Time For India To Stop Wearing The ‘Secular' And ‘Socialist' Labels
One is a colonial, Western construct weaponised against India's civilisation; the other, an infatuation with Soviet Union and its oppressive communist economy, which finally failed
The words of RSS sarkaryavah or general secretary Dattatreya Hosabale have often been the bellwether to profound and unexpected change. His statement against the decriminalisation of homosexuality under Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, for instance, paved the way for the Indian Right bringing down its wall of resistance towards the reform.
So, when 'Datta-ji" calls for a debate on the words 'secular" and 'socialist", which were inserted into the Preamble of the Constitution not by Parliament but through the backdoor during Emergency, his words carry both weight and edge.
'Later, these words were not removed. Should they remain or not, a debate must happen. These two words were not in Dr Ambedkar's Constitution. During the Emergency, the country had no functioning Parliament, no rights, no judiciary and yet these two words were added," Hosabale said.
Has the Narendra Modi dispensation made up its mind to remove 'secular" and 'socialist" from India's Constitution?
It seems so.
Secularism was a European concept that evolved after a conflict between the Church and the King, he said. He argued Bharat is a dharma-centric nation, and therefore, 'secularism" was not part of the Constitution but added during the Emergency by 'one insecure prime minister".
The founding parents of the Indian Constitution had extensively debated the subject before deciding not to include the two terms.
On November 15, 1948, KT Shah proposed an amendment to the draft of the Indian Constitution to include 'Secular, Federal, Socialist Union of States". However, BR Ambedkar, the chairman of the Drafting Committee, junked the proposal.
He said, 'What should be the policy of the state, how society should be organised in its social and economic side, are matters which must be decided by the people themselves according to time and circumstances."
Ambedkar was staunchly against codifying an ideology like socialism in the Constitution and restricting future generations from choosing their own path.
'It cannot be laid down in the Constitution itself because that is destroying democracy altogether," he said.
Ambedkar argued that the Constitution blueprint already had socialist principles laid down through the Directive Principles of State Policy. He pointed to Article 31 of the draft, which already prescribed a strong dose of socialism by preventing the concentration of wealth and providing equal pay for equal work.
And both Jawaharlal Nehru and Ambedkar argued that the term 'secular" did not need to be explicitly mentioned in the Preamble. Ambedkar said the Constitution had already made it clear that India would not recognise any religion.
Articles 16 and 19, for instance, prohibit discrimination against any person based on religion.
Nehru said the notion of Western secularism did not fit Bharat's ideas of religious tolerance and respect for all cultures, ironically echoed by Ravi and the RSS-BJP ecosystem so many decades later.
But Congress member of the Constituent Assembly Lokanath Misra was perhaps one of the most outspoken and unabashed voices against 'secularism". He called 'secular State" a 'slippery phrase, a device to bypass the ancient culture of the land". He argued that religion could not be divorced from life.
'If religion is beyond the ken of our State, let us clearly say so and delete all reference to rights relating to religion. If we find it necessary, let us be brave enough and say what it should be," he said.
Here is a particularly impassioned—many may say politically incorrect—excerpt of his speech at the Constituent Assembly debates.
'We have no quarrel with Christ or Mohammad or what they saw and said. We have all respect for them. To my mind, Vedic culture excludes nothing. Every philosophy and culture has its place but now, the cry of religion is a dangerous cry. It denominates, it divides and encamps people in warring ways.
In the present context what can this word 'propagation' in Article 19 mean? It can only mean paving the way for the complete annihilation of Hindu culture, the Hindu way of life and manners. Islam has declared its hostility to Hindu thought. Christianity has worked out the policy of peaceful penetration by the backdoor on the outskirts of our social life.
This is because Hinduism did not accept barricades for its protection. Hinduism is just an integrated vision and a philosophy of life and cosmos, expressed in organised society to live that philosophy in peace and amity.
But Hindu generosity has been misused and politics has overrun Hindu culture. Today religion in India serves no higher purpose than collecting ignorance, poverty and ambition under a banner that flies for fanaticism. The aim is political, for in the modern world all is power-politics and the inner man is lost in the dust.
Let everybody live as he thinks best but let him not try to swell his number to demand the spoils of political warfare. Let us not raise the question of communal minorities anymore. It is a device to swallow the majority in the long run. This is intolerable and unjust."
It is time for Bharat to do away with 'secular" and 'socialist" labels—one a colonial, Western construct weaponised against India's civilisation; the other, an infatuation with the rise of the Soviet Union and its oppressive communist economy, which ultimately failed.
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The new India must carefully choose what it wears, what it wants to be.
Abhijit Majumder is a senior journalist. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18's views.
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