Constitution Day: Why the political debate over secularism is futile and vitiating

There are two little know dates connected with the Constitution of India: December 9, 1946, the first day of the Constituent Assembly; November 26, 1949 - the day Constitution was adopted. Though January 26 marks the beginning of the Republic Day following the adoption of the Constitution, it is marked by the show of military power and cultural diversity as seen at the Parade on the day. Not much attention is paid to the Constitution itself. It is a good move then to mark the Constitution Day, and the BJP-led NDA government has done well to have introduced it.

The reason that the ruling coalition chose to mark the occasion seems to be dictated by two reasons. First, the BJP is eager and anxious to emphasise that it holds the Constitution to be the ‘holy text’—however anomalous the epithet ‘holy’ is when applied to a secular document—and that it the beacon light of the polity. Second, the right-wing party is trying counter its critics and detractors that it is a party which is majoritarian in orientation and that its attitude towards the minorities is ambiguous and even ambivalent. The BJP is trying to convey that the Constitution does not discriminate anyone on the basis of religion, creed, sex et al.

The more important reason that the BJP has chosen to celebrate the Constitution Day, however, is to appropriate Dr. BR Ambedkar as its icon. This is a bid to counter Jawaharlal Nehru being the architect of independent India. This was quite evident in Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh’s speech in the Lok Sabha in the debate to mark the day. Congress president Sonia Gandhi who followed Singh tried to give it back to the BJP by pointing out that it was the Congress that facilitated Ambedkar being chosen as the chairman of the Drafting Committee. But she went on to point out that the Constituent Assembly was guided by four luminaries— Rajendra Prasad, Sardar Patel, Nehru and Maulana Azad. She taunted the BJP that none of its members or ideologues were part of the grand exercise of making the Constitution. The accusation is both inaccurate and unfair in more ways than one. There were enough right-wingers in the Constituent Assembly, including Patel and Prasad to name just two. The debates were honest and fierce. But in the end the compromises that were reached was on a sense of duty to the nation.

The Constitution of India is the product of the collective wisdom of the politicians and intelligentsia of the day. Ambedkar, Prasad, Patel, Nehru and Azad were part of this galaxy. It is not necessary for the BJP to pick out an individual like Ambedkar, however towering, to become part of the constitutional tradition. It is no sin if the BJP cannot look back to leaders who had participated in the freedom movement or who had been members of the Constituent Assembly. The party is the proud inheritor of the Constitution as the older Congress. It is indeed a foolish attempt on the part of the Congress to taunt the BJP for lack of intellectual ancestors in the making of the Constitution. The BJP has come to power under the aegis of the Constitution. As a matter of fact, BJP leaders need not sound defensive in proclaiming their faith in the Constitution nor do they need to indulge in exaggerated political piety by claiming the Constitution to be the scripture.

The 42^nd Constitutional Amendment which inserted the words ‘secular’ and ‘socialist’ in the Preamble reflected the spirit of the Constitution. It was secular because there was no state religion. It was socialist because some of the provisions in the Directive Principles mandated a certain kind of welfare to help the poor and the disadvantaged. But the timing was wrong. It was done during the Emergency when the people did not know what was being discussed in parliament. And the means were not fair. The Congress had a brute majority in parliament. The Constitution is secular—despite the many distortions of the meaning of the word—and it is socialist in its own way and it would have been so if the words had not been inserted in the Preamble. But the two words remain contentious. Muslims and Christians believe in secularism because they interpret it to mean the freedom to believe and practice their religion. Many among the Hindu majority think that secularism means that they have to disown their religion and that secularism is for preferential treatment of the religious minorities.

Socialism is as troublesome a word as secularism. Many who are getting converted to the free market creed think that socialism is a negation of capitalism and, therefore, antiquated as well as contradictory. There would be people who would swear by secularism and not by socialism, and there would be others who would subscribe to religious orthodoxy of some kind and believe in socialism. The Hindu right-wingers believe in socialism because they think that this would be one way of bringing people of others faiths into the Hindu fold. Middle-class Muslims believe in socialism because they think that state aid would help ease their straitened economic circumstances. Christians too are firm believers in the virtues of socialism. Very few of them seem to like capitalism and the celebration of the individual.

The political debate over secularism is both futile and vitiating. The Congress wants to turf out the BJP and the other right-wing parties from the political arena by invoking secularism. The BJP on its part wants to declare its allegiance to secularism, but it wants to define it on its own terms. There is also the belief in the Congress and other non-right-wing political parties that secularism stands for tolerance in its positive and negative senses.

Democracy is a noisy business and there is no need to despair that there are no firm and clear conclusions to be drawn at the end of the day. It is good there is debate and dissent. It is better than sullen silence on all sides.

The question that needs to be asked about the Constitution is what it means to the generation of Indians who are far removed from the pre-Independence generation, and even that of the post-Independent pioneers. Today’s Indians mostly belong to a post-economic reforms India. Their view of, and expectations from, the Constitution are quite different, and even radically so. This is but natural and there is no need to lament that the young people of India do not look upon the Constitution with any sense of awe, nor do they attach any kind of sacredness to the document.