The belief that history must not merely be recorded but constantly told and re-told was vividly demonstrated by a minor controversy last week that began with an outpouring of ignorance and then, happily, acquired a momentum of its own. I am referring to the minor storm that erupted over an advertisement issued by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. This innocuous and unmemorable advertisement showed a facsimile of the Preamble to the Indian Constitution as it came into existence in January 1950. It was the Preamble that had been approved by the Constituent Assembly and bore the stamp of the Founding Fathers of the Republic.
To my mind, there was nothing sinister or exceptionable about this advertisement. It was simply a page from India’s post-Independence history-and that too not even the first page. It merely recorded India’s self-identity as a ‘sovereign, democratic Republic’ and the principles governing it. To the peddlers of the fairy-tale of a ‘fascist’ conspiracy to undermine the ‘idea of India’, however, there was method in the dreariness. Beginning with the social media-where most conspiracy theories originate in this e-age-the professional army of secular fundamentalism saw significance in the absence of two tell-tale words from the Preamble: ‘secular’ and ‘socialist’.
Of course these two terms were missing not least because they weren’t in the Preamble when the Constitution was first approved in 1950. Indeed, there were suggestions at that time that, in accordance with the fashion of the times, India should declare itself ‘socialist’. The suggestion was heard and turned down with the then law Minister BR Ambedkar politely arguing that it was improper to determine the architecture of socio-economic organisation for future generations. It was even said that the principle of equality implied a commitment to equitable growth, a defining feature of idealised socialism.
As for secularism, the various provisions relating to the freedom of religion, guarantees of minority rights and non-discrimination on the basis of faith implied that India was secular. In any case, India didn’t ever see itself as a Hindu Republic-the pagan counterpart of a Pakistan that chose its own identity as a confessional state. At that time, no one of any significance thought it relevant to flaunt their secular credentials ostentatiously. India’s secularism was real, rooted and, in a very Hindu style, understated.
The story of how ‘secular’ and ‘socialist’ were thrust into the Preamble-almost at gunpoint-during Indira Gandhi’s self-serving Emergency was, I imagined, too well known to warrant endless repetition. However, as last week’s controversy showed, the fact that the Indian Republic wasn’t born bearing the charms of socialism and regulatory secularism has to re-told to those who learnt their politics from slogans masquerading as profundity. The sordid tale of how these attributes were needlessly grafted to the Constitution to the tune of blaring ‘progressive’ music and with the Opposition behind bars has to be narrated once more.
In a nutshell, the infamous 42nd Amendment was the ideological cloak of a regime that used authoritarianism to perpetuate family rule. To confer respectability to the fact that Emergency was declared to allow Indira Gandhi to subvert a High Court verdict that set aside her election, it was decided to highlight the ‘secular’ and ‘socialist’ credentials of an authoritarian regime. leading the charge were the intellectual predecessors of today’s ‘idea of India’ brigade and a supine media that (to use lK Advani’s memorable phrase) “crawled when asked to bend.”
It is hardly a surprise that these same forces have let out a collective howl over a reminder that today’s Preamble is not the same Preamble that was adopted by the Constituent Assembly in 1950. Just because some 38 years have passed since these distortions entered the Constitution doesn’t lessen the sense of outrage felt by those that lived through the dark days of dictatorial rule. That outrage must be now transmitted to other generations for whom history is remote.
This is not to suggest that there are any indications that the Narendra Modi Government has plans to restore the Constitution to its pre-1976 form. I think it has too much on its plate to afford the luxury of a debate that is detached from contemporary concerns. For all practical purposes, ‘socialism’ involving an overdose of centralised, bureaucratic control now belongs to the ages. Indeed, in these days of post-modernism and post-Marxism, it has ceased to be even an intellectual fashion statement. like many colonial laws that still appear in the statute books because no Government has bothered to formally consign them to the archives, the term ‘socialism’ lingers in the Preamble as a spectacular oddity-perhaps as a reminder of unhappy times.
The same can hardly be said of ‘secular’. That India is and must be secular insofar as the state must not ever be identified with any one faith is part of the national consensus. Even those who say India is a Hindu Rashtra are making an important distinction between ‘nation’ and ‘state’. Therefore, to retain ‘secular’ in the Preamble is at best gratuitous.
However, there is a phenomenon worth pondering over. Prior to 1976, India had many communal riots, some of them more horrible than the ones that happened since TV news channels came into existence. It even witnessed a massive nationwide agitation against cow slaughter in 1966. Yet, it is interesting that there was no collective anguish over the future of secularism. Sectarian tensions, it would appear, have acquired a larger political-cum-ideological dimension after the Preamble was doctored. This may be a pure coincidence. Alternatively, it could be an unforeseen consequence of trying to transform a loose spirit of tolerance, brotherhood and pluralism into a codified doctrine. This is a debate worth pursuing.