Making the Constitution great again

“Have you seen the Constitution?” Vinay Kumar, 40, asked everyone who looked into the stall as he pointed to the tome resting on a wooden stand.

Visitors to the “Constitution Curious” stall at the Durgotsab puja pandal in Delhi’s Greater Kailash neighbourhood gasped on discovering a replica of the original Indian Constitution, as calligraphed by Prem Behari Narain Raizada and illustrated by Nandalal Bose.

Kumar invited them to flip through its pages and take in a piece of history. In addition to going through the not-so-little book, visitors could take a short quiz based on the Constitution and win a prize. Or they could print for themselves a copy of the preamble using a screen-printing contraption made by Kumar.

An engineer and lawyer by training, Kumar told Scroll that he designs medical devices for a living. But he gave up having a full-time job years ago to practice his art and activism.

In five days at the stall , he made over a thousand copies of the preamble free of cost for those who visited the stall. The initiative was the result of a collaboration between two non-profit organisations: the Delhi-based National Foundation for India and Kumar’s own Reclaim Constitution.

Sandwiched between a Domino’s outlet and hoardings that advertised real estate deals,...

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