Time to dump some anachronisms?

Came across Barun Mitra’s excellent article in Mint re. the ideology of “socialism” that all of us are forced to adhere to.

Excerpts:

“…under the Representation of the People Act, all political parties in India (also) have to pledge allegiance…to socialism.

…The socialist intent of the Preamble has been extended by law to the Representation of the People Act, 1951, (RP Act) through an amendment in 1988…Rajiv Gandhi’s government introduced this amendment when the ruling Congress party enjoyed three-fourths majority in Parliament.

at the root of this change, was the infamous 42nd Amendment to the Constitution, enacted by the Congress government under then prime minister Indira Gandhi during the days of national emergency, in 1976. The Bill had proposed nearly 60 amendments – one of these amended the Preamble to the Constitution to term India a “sovereign, secular, socialist democratic republic”.

When the Janata Party formed government after the Congress lost the 1977 election, it sought to undo a lot of the draconian provisions of the 42nd Amendment, but retained the section that pertained to socialism and secularism in the Preamble.

However, B.R. Ambedkar, the man who helped draft the Constitution, specifically gave his reason for the non-inclusion of the word “socialism” when it was sought to be inserted into the Preamble by another member during the deliberations.

Ambedkar did not want the Constitution to tie down future generations. He said in the Assembly on 15 November, 1948 :

(H)ow the society should be organized in its social and economic side are matters which must be decided by the people themselves according to time and circumstances. It cannot be laid down in the Constitution itself, because that is destroying democracy altogether. It is perfectly possible today, for the majority people to hold that the socialist organization of society is better than the capitalist… But it would be perfectly possible for thinking people to devise some other form…which might be better than the socialist organization of today or of tomorrow.

…there is now an opportunity to seriously reconsider this whole issue.

What is at stake is not whether one believes in the tenets of socialism or secularism.

At stake is the democratic and political process, which includes campaigning and convincing the people of any particular political ideology; and the freedom of the people to choose from the competing policies.

Democracy is not just about majority rule, it is also about the freedom enjoyed by those who hold a minority opinion today to win over their fellow citizens. Without that freedom, democracy cannot have any substance….”

Well said.

***

P.S. Sadly, the Supreme Court rejected the plea to delete the word “socialist” from the Constitution – by stating that (socialism) “…In (a) broader sense…means welfare measures for the citizens. It is a facet of democracy.”

Hmmm. I am not convinced that socialism = welfare of citizens (only).

The words “secular” and “socialist” were added to the Preamble by an Amendment to the Constitution during Emergency without much debate or discussion. They have not been revisited since.

Some of you would like this article by Arvind Lavakare written about five years ago: The definition of ‘secular’ from which I have taken this excerpt re. the “secular” part of our Constitution:

“…Some other results of our undefined ‘secular’ country are as follows:

  • The government extends financial assistance to religious institutions. Why, under the 1925 Sikh Gurdwara Act, the state government spends millions of rupees for conducting elections to the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee that controls Akali politics.
  • The State allows public celebration of religious functions. Why, the holders of the highest offices of state and tallest political leaders make it a point to visit religious shrines and make a demonstration of paying obeisance to imams or cardinals or sadhus or swamis.
  • The state grants funds to educational institutions run for the benefit of one religion only. Why, the Government of India and state governments share the financial burden of ‘modernisation’ of madrassas and the Aligarh Muslim University is run entirely on government grants.
  • Minority educational institutions can prescribe religious courses and appoint or dismiss a teacher/faculty member according to their whims, but rules and regulations are in force for majority religion educational bodies. The various interpretations of the Supreme Court on Articles 29 and 30 have ensured that unholy scenario.
  • Government subsidises the salaries of imams, naib imams and muezzins of mosques, but not of granthis in gurdwaras and pujaris in temples. Why, the Supreme Court itself has prescribed the scale of these subsidies, which amounted to over Rs 6,000 million annually, according to a publication of the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Nyasa.
  • Though the Jama Masjid of Delhi is not classified as a protected monument, Rs 0.7 million were doled out to it in the eighties by the governments of Indira Gandhi and V P Singh, while nearly Rs 10 million were spent on that institution by the department of archaeology between 1990 and 1996. This ‘secular’ largesse is in contrast to the denial of even a rupee to ancient Hindu temples like Badrinath and Kedarnath.
  • Government-appointed administrators run several Hindu temple trusts while the mosques of Hazratbal and Charar-e-Sharif are free of such control.
  • Public holidays for religious occasions are accepted as being in consonance with a ‘secular’ State. Why, V P Singh’s government declared the birthday of the Prophet as a gazetted holiday although no Islamic country gives that privilege to its citizens.

***

It is a shame that we have never had a full and public debate about the need for having this word in the Preamble to the Constitution, in the first place.

Secondly, we have never really bothered to define what it means and what would it imply in terms of state policies towards Hinduism, Islam, Christianity and other religions.

Should being secular necessarily entail being defensive about Hinduism? And is it not ironical that at its root, Hinduism is actually a very “secular” belief system?

Related Posts:

Hinduism as a secular concept

Of Subsidies and Politics of Secularism

Secular Fundamentalism” alive & kicking in India

Secularism or Politics of Appeasement?

Perverse secularism and India’s future and “On Constitution and Secularism”

UPDATE:

Thanks to “Patriot” for this link: http://indiacode.nic.in/coiweb/amend/amend42.htm. You can read the entire constitution and the various amendments at the above site.

Also, please refer to this comment and the following two comments on this topic:

https://satyameva-jayate.org/2008/05/08/naman-1857/#comment-11957

UPDATE II re. “Secularism”: Apparently an attempt was made to define “secularism” in 44th amendment on 23rd Aug, 1978 which was not passed by Rajya Sabha (courtesy, http://twitter.com/vantage_pt)

UPDATE III: 

As I wrote here last year, the word “secular” in Hindi is panthnirpeksha. In 1977, when Indira Gandhi’s government was voted out after the Emergency, the new Janata Party government introduced a Constitutional Amendment Bill. The word “secular” was sought to be defined in the Constitution as “equal respect for all religions”.

The Bill was passed in the 1977-79 Lok Sabha where the Janata Party held a majority. But it was defeated in the Rajya Sabha where the Congress had a majority. Why did the Congress reject 36 years ago the Lok Sabha’s definition of secularism – “equal respect for all religions”?

Consider what UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi said during a lecture 30 years later at the Nexus Institute in the Hague on June 9, 2007: “India is a secular country. The term means equal respect for all religions.” She thus accepted a definition her mother-in-law, Indira Gandhi, had rejected.

From “Dressed-up Secularism” by Minhaz Merchant, 24th Apr ’13.

UPDATE IV: Well researched post on “Genesis of Secularism in India by Navroop Singh, including details of the Constituent Assembly debates on this topic.

You may also like...

13 Responses

  1. B Shantanu says:

    Some excerpts from Why we must lose sleep over Hindu terror by M R Venkatesh which reinforce the point I made in the post re. “secularism” (emphasis mine)

    Samuel Huntington, one of world’s foremost political thinkers, captures this paradigm rather eloquently and brings out this conflict between the temporal power and the spiritual authorities when he states in his celebrated book The Clash of Civilizations: ‘God and Caesar, church and state, spiritual authority and temporal authority, have been a prevailing dualism in Western culture.’

    He further adds: ‘Only in Hindu civilisation were religion and politics also so distinctly separated. In Islam, god is Caesar, in China and Japan [Images], Caesar is god; in orthodoxy, god is Caesar’s junior partner. The separation and recurring clashes between church and state that typify western civilisation have existed in no other civilisation.’

    It is this separation programme in western civilisation between the church and the government, between the spiritual and the temporal power, that came to be popularly (at least in India) known as secularism.

    Traditionally, India had a simple approach to this vexed issue — temporal power achieved this separation by respecting all religions by adopting the broader philosophy of Raj Dharma. In return, religious leaders never interfered in the matter of mundane governance as was the case of the church in the west.

    It is indeed surprising that despite the civilisational advantage of having settled this issue of separation of temporal and spiritual power long back, it is the lack of understanding of world experiences as well as the history of our nation that continues to haunt modern India.

    what is missed in the melee of adopting this brand of secularism is that secularism as practiced in the West is by and large an intra-religious affair. To amplify further, how could a model that handled one and only one religion and that too the predominant religion in its relationship with the State become a model for setting the relationship of government in a multi-religious, plural and complex country like India?

    …Naturally, when we adopt secularism modelled on the west to deal with religious issues, we run the risk of shooting ourselves in our temple.

    In the process our politicians have failed to understand that India is secular, not because of the Constitution of India which proclaims India to be a secular state, but because the vast majority of people from all faiths believe in the right of others to follow any other religion. At every village, town or city, barring minor exceptions, it is this approach of ordinary people that makes India governable to whatever extent that she is.

    …Nothing else can explain maintenance of law and order across the country consisting of over six lakh villages with a mere hundred thousand police stations.

  2. v.c.krishnan says:

    Dear Shantanu,
    People get riled up when we attempt at that sort of thing.
    Today the Educated lite will not groan in suffocationof religiosity if Gordon brown brings in a legislation because his morals as being brought up as a “Prebyterian Christian”.
    The seculars will not graon with agony when one discusses the aspect that Obama belongs to “The United Church of US”.
    Let them only hear that “Rajaji”, “Advaniji”, or “Sadhvi Rithambara” are practicing HINDUS; OOPS you have set the cat among the pigeons. Their hackles are raised and shamelessely we will have the whole Stephanian, ST’S school educated group coming down on them like a pack of growling dogs;
    By the way I call them growling dogs as in front of the white man they are “Grovelling Dogs”. Sometimes even Dogs have their self respect but these do not.
    Let us get back to the basics and then we can take up this socialistic issue for whatever it is worth.
    Unless we Indians learn to respect each other as humans any amount of legislation of any type will not work.
    Regards,
    vck

  3. tarique says:

    very well said vck .u really don’t mince words and i like ur attitude to call a ‘spade a spade ‘.i also admire ur hindu pride lot . it is much better and more purposeful than many other ‘rabble rousing ‘ hindutvadis who see a ‘violent jihadist’ in every muslim .i feel if u r a truthful person u can be a proud hindu or a proud muslim ,and hold ur head high in any corner of the world ,even if u r just one among a million people .

  4. Sandeep says:

    ” For the sake of Christian and commercial intercourse with China, it is in the highest degree desirable that we should keep out of this quarrel, and that the Chinese should not be led to regard all the nations of the Western World as united in a conspiracy against them.”

    Can anyone identify the Scholar who wrote these lines??

  5. Sanjay says:

    Sandeep – Karl Marx!

  6. Sandeep says:

    Quite Surprising. Is it not?

    This is from an article he wrote in 1857. It is told that he wrote his “manifesto” in 1848.

    http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/04/10.htm

  7. Arjun says:

    “Time to dump” is not a good enough reason. You need to logically state reasons for it. The socialist angle is the only reason why our economy is surviving (not in the GDP way though). If we stop this, prices will again sour and majority of India’s population will perish out of hunger. For god’s sake don’t repeat popular media. Thanks.

  8. Harsh says:

    Shantanu,

    This is an amazing post. Very educational. Thank you!

  9. B Shantanu says:

    More on secularism, courtesy Arvind Lavakare:
    :That fact is that J&K is the only State in our country which is not officially pronounced officially as “secular”. Yes the Preamble of the State’s own, independent and exclusive Constitution, (promulgated in November 1956), does not – repeat, does not — proclaim the State to be “Secular”! Hence, Jaitley erred in thinking that the Indian soil on which he was detained was ‘secular’. QED. Sadly, this Constitutional truth is almost unknown to our politicians, big and small, especially the BJP who should have sworn by it all along.

    The reason for this shocking aberration is that the J&K State Government refused to accept that part of Indira Gandhi Government’s 42nd Constitutional Amendment Act of 1976, which changed the constitutional Preamble characterisation of India from a “sovereign democratic republic” into “sovereign socialist secular democratic republic” with the addition of the words “socialist secular” in our Constitution’s Preamble, was not made applicable to J&K. Article 370 of our Constitution was playing its role because it is that Article which permits the J&K Government the right to refuse the applicability of any law of the Indian Parliament that does not relate to an issue of defence, external affairs and communications. It is this Article which the BJP has wanted to abolish for decades but which the rest of the country has refused to permit. Why? Because the non-BJP India believes that abrogation of Article 370 is a Hindu agenda. Can anything be more stupid than that belief?

    As an aside, let it be recorded here that because the 42nd Constitutional Amendment had left the word “secular” undefined, thereby leaving a lot of ambiguity around. Morarji Desai’s Janata Party Government had wanted to correct the situation. Hence, in its 44th Constitutional Bill of 1977, it inserted a clause defining “secular” as sarva dharma samabhav (equal respect for all religions). While the change was passed in the Lok Sabha where the newly elected Janata Party members had the required majority, the definition was rejected in the Rajya Sabha where the Congress members enjoyed a six-year term. That is why the word “secular” is such a plaything today for pseudo-secularists and those who clamour for reservations of various kinds for religious communities. Tragically, that episode in our Constitutional history seems also unknown to our politicians.

    By the way, the 42nd Constitutional Amendment of India also changed the Preamble’s purpose of securing for its citizens a “unity of the nation” as part of the clause explaining Fraternity therein into “unity and integrity of the nation”. But the “integrity” part was not made applicable to J&K Government. What, pray, did J&K and the Government of India intend to signal with that dangerous exclusion? Recent events in Kishtwar, like innumerable others in J&K are the fallout of that signal from long ago.

  10. Nanda says:

    How article 370 benefited in last 66 years:
    1. kashmiris did not need to work and earn. They got lot of money from central govt for sustaining.
    2. helped them drive out hindus and retain valley exclusively for muslims and central govt couldn’t do anything
    3. helped to keep hindus from other states to own land in J&K and influence the demography. Helped them retain muslim majority
    4. helped them to have more assembly seats in valley and less seats in jammu, disproportionate to population. Thereby, having muslim majority in govt.
    5. helped them to invest, do business, get educated in other states while keeping J&K out of reach for others
    6. helped them protect their women and grab women from other states
    7. helped them remove memories of hinduism by renaming hills and other places without influence of central govt.

    Tell me why would they give up these privileges?

  11. B Shantanu says:

    Nanda: One request: Kindly post comments on the relevant threads.
    Pl use the “Search” box below to find the appropriate post – or the “Categories” drop-down menu on the right.
    As an example, a more appropriate thread for this comment might be this: “Art 370 & the plight of Kashmiri Hindus
    Thanks

  12. B Shantanu says:

    Brief excerpt from 1974 – The invisible turning point by TN Ninan:

    “The turning point in India’s economic policy came shortly before Business Standard was born; in 1974.
    Over the previous five years, Indira Gandhi had nationalised 14 big banks, the general insurance companies, coking coal mines and then non-coking coal mines.
    The monopolies law had been passed, and shackles put on the “big” Indian business houses.
    ….
    The result? Bajaj Auto, being part of a “monopoly house”, was not allowed to expand production, though it had a waiting list for its scooters that stretched for nine long years.
    If you wanted a groom for your daughter, you sometimes had to offer the chap the scarce commodity called a Bajaj scooter as inducement.
    ….
    And when Indira Gandhi took charge as finance minister, after sacking Morarji Desai, she used the 1970 Budget to jack up the maximum income tax rate to more than 97 per cent. If you added the effect of the wealth tax, anyone with some wealth found his combined income and wealth tax burden totalling more than 100 per cent of his income on the margin.
    ….
    The Premier (earlier Fiat) cars that the babus preferred had the lowest price, naturally, and the babus gave themselves preferential quotas. They were also allowed (by themselves!) to sell their quota cars after three years.
    Because of the shortage, the resale price in the market for a three-year-old car was more than the controlled price of a new one; so the babus could replace their old car with a new one every three years, and have some money left over.
    ….Meanwhile, if you wanted to go out of the country, you were allowed all of $8. For this you had to fill out a “P” form, stand in queue at a Reserve Bank counter, then come back some hours or a day or two later to collect your “precious” foreign exchange.
    In this socialist haven, labour laws had been tightened and trade unionists agitated against the use of computers, on the ground that they would reduce employment (ironic, given what was to follow)…

  13. B Shantanu says:

    Somewhat related: Modi’s reforms, Ambedkar’s ideals – It’s time to debate bringing back original Preamble by SHASHI SHEKHAR VEMPATI
    20 September, 2022.
    Brief excerpts:
    ….
    Between the tenures of Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi as prime minister, the Indian Constitution as conceived by Dr BR Ambedkar was amended on more than 50 occasions while diluting and drastically altering its original provisions. In fact, collectively, all Congress governments have amended the Constitution 77 times, which is more than twice the number of amendments during the reign all other prime ministers put together.

    The more than 100 amendments to the Constitution and the undemocratic manner in which the Indira Gandhi government amended the Preamble during the Emergency through the insertion of the words ‘socialism’ and ‘secularism’ are a repudiation of everything Ambedkar stood for and believed in. In fact, on 15 November 1948, the Constituent Assembly debated the very same issue of adding references to socialism in the Preamble and it was Ambedkar who emphatically rejected the demand. Ambedkar’s argument was that such an insertion would be a repudiation of democracy and amount to taking away the liberty of the people to decide what economic system is best suited for the country from time to time.
    ….
    It would perhaps be a fitting tribute to Ambedkar if this public debate were to also deliberate on the question of restoring the Preamble to its original form, ridding it of the Emergency era insertions while reminding future generations of Ambedkar’s sagely wisdom as expressed by him in the Constituent Assembly on 15 November 1948:

    What should be the policy of the State, how the 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. It cannot be laid down in the Constitution itself, because that is destroying democracy altogether. If you state in the Constitution that the social organisation of the State shall take a particular form, you are, in my judgment, taking away the liberty of the people to decide what should be the social organisation in which they wish to live…I do not see therefore why the Constitution should tie down the people to live in a particular form and not leave it to the people themselves to decide it for themselves.