On the campaign trail, Narendra Modi had sought to allay minority anxieties by declaring that the government’s sole religion should be “India first” and the Constitution its “only holy book”. But now, NDA member Shiv Sena declares that the Hindu rashtra is a valid replacement for the secular state, and cabinet minister Ravishankar Prasad sees no harm if the issue is debated. Certainly, debate is the democratic way, but it cannot be blind to the context — a political party is trying to stir the pot. And it is generally agreed that some things are beyond debate — foundational ideas, progressive goals and the basic structure of the Constitution.
The controversy was provoked by the government’s use, in a Republic Day advertisement, of the Preamble to the Constitution in its original form, before the 42nd Amendment of 1976 introduced the words “secular” and “socialist” to describe India. The government did not excise these words from the current text and to that extent, cannot be faulted. Besides, socialism is usually read as a political and economic ideology, and its appropriateness in a directional document may be open to debate. The people of India choose their ideologies by the electoral process. They change their minds every five years, and nothing is etched in stone. But civilisational goals like secularism should be immutable. Despite their apparent confidence, the proponents of the Hindu rashtra cannot create it in the rainbow coalition of ethnicities, cultures, faiths and languages that the people of India constitute, except by expelling, expunging or invisiblising all minorities, a laughably improbable project.
