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Correspondent

23 August 2024 at 4:29:04 pm

Red Romance

For long, the Naxalite in news was recognisable by the gun. But the more insidious version of Naxalism has never needed a rifle. It has thrived in varsity classrooms and newspaper and magazine columns, fostered by men and women sympathetic to it. These academics and other members of the so-called intelligentsia have long enjoyed their status as ‘respectable dissenters’ even when their politics offered intellectual alibis for Naxals carrying guns. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent...

Red Romance

For long, the Naxalite in news was recognisable by the gun. But the more insidious version of Naxalism has never needed a rifle. It has thrived in varsity classrooms and newspaper and magazine columns, fostered by men and women sympathetic to it. These academics and other members of the so-called intelligentsia have long enjoyed their status as ‘respectable dissenters’ even when their politics offered intellectual alibis for Naxals carrying guns. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent Independence Day warning about “dimaagi Naxals” should therefore not be dismissed as another political label. His larger point was that an insurgency does not survive on ammunition alone. It survives on ideas and people willing to make violence appear morally fashionable. The most revealing feature of India’s Maoist movement was never simply its brutality. It was the strange attraction it exercised over sections of the metropolitan Left elite. The Naxalite with an AK-47 could be transformed into a romantic revolutionary while the policeman he killed became an instrument of an oppressive state. This was not merely naïveté. At its ugliest, it was the intellectual laundering of political violence. The fantasy of the romantic revolutionary has always been seductive. In this narrative, amplified through sympathetic media priding itself on telling ‘truth to power,’ India was not a constitutional democracy struggling with inequality and corruption but an inherently illegitimate state waiting to be overthrown. In the minds of this elite Left, Maoist violence has often been recast as resistance while attacks on infrastructure as blows against capitalism. The armed overthrow of the Indian republic was the liberation they craved for. Some of India’s most celebrated intellectuals have flirted dangerously close to that moral inversion. The issue here is whether intellectual prestige can be used to sanitise an ideology whose practitioners have murdered civilians, policemen and public servants and terrorised some of India’s poorest districts. A university cannot be the place where Maoist romanticism acquires the legitimacy of a fashionable campus cause. Professors who turn armed insurgents into heroic revolutionaries are not merely exercising academic freedom. If they knowingly excuse violence, they are helping to construct the moral vocabulary that makes violence possible. Let’s be clear here. A professor who criticises the Indian state is not a Naxal while a journalist who exposes state excesses is not an enemy of India. But an intellectual who repeatedly excuses, glorifies or rationalises political violence cannot hide behind the word ‘dissent.’ India has paid an enormous price for the Maoist fantasy. Thousands have died. Entire regions were held back by fear while development was obstructed. The people supposedly being liberated were often the first to suffer. The armed Naxal is now being pushed towards extinction. But the Indian republic cannot afford to leave behind the romantic mythology that made the gun respectable. A democracy can tolerate dissent. It should never be expected to tolerate the glorification of those who seek its violent destruction.

Judicial Rebuff

Updated: Nov 29, 2024

The Supreme Court of India has firmly rejected petitions seeking to expunge “socialist” and “secular” from the Preamble of the Constitution. This rebuke, nearly half a century after these terms were enshrined via the 42nd Amendment during the Emergency in 1976, underscores both the resilience of constitutional principles and the judiciary’s role as the guardian of India’s democratic ethos.


Critics have long pointed to its draconian context—the Emergency imposed by Indira Gandhi’s government—as grounds for its reassessment. But the judiciary was clear that timing alone does not invalidate legislative acts. The Court emphasized that these terms have since gained deep acceptance among Indians, becoming integral to the constitutional “weave.”


The Court delineated the Indian meanings of secularism and socialism, deflating objections rooted in rigid ideological frameworks. Secularism, it argued, was a facet of equality, mandating state neutrality in matters of faith and that it is not anathema to religious practices unless these impede public welfare or equity. Socialism, too, was recast not as an economic straitjacket but as a commitment to social justice and welfare, reflecting India’s mixed economy, where private enterprise thrives alongside public redistribution.


For the petitioners linked to the ruling BJP, this judicial verdict is a political setback. While their arguments resonated with segments critical of the Emergency-era legacy, they failed to convince the court of the harm caused by the inclusion of these words caused to governance or individual rights? Even the BJP, in its decades in power, has pursued economic liberalization and welfare programs without breaching the boundaries set by constitutional commitments.


The SC verdict means the BJP will now have to eschew courtroom theatrics for legislative reform. Parliament remains the proper forum to initiate such debates, and amendments require the assent of two-thirds of both houses, followed by ratification by half the state legislatures. This route, arduous though it may be, offers legitimacy that judicial decrees cannot.


The debate over secularism and socialism is not unique to India. Across the border, Bangladesh is wrestling with similar questions about its constitutional identity. Attorney General Mohammad Asazzaman recently proposed to remove “secularism” and “socialism” as guiding principles from the Bangladeshi Constitution. Unlike India, where these principles have been adapted to reflect its unique pluralistic ethos, Bangladesh’s approach signals a retreat from foundational ideals.


Either way, if the BJP intends to reshape the constitutional ethos in order to prove the detriment done by including secularism and socialism as part of the Constitution, the SC verdict proved it will have to do more to first convince the country of its vision. For now, the Court has reaffirmed that the Preamble is not just a preface but the soul of the Constitution.

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