
Prime Minister Modi did not bother amending the Preamble of the Constitution or seeking its review by the Supreme Court or even seek a Presidential Reference on the continued presence of the obstacle word, “secular”. He bypassed everything and performed the “bhumi pujan” of the State-Religion nexus.
VVP Sharma | Clarion India
DID Prime Minister Narendra Modi act against the spirit of the Indian Constitution when he commandeered the “bhumi pujan’ ceremony of a Ram temple on Ayodhya on August 5 and dedicated it to the nation?
The answer is a yes.
In doing so, the Prime Minister also put a stamp of approval on a practice that is ultra vires the Constitution: The State-Religion nexus. Or, the Government-God nexus.
The Prime Minister‘s efforts to command the Ayodhya trust, Shri Ram Janmbhoomi Teerth Kshetra , to invite persons from a few other religions, if they were to make the Prime Minister appear secular, failed to do so. It was a Hindutva affair on a Hindu platform. Political and religious.
That one act of Modi has changed the character of the Indian Constitution. Hitherto, the spirit of the Constitution, read with Articles 25-28 and the 42nd amendment to the Constitution defined secularism in India in the following manner:
That the State has no religion, the State favours no religion, the State engages with no religion, no religion can pamper the State, no religion can co-opt the State. The presence of the Prime Minister of India, the Governor of Uttar Pradesh and the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh on the dais of the Ayodhya Trust militates against this interpretation.
That these functionaries of the State shared the platform with the Sarsanghchalak of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh, an organisation which promotes a certain Hindutva ideology – that promotes integration of the State and Hindutva on the ground that those living within the geographical limits of India are subjects of Hindutva and therefore should be governed as a distinct, homogenous, religious identity – intent on making it synonymous with Hinduism completes the picture.
I have no beef with religion. I will not reveal if I am a believer or a non-believer or a disbeliever. That is between me and myself and nobody has a business to pry. I have a beef with the State colluding with any one religion. For, that violates my rights as a citizen to be free from any action of the State that forces down religion on me. That is what the Prime Minister did on August 5.
What he did is not right by the Constitution. If he, an ardent Hindutva supporter and an unabashed right-wing nationalist, has the courage, he should have made it legal. What stopped him from amending the Constitution – every Tom, Dick and Harry has amended this Constitution at whim – one more time? All he had to do was delete the word “secular” from the Preamble of the Constitution and amend Articles 25, 26, 27 and 28 to declare that the State endorses the Hindutva religious ideology.
After all, did not Indira Gandhi do something about secularism? She asked her law minister H. R. Gokhale to bring in the 42nd Constitutional Amendment Bill and he did her bidding on August 28, 1976. (Everything that has to do with violation of the Constitution and its Rights seems to happen in the month of August, the very month in which, ironically India became independent.)
It is another matter that the “secular” aspect of the Bill was probably a front to hide its more terrible proposals. The Bill’s objectives are vague about the “secular” insert. Here are the relevant portions. Check for yourselves:
“The democratic institutions provided in the Constitution are basically sound and the path for progress does not lie in denigrating any of these institutions. However, there could be no denial that these institutions have been subjected to considerable stresses and strains and that vested interests have been trying to promote their selfish ends to the great detriment of public good.
“It is, therefore, proposed to amend the Constitution to spell out expressly the high ideals of socialism, secularism and the integrity of the nation, to make the directive principles more comprehensive and give them precedence over those fundamental rights which have been allowed to be relied upon to frustrate socio-economic reforms for implementing the directive principles. It is also proposed to specify the fundamental duties of the citizens and make special provisions for dealing with anti-national activities, whether by individuals or associations.”
And Gandhi did this a year into the Emergency! Her purpose was to transfer as much constitutional power to Parliament as she could manage. But why secularism? Did she kick off something that ended up in Ayodhya on August 5?
She did something her father Jawahar Lal Nehru was strictly against. He and the “father” of the Constitution B.R. Ambedkar were both opposed to the insertion of the word “secular” in the Preamble.
The Constituent Assembly had heated debates on this issue in 1946. Assembly member K.T. Shah proposed an amendment for declaring India a “Secular, Federal, Socialist” country. Nehru opposed it. Ambedkar opposed it. But the opposers argued more over the word “socialist” than “secular” to register their opposition. Ambedkar and Nehru wanted Indian secularism to mean that the State will respect all religions equally. They never admired the Western concept of strict separation of the two.
Shah went by the separation idea. People like K.M. Munshi went by the respect for all idea. The confusion among the members resonated in what some members said.
Lokanath Misra asked the Assembly: “Do we really believe that religion can be divorced from life, or is it our belief that in the midst of many religions we cannot decide which one to accept? If religion is beyond the ken of our State, let us clearly say so and delete all reference to rights relating to religion.”
H.C. Mookherjee, who was also the vice-president of the Drafting Committee of the Constitution, asked: “…are we really honest when we say that we are seeking to establish a secular state? If your idea is to have a secular state it follows inevitably that we cannot afford to recognise minorities based upon religion.”
In this atmosphere, the Constituent Assembly debated the Preamble in 1949. The debate was not about secularism at all. It was about which word to include: God or Gandhi!
A political analyst, Rajesh Singh, writes in an article on the Vivekananda International Foundation website: “It was then the turn of another member, H.V. Kamath, to move his amendment to the Preamble. Purnima Banerji, a member of the United Provinces, aware of the amendment to come, appealed to the chair to disallow any reference to ‘god’ in the Preamble, and said the “matter of God” should not be “made the subject of discussion between a majority and minority”. She then appealed to Kamath “not to put us to the embarrassment of having to vote upon God”. Kamath moved his amendment nevertheless, and it read as follows: “In the name of God, we, the people of India, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a Sovereign Democratic Republic, and to secure to all her citizens justice, social economic and political; liberty of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship; equality of status and of opportunity; and to promote among them all fraternity, assuring the dignity of the individual and the unity of the nation in our Constituent Assembly, do hereby adopt, enact and give to ourselves this Constitution.”
“Various members remarked that the amendment lay only in the first line, which was proposed to begin in the name of God. Rohini Kumar Chaudhary from Assam inserted a lighter moment in the House when he wondered if he could move an amendment which referred to “Goddess” instead of “God”…Kamath found one supporter in V.I. Munaiswamy Pillay of Madras. But another member M. Thirumala Rao, asked Kamath to withdraw his amendment since it provided for no alternative to those who did not believe in God.”
Member Shibban Lala Saxena wanted to movement an amendment, insisting not only the inclusion of “God” but “the Father of our nation, Mahatma Gandhi” as well. Pandit Govind Malviya wanted the Preamble to begin with “By the grace of Parmeshwar, the Supreme Being, Lord of the Universe…”
The point to be noted is that the exhaustive debate never raised or discussed the insertion of the word “secular” in the Preamble. Just one member, Brajeshwar Prasad, to quote Rajesh Singh, “remarked that ‘secular’ had not found place in the Constitution as it stood before the House”. However, his amendment, when it came, did not refer to “secular”.
It has been argued that the Constitution drew inspiration from the principle of secularism even if it did not specifically mention the word. The secular character of the state was ingrained in the Directive Principles and the Fundamental Rights. Articles 25-28 articular secularism.
Until Indira Gandhi changed all that. After her defeat in 1977, the “secular” in the Preamble survived many attempts to erase it, even if not specifically, at least as part of attempts to nullify the 42nd amendment itself. The Janata Party tried first, but Congress with majority votes in the Rajya Sabha vetoed the bill. The Janata Party then brought in the 43rd and 44th amendments to restore the pre-1976 position of the Constitution, but succeeded only partially. In 2008, a petition challenged the word “socialist” in the 42nd amendment, but was not entertained.
There were occasions when secularism was dragged to court. The Supreme Court, in Ahmedabad St. Xavier’s College v. State of Gujarat, stated that secularism is not about being for or against god but means that there will not be any discrimination on the basis of religion in matters of state. The apex court reiterated it in the S.R. Bommai v. Union of India case.
Until August 5. Prime Minister Modi did not bother amending the Preamble of the Constitution or seeking its review by the Supreme Court or even seek a Presidential Reference on the continued presence of the obstacle word, “secular”. He bypassed everything and performed the “bhumi pujan” of the State-Religion nexus.
In these Covid times, as the country recovers from a lockdown, Ram and Constitution both are confined to home quarantine.
Till the next date: September 27, 2025, the centenary of the founding of the RSS.
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(VVP Sharma is a journalist-cum-academic and a commentator on contemporary politics, journalism and society)