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Mint
5 days ago
- Politics
- Mint
Srinath Raghavan unpacks Indira Gandhi's controversial legacy during the Emergency years
I am a child of the Indira Gandhi era. Through my formative years, she was Prime Minister. Until 1977, it never occurred to me that men could aspire to this position. Consider what an amazing reversal this is in a patriarchal, misogynistic society—that a little girl thought that only women could lead her country. Of course, this was always with the chorus of Indian male voices saying derisively, 'That woman (this or that) …" Even back then, I knew that tone was reserved for women—women drivers, women managers, women entrepreneurs and, of course, women Prime Ministers. No matter, as that little girl, I still wanted to be 'that woman." This book is not about 'that woman." The title, Indira Gandhi and the Years that Transformed India, is misleading. What it is, is a history of India from 1966-84. Also read: Let women reclaim the right to rage The prologue sets the stage, moving between Indira Gandhi's biography and a potted history of the first one-and-a-half decades after independence. In the first chapter, Srinath Raghavan traces the simultaneous decline of the Congress party's dominance and Gandhi's attempt to consolidate her position. It accounts for the economic crises of the mid-1960s and narrates the backstage machinations within the Congress, when Gandhi proved to be not such a 'gungi gudiya" (or 'dumb doll," as the socialist leader, Ram Manohar Lohia, called her) after all. The fractured mandate of 1967, the split in the Congress party and the 1972 election move the story forward. The detailed reconstruction of all of the attendant intrigue and controversy is quite remarkable. The outstanding chapter in the book—no surprise, given that Raghavan is a military historian—is the one on the 1971 war. The chapter weaves together the emerging story from East Pakistan, the international context and Gandhi's domestic challenges. If you had not read about this critical year in Indian history, these pages would be the place to start. It segues from the end of the war to the growing power of the Prime Minister and the way the argument began to build for the important constitutional amendment that was passed in 1977—the 42nd Amendment—and remains contentious. This Amendment added the words 'Socialist" and 'Secular" to the Preamble; added a part on Fundamental Duties of citizens; strengthened the Concurrent List at the expense of the State List; limited judicial review of laws; extended the duration of President's Rule to one year and that of the Lok Sabha to six years. Some of this was rolled back in subsequent amendments. Raghavan pays a great deal of attention to economic policy in this period, including bank nationalisation and the constitutional debates on property rights. It is interesting that the only mention of India's first nuclear tests in Pokharan in 1974 is this: '…the prime minister even burnished her Caesarist credentials by testing a nuclear device to rapturous applause." Given the way in which Raghavan reconstructs policy debates and decision-making, it would have been interesting to read more but perhaps, he chose to leave this out because others, such as Itty Abraham, George Perkovich, Kanti Bajpai and Bharat Karnad, have written extensively on this. The next chapter is devoted to Jayaprakash Narayan's movement that culminated in the Janata Party experiment. What came to be known as the JP movement was a mobilisation of student protests with the support of some opposition parties. They gained enough momentum to give the government pause and this became the pretext for the imposition of Emergency. Raghavan reserves his most colourful descriptions for this period—'The polar night of the emergency" and 'The dark and gnarled stretches that led to this decision"—almost as if we might miss the point that these were bad times. To use Indian newspaper headline language, there is virtually no one that Raghavan does not 'slam" in the Emergency chapter—from Indira Gandhi to Nani Palkhivala ('Such are the vagaries of the liberal conscience that Palkhivala not only agreed to appear for Indira Gandhi…") to Justices Y.V. Chandrachud and P.N. Bhagwati. The chapter on the Emergency recounts in parallel the programmes that the government promoted vigorously, the manoeuvres of an imprisoned and underground but coalescing opposition and, also, what came to be called the 'excesses" of Sanjay Gandhi's Youth Congress. Raghavan writes about the one-and-a-half years of the Janata Party government under Morarji Desai and Charan Singh just as unsparingly, making note of every intransigence, foible and egotistical assertion. The final chapter takes us from Gandhi's return to power in January 1980 to her assassination in October 1984. This is a period in which India was witness to growing unrest in three regions—Assam, over citizenship; Punjab, over the demand for a separate Sikh state; and Kashmir, where the push-pull of Centre-State relations was fomenting the conditions for the militancy that would come. Describing the world in which Gandhi came of age politically, the author writes, '…a wilfully cultivated aura of ruthlessness—as distinct from a highly developed instinct for power—was apparently her shield in an arena of politics shot through with gendered mores: one in which a woman prime minister could casually be called a 'gungi gudiya'... or a 'chokri' (derisive term for girl)." For all this gender sensitivity, in a nod to other writings on these years, he mentions five male authors but misses Nayantara Sahgal and Sagarika Ghose's work. When one later reads sexist phrases (most likely inadvertently used) like '…she did succeed in molesting the constitution" and 'More pregnant was her claim" (about the Congress mandate in 1971), it is hard to overlook them. That Raghavan is not a fan of Gandhi is made abundantly clear in the book, not just because the calculus of her political actions leads us to a critical appraisal but because his use of adjectives and adjectival clauses makes sure we know this. Writing about her first assumption of Prime Ministerial office, we are told about 'her shallow puddle of experience" and then the word 'Caesarist" appears over and over, sometimes as description and sometimes as explanation of other things. I would have enjoyed coming to a conclusion on my own based on the very detailed narrative he constructs, but then these were my formative years and perhaps unfamiliar readers need the signposts. Raghavan writes in his Prologue, '…this book was written in a time when a new political configuration was crystallizing in Indian democracy. It would be idle to suggest that my political views on this recent turn have not shaded this historical account… I have sought to write a history that 'supplies the antidote to every generation's illusion that its own problems are uniquely oppressive.'" He is also writing at a time when chunks of Indian history are literally being erased from our textbooks. This is a good book for those trying to fill in the blanks about a period to which everyone now refers but ever-fewer people remember first-hand. What we hear on official channels is a version where successive Indira Gandhi governments accomplished nothing but the oppression of today's rulers whose role in resisting the Emergency is lionised. Was Gandhi good or bad, the best or the worst? In our fact-free, nuance-free times, Raghavan's book makes an important contribution by writing in detail about the decision-making process on a number of policies—from the first stirrings of an idea or a crisis to the various points of view as they emerged and crystallised to the implementation and consequences of that idea. This lets us see that nothing about government is easy, even for 'Caesarist" Prime Ministers! On economic and foreign policy, and even on the question of constitutional amendment, despite his own disapproval, Raghavan lets us see someone who asks for opinions and considers them thoughtfully even though she ultimately follows her instinct. In fact, one of the strengths of the book is the dispassionate reconstruction of policy processes and outcomes. On bank nationalisation, for example, Raghavan says that while later writing has judged this as a politically expedient decision by Indira Gandhi, he also writes about its actual impact in giving the state access to more funds and taking the reach of the banking sector into rural India. Overall, I am not sure how accessible this book is for the general reader. Within the chapters, the narrative sometimes jumps around, almost requiring you to know this era to follow. The language is sometimes difficult and sometimes chatty. Reading about these years always feels personal to me. To encounter the years of one's life in another person's words is a strange experience because you want to jump in and say, 'I don't remember it like that" or 'I also remember this". Despite this personal connection, this book did not draw me in. What I missed was more quotations from Gandhi's own letters and notes. In a book titled 'Indira Gandhi," I missed her voice. The writing has a personal quality because the author has such a strong opinion of the protagonist-who-isn't and yet, it is impersonal (not dispassionate) as a textbook would be. This may be to your reading taste or not. That diminishes neither the solid historical research nor the astounding detail in which historical events are described in the book. Swarna Rajagopalan is a political scientist and peace educator. Also read: Writer Gideon Haigh on the foremost rivalry in cricket today
News18
17-07-2025
- Politics
- News18
Why India Needs To Relook At The Concept Of ‘Secularism'
It is important to take a relook at the concept of 'secularism' as originated in the West and is being applied to India In the wake of the 50th anniversary of Emergency (1975-77), which was commemorated on June 25 this year, a debate has been reignited on the inclusion of the words 'secular" and 'socialist" in the Preamble of the Indian Constitution. This inclusion was done through the 42nd Amendment of the Constitution in 1976. Several clauses of this amendment were struck down by the Supreme Court in 1980 (Minerva Mills vs Union of India case). The amendment's constitutional morality has also been questioned, as it was passed when the opposition was put in jail by the Indira Gandhi government. A look at the historical evolution of the concept of 'secularism" indicates that it is largely a Christian construct suitable for the West. Its suitability to India's civilisational construct needs to be debated in this regard. Origin and evolution According to Britannica, 'The word secular is derived from the Latin term saeculum, meaning 'a generation", 'a human lifetime", 'an era of time", or 'a century". In its original Christian sense, the word indicated the finite temporal world of mundane daily or political affairs as opposed to Christian religious time and practices filled with the sense of eternity and laden with spiritual significance. The first edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica (1768-71) defined secular as 'something that is temporal; in which sense, the word stands opposed to ecclesiastical". 'The English thinker and writer George Holyoake in 1851 was the first to use the term secularism to refer to a particular nonreligious civic and ethical philosophy that he intended to lack the negative ethical connotation that atheism carried at the time." Holyoake's explanation in 'The Principles of Secularism" (third edition; 1870) is typically rooted in the concept of Christian morality. He said, 'Secularism relates to the present existence of man, and to action, the issues of which can be tested by the experience of this life—having for its objects the development of the physical, moral, and intellectual nature of man to the highest perceivable point, as the immediate duty of society: inculcating the practical sufficiency of natural morality apart from Atheism, Theism, or Christianity: engaging its adherents in the promotion of human improvement by material means, and making these agreements the ground of common unity for all who would regulate life by reason and ennoble it by service." Interestingly, after Holyoake's first edition of 'The Principles of Secularism" had come out in the early 1850s, a group inspired by his work started a Secular Institute on Fleet Street in London in 1854. Their goal was to set up secular societies. Later they also set up a 'Secular Guild" and published a magazine, 'Reasoner". Secularism: Christian construct The concept of 'secularism" as it is applied today was a typical Christian response to intra-Christianity wars and the dominance of the Church in Europe. The Christian wars in the 16th and 17th centuries had ravaged Europe, as the Church was intertwined with the State in such a manner that one couldn't segregate the two. The Treaty of Westphalia (1648), which ended the 'Thirty Years War" in Europe, was the first significant step by the Western polity to curb the authority of the Church by introducing the principle of cuius regio, eius religio (the ruler's religion would be the religion of the people). Prominent thinkers and intellectuals like John Locke (1632-1704), who is often called the 'father of Western liberalism", pushed for greater religious tolerance to reduce the dominance of the Church in public life. The French Revolution One of the key milestones in the development of this Christian framework of secularism was the 'French Revolution" in 1789. It was a violent revolution against the dominance of the Church in France. According to Stewart J Brown and Timothy Tackett (Christianity: Enlightenment, Reawakening and Revolution 1660-1815; Cambridge University Press; 2008), 'By 1794, the radical revolutionaries had literally attempted to 'de-Christianise' France by closing down churches, forcing priests to resign or emigrate, and inventing new republican cults to replace Christianity. Over the next twenty years, as Catholics struggled to restore religious practice, France's leaders worked to define a new relationship between nation and religion. In the later years of the Revolution, the Directory (1795-99) experimented with separating church and state yet continued to view Christianity as potentially subversive and to pursue anticlerical or de-Christianising policies. When Napoleon came to power, he negotiated a new settlement that re-established Catholicism as the 'religion of the majority of the French' and sought to make it dependent upon the state." Most importantly, the French Revolution laid down the foundation for the principle of laïcité—the separation of religion and the state. In 1905, France formally codified it as a law. The rest of Europe broadly followed this principle. Indian intellectuals and politicians who were in awe of 'Western liberalism" or 'Marxism" picked up this idea and thrust it upon India. top videos View all In the Indian civilisational construct dating back several millennia, religion never dominated the state because we were ruled by the concept of 'dharma"—a set of eternal values that has nothing to do with any particular way of worship. In this context, it is important to take a relook at the concept of 'secularism" as originated in the West and is being applied to India. The writer is an author and a columnist. His X handle is @ArunAnandLive. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18's views. tags : constitution emergency secular First Published: July 08, 2025, 19:55 IST
India Today
16-07-2025
- Politics
- India Today
Socialist-secular debate: ‘Dattatreya Hosabale seeks regression, not reform'
(NOTE: This article was originally published in the India Today issue dated July 14, 2025)On June 26, RSS general secretary Dattatreya Hosabale said the quiet part out loud. He wanted a discussion on whether the words 'secular' and 'socialist' 'should remain' in the Constitution's Preamble. He said Ambedkar never used these words and argued that they were smuggled in during the Emergency. The 50th anniversary of the Emergency was seemingly a good occasion to discuss deleting them does not seek reform; what he wants is a regression. The Constitution is not an la carte menu. You cannot pick what you like and discard the rest. The Preamble reflects our national purpose. To alter its core is not debate. It is the 42nd Amendment added those words in 1976. But the idea behind them was always there. Secularism and Socialism flow through the Constitution like groundwater. You won't find secularism on every page. But dig, and it's there. Article 14 promises equality before law. Articles 15 and 16 prohibit discrimination. Article 25 guarantees freedom of religion. Articles 27 and 28 keep religion out of state institutions. Articles 29 and 30 protect cultural and educational rights of minorities. None of these need the word 'secular' to work. But the word ties them together conceptually. Secularism in India is not about hostility to religion. It means the state keeps an equal distance from all religions. It does not bow before temple, mosque or church. It protects belief. And the right not to believe. That's not alien. That's constitutional. Socialism, too, is not an alien transplant. It means social justice. It means the state must look after the weak. It means wealth cannot be the only source of power. Ambedkar didn't oppose the idea. He only warned against locking in an economic model. But the Directive Principles say enough: reduce inequality, ensure fair wages, protect the dignity of labour. These are socialist values, Indian in says the amendment came during dark times. True. But a bad moment doesn't make every act bad. Courts didn't strike down that part of the amendment. Even the Janata government, which reversed much of the Emergency's excesses, retained those words, and Atal Bihari Vajpayee and L.K. Advani, as important ministers in that government, raised no objection to the continuation of those Supreme Court has settled this. In Kesavananda Bharati vs State of Kerala (1973), secularism was enumerated among the Constitution's basic features. In S.R. Bommai vs Union of India (1994), the court said secularism is part of the Constitution's basic features. These are not footnotes. These are judgments of large constitution cannot amend the basic structure. You cannot touch the foundation without breaking the house. Parliament is powerful, but not absolute. Hosabale's demand is not about semantics. It is about reshaping the state. It is about shifting India from a secular republic to a majoritarian democracy. That's not just a constitutional problem. It's a national is not one colour, one language, one faith. It is a complex, layered society. Secularism is how we manage that diversity. Not by denial. But by respect and neutrality. You don't need the word 'secular' to act secular. But once you drop the word, you make space for its opposite. That is the risk. Words matter. That's why the RSS wants to drop them. To clear the path for something else. They want a Hindu Rashtra, not a secular republic. Let us not pretend otherwise. This is not about constitutional clarity. It's about political ambition. The Preamble is not a draft. It is a declaration. It says who we are. It says what we aspire to be. We may not always live up to it. But we do not give up on it or allow our national covenant to be rewritten by those who never believed in its words to begin with.—The author is a senior advocate at the Supreme CourtadvertisementSubscribe to India Today Magazine- EndsMust Watch
Time of India
15-07-2025
- Politics
- Time of India
Organiser: Go back to original Preamble sans 'socialist' and 'secular'
File photo: RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat (PTI) NEW DELHI: Close on the heels of RSS general secretary Dattatreya Hosabale's call for a review on the continuation of "socialist" and "secular" in the Constitution's Preamble - words added during the Emergency, Sangh-inspired weekly 'Organiser' dubbed the terms "ideological landmines" designed to "subvert dharmic values" and "serve political appeasement", stressing it's time to "undo" them and reclaim the original Constitution. Terming the insertion of the two words into the Preamble an "act of constitutional fraud", an article in the magazine's latest edition said these terms were not mere "cosmetic additions" but "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," Dr Niranjan B Poojar said in the opinion piece, titled 'Revisiting Socialist and Secular in the Preamble: Reclaiming India's Constitutional Integrity'. It was an "act of constitutional fraud", akin to forging someone's will when they are unconscious, it said. "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," the article 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". "We are not a socialist country. We are not a secular-atheist state. We are a dharmic civilization rooted in pluralism, swaraj and spiritual autonomy. Let us have the courage to say so in our Constitution," it said. The article said after insertion of the term 'secular' into the Preamble, the "Indian version" of secularism lost neutrality and it became a "smokescreen for state-sponsored discrimination against Hindus in the name of minority rights".
Indian Express
13-07-2025
- Politics
- Indian Express
CPM too opposed changes to Preamble during Emergency, now blaming RSS: Sangh-linked magazine
After RSS general secretary Dattatreya Hosabale's recent remarks questioning the inclusion of the words 'socialist' and 'secular' in the Constitution's Preamble sparked a row, RSS-affiliated magazine Organiser has carried a cover story on the topic. Its focus: CPI(M)'s opposition to the Emergency-era 42nd Amendment that led to the addition of the words to the Preamble. The magazine has also published a sharply worded editorial accusing the Congress and the Left of distorting the legacy of the Emergency and turning the RSS into a political scapegoat. While critics, particularly from the Left and the Congress, labelled Hosabale's remarks an ideological attack on the Constitution, Organiser's cover story by Ganesh Radhakrishnan in its latest issue sought to highlight what it called the CPI(M)'s 'original position' on the matter, one that it claimed closely mirrored the RSS's stand. Citing a 1976 pamphlet the CPI(M) published during the Emergency, the article said the party had explicitly criticised the addition of 'socialist' and 'secular', viewing them as a political manoeuvre by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi to centralise power. The pamphlet, later republished in Malayalam by Chintha Publishers in 2005, warned that the amendment was part of a broader strategy to turn the Constitution into an instrument of one-party rule under Gandhi. The CPI(M)'s alternative proposal of 26 amendments at the time made no mention of 'socialist' or 'secular' either, the Organiser article claimed. According to the article, in a preface to the republished volume, senior CPI(M) leader P Govinda Pillai had opposed the amendments tooth and nail. 'Indira Gandhi wanted to portray that the declaration of Emergency and the constitutional amendments were not an expression of fascist tendencies, but rather, an effort to defeat fascist forces and implement democracy and socialism … These changes were not based on democratic consensus but on political expediency,' Pillai is quoted as saying. The article said Hosabale's recent statements had 'not deviated from its original position even today'. 'The onus now falls upon the CPM to clarify whether its stance has changed,' Radhakrishnan wrote. It also quoted CPI(M) general secretary M A Baby's remarks following Hosabale's statement to make its point. 'RSS's demand to remove socialism and secularism from the Constitution's Preamble is a direct assault on India's core values. RSS always pushed Manusmriti over our Constitution,' Baby said. Building on this, Organiser editor Prafulla Ketkar, in his editorial, accused the Congress and Left of historical revisionism. 'This year marks the fifty years of the dark days of the Emergency… Instead of recognising the personal dictatorial ambitions of Ms Indira Gandhi as the root cause of the Emergency, an attempt is being made to divert the blame to a selfless leader like JP (Jayaprakash Narayan) and a nationalist organisation like RSS,' Ketkar wrote. 'When RSS Sarkaryavah Dattatreya Hosabale spoke about how 'secularism' and 'socialism' were inserted into the Constitution during the Emergency, he was exposing this hypocrisy. Dr Ambedkar was unmistakable when he called out Communists as the enemies of the Constitution while dedicating the final draft to the nation in 1949. Various outfits with allegiance to communism have openly called the Constitution 'bourgeoisie', and most of them vowed to overthrow it someday,' he added. Ketkar accused the Congress of repeatedly trying to undermine constitutional democracy, citing Nehru's First Amendment and the UPA's proposed Communal Violence Bill, and dismissed the CPI(M)'s claims of ideological consistency. While the CPI(M) has yet to officially respond to the Organiser article, the party has maintained in the past that it opposed the Emergency and the way the constitutional changes were carried out, but supports the substantive values of socialism and secularism. The Congress has also repeatedly defended the incorporation of these principles as essential to India's democratic and plural ethos. In his address at a recent event in Delhi at the Dr Ambedkar International Centre, Hosabale said: 'During the Emergency, two words, 'secular' and 'socialist', were added to the Constitution, which were not part of the original Preamble. There was no Parliament, no rights, no judiciary functioning, and yet these words were added. That is why this matter must be discussed.'
