Preamble Politics

In Indian public life, few words have caused more heat than ‘socialist’ and ‘secular,’ the twin additions to the Preamble of the Constitution during the Emergency of 1975. Nearly 50 years later, it is worth asking whether those two words, inserted not by deliberation but by fiat, have become constitutional barnacles, cluttering rather than clarifying the meaning of the Indian state.

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), often caricatured but rarely engaged with in good faith, has once again raised the question. At an event marking five decades since the Emergency, Dattatreya Hosabale, the organisation’s general secretary, made a characteristically blunt point that India’s founding document as drafted by B.R. Ambedkar and the Constituent Assembly contained no mention of either ‘socialist’ or ‘secular.’ Their addition came through the 42nd Amendment and rammed through Parliament at the height of Indira Gandhi’s authoritarian spell. There was little public debate, and even less legitimacy.

Constitutional language is not sacred because of its origin story but because of the clarity and cohesion it provides to national life. The Supreme Court, in a recent ruling, upheld both terms as having evolved into uniquely Indian ideas. Socialism, the Court held, now refers to economic justice, not Marxist dogma; secularism is not anti-religion, but equal respect for all religions. But that, ironically, strengthens Hosabale’s call for a discussion. If the terms are so settled, why fear debate?

The truth is more awkward. These words were never part of the consensus that underpins a constitutional democracy.

What socialism meant in 1975, when state ownership, the Licence Raj and central planning were dogma, is radically different from what India practises today. The same applies to secularism. From Nehruvian equidistance to selective state interference in religion, secularism in India has come to mean minority appeasement.

The problem is not that India is not secular or does not pursue social justice. It is that these two ideas have been reduced to rhetorical devices rather than constitutional commitments. India’s true secular character is etched in Articles 25 to 28 which guarantee religious freedom. Its pursuit of social justice is laid out in the Directive Principles of State Policy. These legal frameworks do far more for the poor and for pluralism than the two vague words in the Preamble ever have.

Both words have been invoked less to elevate democratic ideals than to deflect from democratic failures. By revisiting these terms, the RSS is not suggesting a theological state or an unregulated free market, as its critics will surely allege. It is, instead, asking a mature republic to re-interrogate whether its symbolic language serves the purpose it once might have.

In doing so, the RSS is making a point that the Indian Constitution should reflect the will of the people, not the will of one Prime Minister acting under Emergency powers.

At stake is not merely a semantic argument. It is whether India, having outgrown its postcolonial anxieties, is confident enough to reimagine how it articulates its foundational values.