By- Anupam Prabhat Shrivastava !!
Fundamental rights are the basic rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Constitutions of India to its citizens. These rights have a legal sanction and are enforceable in the court of law.
A few good reasons made the enunciation of the Fundamental Rights in the Constitution rather inevitable. During the British Rule in India, human rights were violated by the rulers on a very wide scale. Therefore, the framers of the constitution had a very positive attitude towards these rights. Secondly, India is a land of diversities and is fragmented into many religious, cultural, and linguistic groups and therefore it was very necessary to declare Fundamental Rights to give to the people a sense of security and confidence. Also, it was thought that people should have some rights which may be enforced against the government which may get arbitrary at times.
So the need to have the Fundamental Rights was accepted by everyone in the Constituent Assembly. The Fundamental Rights are necessary consequence of the declaration in the Preamble to the Constitution.
In India, The Fundamental Rights is defined as the basic human rights of all citizens and the concept of Fundamental Rights is borrowed from the USA. It is embedded in Part III of the Indian Constitution and it is applicable irrespective of race, place of birth, religion, caste, creed or gender. They are enforceable by the court of law subjecting to specific restrictions. The Fundamental Rights guarantee civil rights to all the Indians. It prevent the State from encroaching on individual liberty while simultaneously it has an obligation to protect the rights of the citizens from encroachment by society. Seven fundamental rights were originally provided by the Constitution, viz, right to equality, right to freedom, right against exploitation, right to freedom of religion, cultural and educational rights, right to property and right to constitutional remedies. However, the right to property was removed from Part III of the Constitution by the 44th Amendment in 1978.
The very objective of the Fundamental Rights is to preserve and promote individual liberty and democratic principles based on equality of all the members of society. Dr B R Ambedkar said that the responsibility of the legislature is not just to provide fundamental rights but also and rather more importantly, to safeguard them.
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Indian Society for Legal Research 