The Opposition on Friday accused the ruling dispensation of reviving its agenda of dismantling Ambedkar’s Constitution, citing RSS general secretary Dattatreya Hosabale’s oblique push for the deletion of “socialist” and “secular” from the Preamble.
The Congress castigated the “assault on the Constitution”, alleging it was part of “a longstanding conspiracy” to dismantle B.R. Ambedkar’s vision of a “just, inclusive and democratic India”.
A CPM statement said: “This proposal (to drop the terms) exposes the RSS’s longstanding objective of subverting the Constitution and its intent to transform India into a Hindu Rashtra, in pursuit of its Hindutva project.”
Hosabale, second in command in the BJP’s ideological parent, had on Thursday underlined that the words “socialist” and “secular” had been inserted into the Preamble through (the 42nd) constitutional amendment in 1976, during the Emergency.
“They (these words) were not part of the original Constitution drafted by Babasaheb Ambedkar. No attempt was made to remove them later. So there should be a discussion on whether they should remain,” he said, addressing an event to mark the 50th anniversary of the Emergency.
Last year, however, the Supreme Court had dismissed petitions challenging the
constitutional validity of the 42nd amendment, stressing that the labels “secular” and “socialist” for the Indian republic had “achieved widespread acceptance”.
Hosabale’s comments provoked a political row on Friday.
Congress communications chief Jairam Ramesh said the RSS had “never” accepted the Constitution. He argued that the people had, during the last general election, rejected the BJP’s alleged plans to change the Constitution by denying the party the overwhelming majority it needed to do so.
“Let us not forget: when the Constitution was adopted, the RSS rejected it. They didn’t just oppose it — they burnt it,” the Congress said in a statement on X.
“In the Lok Sabha elections, BJP leaders did not even hide their intent. They declared openly that they needed over 400 seats to rewrite the Constitution. But the people of India saw through their agenda — and gave them a resounding answer.”
The CPM said the words “socialism” and “secularism” were not arbitrary additions but reflected the core values of the freedom struggle.
Congress general secretary (organisation) K.C. Venugopal said: “A senior RSS member surely knows that the Supreme Court declared socialism and secularism to be part of the basic structure of the Constitution. Yet, to take this stand is a clear insult to the Constitution, a rejection of its values, and a direct attack on the Supreme Court of India as well.”
There was no official statement from the BJP on Hosabale’s remarks. However, Jitendra Singh, minister of state (independent charge) for science and technology, justified the push for the deletion of “socialist” and “secular”.
“Any right-thinking citizen will endorse it because everyone knows they were not part of the original Constitution document, which Dr Ambedkar and the rest of the committee wrote,” news agency ANI quoted Singh as saying in response to a question at an event in Jammu.
The issue had rocked the Narendra Modi dispensation in 2015 after a Republic Day advertisement issued by the government showed the Preamble without the words “socialist” and “secular”.
As the Opposition exploded in protest, then Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said there was no harm in having a debate over whether these two words should remain in the Constitution.
Then parliamentary affairs minister Venkaiah Naidu had, however, promptly clarified that the Modi government was committed to “secularism” and there was no proposal to remove the two words.
The RSS believes that “socialist” and “secular” are western imports unaligned with the Indian ethos, but has largely refrained from voicing its reservations too strongly for fear of a political backlash.
