‘Socialist', ‘secular' in Preamble ideological landmines; time to undo: Article in RSS-linked weekly

Indian Express

a day ago

The words 'socialist' and 'secular' added to the Preamble during Emergency are 'ideological landmines', designed to subvert 'dharmic values' and serve 'political appeasement', an article published in an RSS-linked weekly has said, stressing that it's time to 'undo' them and reclaim the original Constitution.
This comes days after RSS general secretary Dattatreya Hosabale called for a national debate on whether the two terms in the Preamble should continue to remain there, saying they were never part of the original Constitution.
The article published on the Organiser's website on Saturday termed the insertion of the two words into the Preamble as an 'act of constitutional fraud' and said these words were not mere 'cosmetic additions' but also 'ideological imposition' that contradicts the very spirit of Bharat's civilisational identity and constitutional democracy.
'Let us be clear: no Constituent Assembly ever approved these words. The 42nd Amendment was passed during Emergency when Parliament functioned under duress, with Opposition leaders in jail and the media gagged,' said the article.
It was an 'act of constitutional fraud', akin to forging someone's will when they are unconscious, it added.
'Bharat must revert to the original Preamble, as envisioned by the founding fathers… Let us undo Emergency's constitutional sin and reclaim the Preamble for the people of Bharat,' Dr Niranjan B Poojar said in the opinion piece, titled 'Revisiting Socialist and Secular in the Preamble: Reclaiming India's Constitutional Integrity'.
'The words 'socialist' and 'secular' are not Indian in spirit, not constitutional in procedure and not democratic in intent. They are ideological landmines, designed to subvert dharmic values, justify State outreach, and serve political appeasement,' he said.
Noting that a 'constitutional clean' up is due, the article said removing 'socialist' and 'secular' is not about ideology but restoring 'constitutional honesty, reclaiming national dignity and ending political hypocrisy'.
'If we truly respect Ambedkar, respect democracy, and believe in Bharat, then we must act,' it stressed.
'We are not a socialist country. We are not a secular-atheist state. We are a dharmic civilisation rooted in pluralism, swaraj and spiritual autonomy. Let us have the courage to say so in our Constitution,' it added.
The article said that after insertion of term 'secular' into the Preamble, the 'Indian version' of interpretation of secularism lost neutrality and it became a 'smokescreen for state-sponsored discrimination against Hindus in the name of minority rights'.
'Far from separating religion from the State where it was conceptualised in Europe, Indian secularism has led to the State's intervention in Hindu temples, control over religious education, and denial of equal rights to Hindus in matters like education,' it claimed.
At the same time, minorities enjoy 'unquestioned privileges' – from running their institutions without interference to receiving targeted subsidies, it added.
'Furthermore, secularism is not a neutral word in real sense –it carries Jewish, Protestant and Enlightenment roots, developed specifically to undermine the authority of the catholic Church in Europe,' the article said.
'However, in the Indian context, it has been systematically designed and pushed to defame Hindutva, its dharmic nature and holistic worldview,' it said.
'It's no coincidence that Marxist historians, leftist politicians and Westernised intellectuals have aggressively pushed secularism as the defining feature of Indian modernity to suit their agenda,' it added.
The article termed socialism a 'global agenda' and said it is not just an economic model but a 'political weapon'.
'It kills individual enterprise, promotes bureaucratic control and fosters a nanny State where citizens become dependent, not creators. The inclusion of 'socialist' in the Premable has allowed successive governments to justify State overreach, nationalise resources and suffocate private innovation — all in the name of public good,' it said. This socialism has only 'deepened inequality', rather than solving it, it claimed.
'As economist B R Shenoy warned as early as 1955, Nehruvian socialism would lead Bharat to a 'bureaucratic raj and economic stagnation'. Decades later, that is precisely what happened. The collapse of the license-permit-quota raj in the early 1990s exposed the moral and economic bankruptcy of socialist policies,' the article said. 'So why should this outdated, failed ideology continue to stain our Constitution?' it asked.
In an editorial published in RSS-linked Hindi weekly Panchjanya on July 5 said that Rahul Gandhi accepted a few years ago that imposition of Emergency was a mistake, and asserted that the Congress leader should come forward to rectify that mistake.
'If the Emergency was a mistake, then the constitutional amendments made during that period are also the result of that mistake,' weekly's editor Hitesh Shankar said in the editorial.
'If Rahul Gandhi and the Congress consider this amendment a wrong decision, then they should demand a review of this amendment in the Parliament and take the initiative to remove the words 'secular' and 'socialist',' he added.
Shankar said the country should also come up with a 'new discussion, new resolve and new courage' in this matter.
'Along with discussion on the (two) words (in the Preamble), there should be deliberations on the process and legality as well,' he added.