TWO DAYS after RSS general secretary Dattatreya Hosabale sought a discussion on whether the words ‘socialist’ and ‘secular’ added in the Constitution’s Preamble by the Indira Gandhi government during the Emergency should remain, the chorus for their removal is only growing louder.
On Saturday, Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar waded into the political debate, saying that changing the Preamble by adding the words ‘socialist’, ‘secular’ and ‘integrity’ during the Emergency was “sacrilege to the spirit of sanatan”. Joining the issue, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said ‘socialism’ and ‘secularism’ were Western concepts, and these words have no place in the Indian civilisation.
Addressing an event at his residence in Delhi, Vice President Dhankhar said, “If you deeply reflect, we are giving wings to existential challenges. These words have been added as nasoor (festering wound). These words will create upheaval. Addition of these words in the Preamble during the Emergency signal betrayal of the mindset of the framers of the Constitution. It is nothing but belittling the civilisational wealth and knowledge of this country for thousands of years. It is sacrilege to the spirit of sanatan.” In the event at his official residence, Dhankhar was presented the first copy of ‘Ambedkar’s Messages’, a book compiled by author and former Karnataka MLC DS Veeraiah.
The two terms ‘secular’ and ‘socialist’ were inserted to the Preamble as part of the 42nd Amendment of the Constitution in 1976 during the Emergency. While the Janata government that came to power after the Emergency reversed many other changes made to the Constitution through the 42nd Amendment, it retained ‘socialist’ and ‘secular’.
Non-Congress governments, including the BJP-led AB Vajpayee government, refrained from moving to delete the two terms. In fact, after BJP returned to power in 2024 under Narendra Modi, the BJP President, Amit Shah, had in 2015 set clear the party line. “The BJP believes that the Preamble, as it stands today, should remain. There is no need to change it,” he had told The Hindu in an interview after a controversy over government advertisements showing the original version of the Constitution.
But Hosabale’s remarks — coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the Emergency and months after India celebrated the 75th anniversary of the adoption of the Constitution — continued to reverberate. Weighing in, Dhankhar said altering the Preamble was a “travesty of justice”. He said the Preamble was the soul of any constitution and apart from India, no other country had changed it.
“Preamble is not changeable. Preamble is not alterable. Preamble is the basis on which the Constitution has grown. Preamble is the seed of the Constitution. It is soul of the Constitution but this Preamble for Bharat was changed by the 42nd Constitutional Amendment act of 1976, adding words ‘socialist’, ‘secular’ and ‘integrity’,” the Vice President said. “We must reflect. Dr. Ambedkar did painstaking work. He would have surely focused on it. The founding fathers thought it befittingly wise to give us that Preamble…what a travesty of justice. First, we change something which is not changeable, alterable – something that emanates from We the People – and then, you change it during Emergency. When We the People were bleeding in heart, in soul, they were in darkness,” he said.
Addressing an event in Guwahati, Assam Chief Minister Sarma said ‘socialism’ and ‘secularism’ were Western concepts, and these words have no place in Indian civilisation. He said these words should be struck down from the Constitution. “How can I be secular? I am a hardcore Hindu. A Muslim person is a hardcore Muslim person. How can he be secular?”
Sarma was speaking after launching in Assam a book titled ‘The Emergency Diaries: Years That Forged a Leader’ which is based on first person anecdotes from associates who worked with Narendra Modi, then a young RSS pracharak, and used other archival material. The book chronicles the 1975-77 Emergency era and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s role in the ‘resistance movement’. He maintained that the Indian concept of secularism is not about being neutral, but it is about being ‘positively aligned’.
The word ‘secularism’ was inserted by people who view it from the Western angle, and it needed to be struck off from the Preamble, Sarma said. The Assam Chief Minister also claimed that the Western concept of socialism was also imposed by Gandhi. Indian economic principle was based on ‘trustee-ship’ and helping the marginalised. “The BJP didn’t have to even demolish this concept of socialism. PV Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh did it for the Congress,” he said.
The remarks by the Vice President and the Assam Chief Minister came a day after two Union Ministers, Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Dr Jitendra Singh, backed Hosabale’s comments. At a press conference in Varanasi, Chouhan said the core of Indian culture was Sarva Dharma Sambhav (equal respect for all religions), and not secularism. He said there should be a discussion on the removal of “secularism” from the Preamble, and that there was “no need for socialism here”.
At an event in Jammu, Singh was asked whether the BJP supported the demand for removing “secular” and “socialist” from the Preamble, to which he said: “Who doesn’t want to? Every right-thinking citizen will endorse it because everyone knows they are not part of the original Constitution document, which Dr Ambedkar and the rest of the committee wrote.”
Opposition parties, including the Congress, have already hit out at the BJP and the RSS alleging that their intention was to subvert the Constitution and transform India into a Hindu Rashtra” governed by the Manusmriti.
Dhankhar also spoke about the Emergency calling it the “darkest period for the Constitution of the country” and highlighted Ambedkar’s speech to the Constituent Assembly on the last day that cautioned against political parties putting creed above country.
The VP read out Ambedkar’s quote, saying: “It is this thought which fills me with anxiety. This anxiety is deepened by the realisation of the fact that in addition to our old enemies in the form of castes and creeds, we are going to have many political parties with diverse and opposing political creeds. Will Indians place the country above their creed? Or will they place creed above the country?… I do not know, but this much is certain that if the parties place creed above country, our independence will be put in jeopardy a second time and probably be lost forever. This eventuality we must all regularly guard against. We must be determined to defend our independence with the last drop of our blood.”
While Sarma called for removal of the words, his Maharashtra counterpart Devendra Fadnavis Saturday said 90 per cent of the country’s problems will be resolved forever if the values of the Constitution and its Preamble are accepted.
Addressing an event in Nagpur, Fadnavis said the essence of the Constitution is reflected in its Preamble. “If we accept the values of the constitution and its Preamble, 90 per cent of the country’s will be resolved forever. Therefore, the constitution and Preamble are of utmost importance.
“If we accept the Constitution and values in its Preamble, 90% of the problems in the country will be resolved forever. Therefore, the Constitution and Preamble are of utmost importance. Today, there is a democracy in India because the Constitution has beautifully framed it, providing the right to freedom of expression to every individual, because of which no one has to think that he or she is being suppressed. In case there is suppression, the system has been set right through courts and fundamental rights, to ensure that everyone gets justice,” Fadnavis said.
