Words are not mere words; they do indicate our values and
the basis of our association when it comes to the books like Constitution of India.
Recently the controversy was created by dropping the words Secular and
Socialist from Indian Constitution’s preamble in the advertisement released by
the Modi Government on the eve of Republic day. When it was questioned how come
these words are missing, which are part of the preamble, BJP leaders jumped to
say that this is the ‘original’ Constitutions’ preface.
Ravi Shanker Prasad,
the union minister retorted that Nehru and Ambedkar, were no less secular,
still these words were not put in the Constitution in 1950. At that time Nehru
was Prime Minister and Ambedkar was the Chief of the drafting committee. BJP’s
political ally Shiv Sena’s Sanjay Raut stated that these words should be
deleted for good as we are neither socialist nor secular.
His mentor, late Bal
Thackeray had time and again said that this is a Hindu nation. There was good
opposition to this retrograde move all around. In the face of strong resistance
to this step of the Government, finally Arun Jaitly went on to say that from
now on the prevalent Constitution’s preamble, with words secularism and
socialism, alone will be used.
It is true that the words Socialist and Secular were not
there in the original Constitution which was implemented in 1950. The values of
Socialism, equitable distribution of wealth, social control on resources were
the spirit of the policies for a long time. When the word Socialism was
introduced it was felt that it was the right approach to our economic policies,
and that’s how the current ruling party, BJP also used the word Gandhian
Socialism as its ideology in 1980.
With Modi Government coming to power, its policies are a
signal that Corporate will have unabashed control over social resources. Also
the signals are that policies which were meant to act as protective clauses for
the weak and marginalized will be done away with. So with the new dispensation
the word Socialism is a big embarrassment. Whatever little control state tended
to exercise in economic domain is now over after this Government has come to power.
Just to recall that the industrial giants were the major funders of Modi
campaign.
As for as secularism is concerned it had been the inherent
spirit of Indian Constriction, as the articles 25 and 26 elaborate the secular
nature of the state. The whole Constitution is seeped with secular values. The
addition of these words in the preamble during the dreaded emergency regime was
mostly due to the fact that the authoritarian regime wanted to get some
legitimacy for itself, so these two words might have been added. These words
did not negate the spirit of our Constitution but as such are a value addition
to what we had.
So why this subtle move to delete these words from the
advertisement? Shiv Sena spokesperson said even if this might have happened by mistake,
let’s make it permanent. The core point is that BJP and its ally Shiv Sena are
uncomfortable with the secularism as a guiding principle of our nation, our
state, as their political agenda is totally opposed to upholding pluralism,
diversity and protection of minority rights in our country. Right from the
beginning they have upheld Hindutva i.e. Hindu nationalism as their ideology in
contrast to secularism-Indian nationalism. Times and again as the opportunity
comes they articulate it and depending on their electoral political strength
they try to implement a course towards Hindu nation. Due to their recent
electoral success they feel more emboldened to express this openly.
True that these words were included during emergency, it’s
also true that the Janata Party which came to power had sworn that they will
undo the ‘emergency amendments’, once they come to power, still they did not
touch these words as it was clear that any such attempt will be opposed by the
large section of Indians. One should note that the stalwarts of BJP, Vajpayee
and Advani, were part of that Government. After demolition of Babri Mosque, the
word Hindu Rashtra came more in to bigger prominence. Later once NDA coalition
came to power in 1998 they expressed this subtly by forming ‘Constitution
Review’ committee. Again, seeing the massive opposition from the people, the
NDA government withheld the implementation of the committee report.
Now with majority in the parliament for BJP, this move can
be seen as an attempt to test the waters to see as to how far the BJP
government can go ahead with their agenda of Hindu nationalism. As the matters
stand, seeing the protests and campaigns against BJP’s move, they have finally
decided to use only the preamble with words Secular and Socialist. This attempt
of removal of this word secular cannot be seen in isolation. This was running
in parallel with all-round enfoldment of agenda of RSS combine. There is an assertive
talk by RSS that, we are all Hindus, this is a Hindu nation. At the same time
other voices operate at different level and ask for bringing in Gita as the
national book. Within BJP itself there are supplementary forces that denigrated
religious minorities by calling them Haram jade, and glorify the killer of
Mahatma Gandhi as a patriot. At yet another level, the communal combine is out
to intensify the polarization of society along religious lines, so burning of a
Church here, the incident or throwing corpse of a pig in a holy place, the
campaigns of Ghar Vapasi, and targeting of youth in the name of love jihad are
painfully present on the plate of communal politics.
The fathers of Indian Constitution brought in the core
values of India’s
freedom movement. The ones, who are currently demanding a deletion or debate to
on these words are the ones’ who are opposed to Indian Nationalism and want to
march towards Hindu nationalism. They also don’t identify with India’s freedom
movement. The battle is not merely around this or that word, its battle between
upholding the spirit of Indian freedom movement versus nationalism in the name
of religion.
