Caravan News
MUMBAI — The radical Hindutva outfit Sanatan Sanstha, under the scanner of various investigating agencies, made a demand on Monday to exclude the word “secular” from the Preamble to the Constitution.
Sanstha spokesperson Chetan Rajhans said the words ‘socialist’ and ‘secular’ were added in the Constitution by the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
“So, if there is a provision to add words, these can also be removed by the same provisions,” he told a media conference in Mumbai.
Elaborating on the demand at a press conference, Sanatan Sanstha spokesperson Chetan Rajhans said that the Constitution does not define which aspect of India is secular: the country, government, or the people. He further added that because of the addition of the term, Hindus are “at a disadvantage”.”No other country in the world puts its majority at a disadvantage,” the outfit said.
Facing a barrage of questions, Rajhans said that the issue is “nothing new” and that the organisation has been demanding this for long through constitutional means.
Although the outfit is a non-government charitable trust and claims to be a spiritual organisaton, it is currently facing massive criticism for being allegedly linked to terror activities, and murder cases of rationalist thinker Narendra Dabholkar and journalist Gauri Lankesh.
On 23 August, Prithviraj Chavan, who had served as the state’s chief minister from November 2010 to September 2014, said that his government had sent a proposal to ban the organisation in 2011 and followed it up with a 1000-page dossier detailing the activities of the radical outfit in 2012.
He said the dossier was “without any prejudice” and was based on a report prepared by the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad on the activities of the Sanstha.
Chetan Rajhans speaking at the press conference, however, said, “We are being defamed in a pre-planned manner. We do not support or approve of violence in any form. Our mission for the past 27 years is to propagate ‘dharma and spirituality.”
(With inputs from agencies)
