinction that was explicit during the Constituent Assembly debates but has since faded from constitutional discourse. Liberty and equality define the relationship between the citizen and the state. Fraternity defines the relationship between citizens themselves. That distinction makes all the difference. If the state violates liberty or equality, courts can intervene. But what recourse exists when citizens cease to regard one another as fellow citizens? When disagreement hardens into hostility and difference into suspicion, fraternity begins to disappear. B R Ambedkar understood this with unusual clarity. In his final address to the Constituent Assembly on November 25, 1949, he warned, “Without fraternity, equality and liberty will be no deeper than coats of paint.” His warning stemmed from a frank assessment of Indian society. “How can people divided into several thousands of castes be a nation?” he asked. He was reminding us that nationhood is not a given but an achievement, and fraternity........

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