Top BJP leaders back Preamble review call, Oppn hits out
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Top BJP leaders back Preamble review call, Oppn hits out
RSS leader Dattatreya Hosabale called for “reviewing’ the insertion of the words “secular and socialist’ in the Preamble of the Constitution. Union agriculture minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan argued that these words did not reflect India’s core cultural values. The Opposition accused the government and the RSS of “distorting and destroying” the Constitution, and accused the Congress of wanting to “destroy” it. The changes were among those made in the contentious 42nd Amendment, passed in 1976, and stoked a political furore. The Congress said the people of India “know very well the devious means deployed by the RSS to spread poison and divide this country.” The BJP said the Congress needs to apologise for imposing the words as they are not part of the original document, which Dr Ambedkar and the rest of the committee wrote. The BJP-led Union government observes June 25 as the day the Constitution was proclaimed during the premiership of Indira Gandhi.
Speaking at an event in Delhi on Thursday, RSS general secretary, Hosabale said, “During the Emergency, two words, secular and socialist, were added to the Constitution, which were not part of the original Preamble. Later, these words were not removed. Should they remain or not… a debate must happen on this. These two words were not in Dr Ambedkar’s Constitution. During the Emergency, the country had no functioning Parliament, no rights, no judiciary and yet these two words were added.”
The changes were among those made in the contentious 42nd Amendment, passed in 1976.
His statement stoked a political furore, and the Congress accused the RSS of wanting to “destroy” the Constitution.
“The mask of RSS has come off again. The Constitution irks them because it speaks of equality, secularism and justice,” Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, said on X.
“The RSS, BJP do not want the Constitution, they want ‘Manusmriti’. They aim to strip the marginalised and poor of their rights and enslave them again. Snatching a powerful weapon like the Constitution from them is their real agenda,” he said.
“The RSS should stop dreaming this dream — we will never let it succeed. Every patriotic Indian will defend the Constitution until their last breath,” Gandhi asserted.
Asserting that the Congress will defend the Constitution, Congress general secretary KC Venugopal said the people of India “know very well the devious means deployed by the RSS to spread poison and divide this country.”
Union minister Chouhan, however, supported the RSS leader’s statement. He said the word “secular”, added to the Constitution by the Congress, should be removed, while there’s also no need for the word “socialist” as equality is the basic principle of India.
“Sarva dharma sambhav (equal respect for all religions) is the core of Indian culture, but secularism is not a core value of our culture…it was inserted during the Emergency. That is why there should be strong consideration on removing the word ‘secularism’ from the Indian Constitution,” said the minister at a press conference in Varanasi.
“The second word is socialist: Sabko apne jaisa maano (treat everyone like yourself), live and let live, the world is one family is the core of India. That is why there is also no need for the word. Its removal should be considered seriously,” added Chouhan.
The minister alleged that the Congress amended the Constitution to save its power as well as to impose its ideological agenda. “The Congress added words like secular and socialist to the Constitution by amending it so that the party could impose its ideological agenda on the nation. This amendment extended the period of Emergency and the President got the right to declare emergency even without prior approval of Parliament,” he said.
In Jammu, Union minister Jitendra Singh said the call to review the inclusion of the words is “a matter of preserving democratic and constitutional values”.
“…I don’t think there’s any doubt about it. Dattatreya Hosabale has stated that the words ‘secular’ and ‘socialist’ were added to our preamble after the 45th amendment… Dr. Ambedkar has crafted one of the world’s finest constitutions. If this was not his thinking, then how did someone add these words?…” Singh said.
The BJP-led Union government observes June 25, the day when Emergency was proclaimed during the premiership of Indira Gandhi as Samvidhan Hatya Divas (The day the Constitution was murdered).
Responding to a question on whether he endorsed the removal of the words, Singh said, “Any 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…”
The BJP said the Congress needs to apologise for imposing the Emergency. “They need to apologise for imposing Emergency, and putting people through horrors of suspended civil liberty and taking away their freedoms. The two words were not part of the original Constitution drafted by Babasaheb Ambedkar, that is a fact that needs to be acknowledged by all,” party lawmaker Anil Baluni said.
RSS chief spokesperson Sunil Ambekar said it is a well-known fact that the two words were inserted in the Constitution, when Emergency was in place. “There are Constituent Assembly debates on whether secular and socialist should be included… and the document drafted by Ambedkar and adopted by the Assembly did not include the two words. So, the ones who attempted to fiddle with the Constitution are them (Congress)…” he said.
The BJP and its ideological mentor the RSS have for long pushed for reviewing the Preamble. During the discussion in Parliament on 75 years of the Constitution, BJP president JP Nadda said, the framers of the Constitution did not feel the need to add these words as the spirit of these terms was considered ensconced in the document.
Ambedkar, he said, was against the use of socialist because he felt it would go against the grain of democracy to decide what sort of a society Indians would want.
In September 2023, when the new Parliament building became functional, the government handed out two copies of the Constitution, one that did not include the words “secular” and “socialist” in the Preamble and another with the words included.