Why framers of India's Constitution didn't include secular in it

India Today

a day ago

Speaking on the 50th anniversary of the declaration of the Emergency, RSS general secretary, Dattatreya Hosabale, questioned the inclusion of the terms 'secular' and 'socialist' in the Preamble by the 42nd Amendment to the Constitution. While the Congress attacked the RSS and BJP after Hosabale's remarks, Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar and Union Ministers Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Jitendra Singh backed the idea that the inclusion of the two words needs to be reviewed.Dhankhar said the inclusion of the terms in the Preamble during the Indira Gandhi-imposed Emergency was a "travesty of justice" and "sacrilege to the spirit of Sanatana".Interestingly, the argument that Hosabale made of the term not being in the original draft of the Indian Constitution is not incorrect.The lone use of the term 'secular' in the original Constitution was in Article 25-2A. Here it was used to refer to "political or other secular activity which may be associated with religious practice", and not to describe the nature of the State.Hosabale said, "Yes, the ideas of socialism and secularism existed through the rules and policies of the government, but that is different. However, it must be questioned whether 'secular' and 'socialist' should remain in the Constitution or not because the makers of the Constitution did not originally include this.""This was not added by Babasaheb but during the Emergency when democratic rights and the legislature were dysfunctional. Hence, such questions must be addressed today," the RSS functionary added.As a political ideology, secularism is the absolute separation of the state from religion, but in the Indian context, it has meant equal respect to all religions. The Indian state is neither anti-religion nor strictly neutral.Even as the Constitution is secular in its spirit, both BR Ambedkar and Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru did not believe that it adhered to the dictionary understanding of the term secularism.The Constituent Assembly agreed that while it was required in spirit, the official inclusion of the term 'secular' would have impeded the necessitated interventions towards ending discrimination and affirmative action.SECULAR: THE CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY DEBATESKT Shah, an eminent economist, advocate and socialist, proposed to add to clause (1) of Article 1 that read, "India shall be a", the words – secular, federal and socialist.With regard to the secular character of the Indian State, he said, "We have been told time and again from every platform, that ours is a secular state. If that is true, if that holds well, I do not see why the term could not be added or inserted in the constitution itself, once again, to guard against any possibility of misunderstanding or misapprehension."However, he added, "The term secular, I agree, does not find place necessarily in constitutions on which ours seems to have been modelled."To this, the Chairperson of the Drafting Committee, Dr BR Ambedkar, expressed his inability to accept such a proposal.He justified it by stating, "The Constitution is merely a mechanism for the purpose of regulating the work of the various organs of the State."For him, the Constitution was not a mechanism for deciding the policy of the state. Rather, the people themselves should actively shape the Constitution in accordance to their social and economic circumstances.Ambedkar did not see the need to, as he said, "tie down the people to live in a particular form and not leave it to the people themselves to decide it for themselves".He also called the proposed amendment "superfluous" as there are other provisions in the Constitution, rather than fundamental rights that obligate the State to be secular, social, and federal in spirit.Other members, such as HV Kamath, argued that, if at all, the term can be added to the Preamble but not to the Constitution, especially within the first article, which talks about 'Union and its Territories and Jurisdictions'.Ambedkar strongly argued, "It cannot be laid down in the Constitution itself, because that is destroying democracy altogether," and the motion was negated by the Vice President.Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru asked the members of the constituent assembly demanding the inclusion of the term 'secular' to consult the dictionary.Frustrated by how this debate had been brought up numerous times, he said, 'It has a great deal of importance, no doubt. But it is brought in all contexts, as if by saying that we are a secular state we have done something amazingly generous, given something out of our pocket to the rest of the world, something which we ought not to have done."For him, the inclusion of the word would be a superficial assertion of having done something 'mighty'.ANCIENT CULTURE OF INDIA WAS NOT SECULARIndia has practised the "principled equidistance" model of secularism, which is engaging with all religions without favouring one over the other.Constituent assembly member, HV Kamath, distinguished the Indian model of secularism by saying, 'When I say that a State should not identify itself with any particular religion, I do not mean to say that a State should be anti-religious or irreligious."Propagating 'dharma' or duty to be the religion of the State, he said, 'A secular state is neither a God-less State nor an irreligious nor an anti-religious State."Another member, Loknath Misra, mentioned India's history to argue that religion cannot be divorced from life and the term 'Secular State' cannot be "a device to bypass the ancient culture of the land". For him, the inclusion of the term 'secular' would require all the rights related to religion in the Constitution to be deleted.The strongest argument against the inclusion of 'secular' in the Constitution was that it would negate the various religious rights.Historian Ian Copland justified the exclusion of the term on two grounds in his book, 'A History of State and Religion in India'. One, the Protestant concept of 'enlightened secularism' did not suit a country where the rulers and religious public have since times immemorial interacted with each other. Two, adding the term might make the public think that the government 'had religion in its sight'.So, while the future of India was rooted in the idea of secularism, it was not the European model but a contextualised Indian model taking into account by the framers of the Constitution.SECULAR DEMOCRACY IS AN IDEAL TO BE AIMED FORThe Articles such as 15(4), 16(5), 17, 25, and 45 already laid down rules as to how, even with the right to religion enshrined as a fundamental right, certain practices within religions are unconstitutional and even illegal.Yet, the then Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, enacted the 42nd Amendment Act in1976 while the country was in a state of national emergency and added the term 'secular' to the Preamble to the Indian Constitution.A member argued, 'What is the use of calling India a secular State if you allow religious instruction to be imparted to young boys and girls?', while another questioned the validity of legislating through private laws.A long debate was then held over the need for a uniform civil code, the meaning of religious instruction, apprehension over the freedom to propagate religion and the future of minority rights in a secular state.To this, Nehru evoked the idea of a "secular democracy" and stated, "It is an ideal to be aimed at and every one of us whether we are Hindus or Muslims, Sikhs or Christians, whatever we are, none of us can say in his heart of hearts that he has no prejudice and no taint of communalism in his mind or heart."'SECULAR' AN ATTACK ON SPIRIT OF CONSTITUTIONSpeaking at the book release of 'Ambekar's Messages', the Vice President of India, Jagdeep Dhankar called the addition of the words to the Preamble a 'betrayal' and 'sacrilege to the spirit of Sanatana'.He said, "The Preamble of the Indian Constitution is unique. Except Bharat (no other) Constitution's Preamble has undergone change, and why? Preamble is not changeable'.Hence, what Hosabale said is not untrue, and he has been joined by others in his criticism of the 42nd Amendment, which added 'secular' to the Preamble.While Congress leaders and the larger opposition have called this an attack on the Constitution, Union Ministers Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Jitendra Singh backed a review of the inclusion of the terms 'socialist' and 'secular'.Chouhan said that the core of Indian Culture is 'Sarva Dharma Sambhav' (equal respect to all) and not 'dharma nirpeksh' (secular). With this he demanded the removal of the terms.Singh supported Hosabale by saying that Ambedkar crafted 'one of the best Constitutions in the world and if it was not his thinking, then with what thought did someone add these terms'.Chief Minister of Kerala Pinarayi Vijayan called this uproar by the RSS 'sheer hypocrisy and political opportunism'.He said, 'Invoking the Emergency to discredit these principles (secularism and socialism) is a deceitful move, especially when the RSS itself colluded with the Indira Gandhi government during the time for its own survival'.There was consensus among the framers of the Indian Constitution that India should not be a theocratic state and there was also debate about 'secular' was the right term to define otherwise. Though a decision was made, the debate continues, 75 years on, because Indira Gandhi included the term during the Emergency when most opposition leaders were hounded underground or packed into jails.- Ends
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