Our constitutional ethos is socialist, secular for sure

THE process of conceptualising a Constitution for a yet-to-be-born republic commenced on December 9, 1946. It culminated on November 26, 1949, with the adoption of the Constitution.

The exemplary founding fathers of modern India did not start, in 1947, to raze and raise buildings to announce the dawn of a new freedom and a new covenant of equality, fraternity and justice for all Indians. They chose to sit down, almost three hundred of the very best of them, for almost three long years, to debate and dissect and carve the most important book of contemporary India, the Constitution.

Democrats create festivals of ideas, crusades of justice and equity, carnivals of creativity, in which all may participate, on some kind of equal footing. It is only autocrats and fascists, monarchs and megalomaniacs, not necessarily in that order, who seek statues and monuments to awe their subjects.

The Constitution imbibed some of the fundamental impulses unique to India’s peaceful and non-violent mass mobilisation to overthrow the yoke of British imperialism. The trials and tribulations that seared humanity as a consequence of two world wars, leaving over 100 million people dead, the first destructive use of the potential of the atom, the failure of the League of Nations and the desire to see the United Nations succeed were all facts and yearnings that found a voice in various Articles of the Indian constitutional project.

Though the initial Preamble to the Constitution only stated that India would be a “sovereign democratic republic”, the statute’s fundamental design was both socialist and secular in character from day one itself.

A bare reading of Articles 25 to 28 that deal with the Right to Freedom of Religion and Articles 29-30 that address the question of Cultural and Educational Rights makes this fact abundantly clear.

Article 25(2)(A) specifically refers to secular activity, albeit in the context of the right of the State to ring-fence certain activities that are “associated with religious practice”.

Similarly, Articles 14 to 18 pertaining to the fundamental right to equality are both secular and socialist in character. The overwhelming bulk of the Directive Principles of State Policy from Article 36 to 51, including and not limited to Article 39 — ‘Certain principles of Policy to be followed by the State’ — are intrinsically socialist in character.

Article 39(b) specifically ordains “that the ownership and control of the material resources of the community are so distributed as best to subserve the common good”. What, pray, can be more socialistic than this?

It is in this context that the Constitution (42nd Amendment) Act was gazetted on December 18, 1976. The statement of objects and reasons stated: “It was, therefore, considered necessary 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…”

Section 2 of the Act postulated that in the Preamble, “for the words ‘sovereign democratic republic’, the words ‘sovereign socialist secular democratic republic’ shall be substituted; and for the words ‘unity of the nation’, the words ‘unity and integrity of the nation’ shall be substituted.”

Secularism was defined not as irreligion or atheism, but as rejection of theocratic governance while maintaining “equality and respect for all religions” — values accepted by India’s pluralist civilisation going back millennia.

Ideally, it should have been the strict separation of the church and the State, as can be extrapolated from the writings of Jawaharlal Nehru. The distilled principles of Nehruvian secularism are three-fold separation of religion from political, economic and governance paradigms; religion being treated as purely a personal matter; and neutrality of the State from ‘ALL’ religions.

During the parliamentary debate on the 42nd Amendment, the late Vasant Sathe explained what socialism meant: “The elementary principle of democratic socialism is economic democracy… it must lead to a society free from exploitation, that the few in the society should not have the right to exploit the many.”

This definitional principle drew inspiration from the 1931 Karachi Resolution’s commitment to the organisation of economic life conforming to the principle of justice.

It was, therefore, surprising that the Vice-President endorsed the assertion, which was not properly thought through, that ‘socialism’ and ‘secularism’ be deleted from the Preamble. He said, “The Preamble is not changeable… but this Preamble for Bharat was changed by the 42nd Constitutional Amendment Act of 1976, adding ‘socialist’, ‘secular’ and ‘integrity’.”

It is a perplexing position for a senior constitutional functionary to take, given the fact that on November 25, 2024, a Division Bench of the Supreme Court headed by the Chief Justice of India had dismissed a writ petition opposing the addition of ‘socialist’ and ‘secular’ to the Preamble.

The court held, “A number of decisions of this court, including the Constitution Bench judgments in Kesavananda Bharati vs State of Kerala and SR Bommai vs Union of India, have observed that secularism is a basic feature of the Constitution.” In RC Poudyal vs Union of India, the court elucidated that although the term ‘secular’ was not present in the Constitution before its insertion in the Preamble by the 42nd Amendment Act, 1976, secularism essentially represents the nation’s commitment to treat persons of all faiths equally and without discrimination.

In M Ismail Faruqui vs Union of India, the court elaborated that the expression ‘secularism’ in the Indian context was a term of the widest possible scope. “The State maintains no religion of its own, all persons are equally entitled to freedom of conscience along with the right to freely profess, practise and propagate their chosen religion, and all citizens, regardless of their religious beliefs, enjoy equal freedoms and rights… In essence, the concept of secularism represents one of the facets of the right to equality, intricately woven into the basic fabric that depicts the constitutional scheme’s pattern,’ the court said.

The apex court stated that ‘socialism’ in the Indian context should not be interpreted as restricting the economic policies of an elected government. “Neither the Constitution nor the Preamble mandates a specific economic policy or structure, whether left or right. Rather, ‘socialist’ denotes the State’s commitment to be a welfare State and its commitment to ensuring equality of opportunity,” the SC Bench added.

Let me conclude with a dare. When the government provides free foodgrains to 81.35 crore people, is it socialist or capitalist in its disposition? When Indian MPs go abroad and unanimously sing paeans to India’s multiculturalism, stating that we have the largest minorities in the world, are we then being secular or theocratic in character? People who make such demands need to think them through.

Manish Tewari is Lok Sabha MP from Chandigarh and former I&B minister.

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