What if 'socialist' and 'secular' go from the Preamble

It's only two words.

But they matter a lot.

On February 9, 2024, livelaw.in reported, "In a public interest litigation filed by former Rajya Sabha MP Dr Subramanian Swamy seeking to delete the words "Socialist" & "Secular" from the Preamble to the Constitution of India, the Supreme Court today asked if the Preamble could have been amended while keeping the date intact."

Elaborating on the Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed by Swamy, which the court posted for hearing from April 29, Times of India reported, "Swamy in his petition has asserted that the two words violate the basic structure doctrine enunciated in the famous Kesavananda Bharati judgement as the words were inserted in the Preamble through the 42nd Constitution Amendment Act of 1976 during the Emergency."

According to the petitioner, the framers of the Constitution had rejected the inclusion of said words and alleged that they were imposed on the people even as the framers had no intention of introducing socialist and secular principle in democratic governance.

The paper also mentioned that CPI member of parliament, Binoy Viswam had approached the Court opposing Swamy's PIL, contending that the real purpose of the PIL was to allow political parties to seek votes in the name of religion.

On its part, the court has made observations wondering whether the Preamble could have been amended while keeping the date of adoption of the Constitution intact.

The honourable Court set the date of hearing for April.

In the humble opinion of this writer, the view of the layman on the matter is as valid as that of more learned others because the practical, day to day experience of living with or without the said two words, plays out on India's streets.

"Socialist" is a word from the realm of politics and economics and it, without doubt, evokes shades of Communism.

The latter is dreaded and hated by the world of business, worldwide.

Corporate India is no exception and the business class is a major funder of Indian political parties.

Further, with liberalisation and subsequent economic policies proving over the last couple of decades that rags to riches stories are possible in India's decontrolled economy, an act of committing the country to anything vaguely Communist would seem irrelevant.

Usually peaceful and accommodative in their daily affairs, "secularism" bothers people much less.

But it irritates those given to mixing religion with politics and this constituency has grown by leaps and bounds in India of late.

It gains fuel from the fact that modern education and industrial and post-industrial society have got both religion and family feeling insecure. There is the fear that these institutions are getting weakened.

Both have been actively seeking protection.

While most religions have allowed themselves to be enmeshed in politics for survival, a good example for the insecurity felt by family would be the recent Uniform Civil Code (UCC) of Uttarakhand that saw live-in relationships become a subject for policing by the state.

A very relevant question to ask as "socialist" and "secular" hang by a thread, is whether their loss will rob the Indian State of any crucial quality founded in justice.

Binoy Viswam, who has opposed Swamy's PIL, is a member of Parliament from Kerala.

In pre-Hindutva days, Kerala, while deplored for its industrial barrenness was nevertheless admired for its land reforms, people-centric policies and good social indices.

In Hindutva days, the state has been mocked by the political Right-Wing as a Somalia in the making (by no less a person than Narendra Modi in 2016) and has become in their imagination, a diabolical example to recast differently.

The reason is simple -- it has a history of indulging Communism.

The ground level feel of Communism in Kerala is however neither Stalinist, Leninist or Maoist or indeed any -ist.

It is rooted in secularism and the wish for an egalitarian society.

For sure there are problems. Not long ago, a leading industrialist, one that is resident in the state to boot, was happy to migrate fresh investments to Telangana.

There are also allegations of corruption and authoritarianism and the need to keep the Leftists happy.

Yet the state is where it has managed to reach today, with no more than one seat surrendered at assembly level to the Right-Wing (since lost by the Bhartiya Janata Party), in all these years of assembly and parliamentary elections.

Simply put, Communism in Kerala, despite its occasional truck with parties identified with religion and community, acts as a bulwark against communalism.

With its appetite for people centric-policies, it also periodically acts as a leveler of sorts, promising the common person that s / he would be taken along and not forgotten or abandoned.

The Congress, which is the other main party that gets to rule the state, has also indulged in faith-based expediency but has kept its own train of people-oriented schemes alive.

Hate "socialist" if you wish, but there is no denying that egalitarian and secular are significant qualities to have at the national level.

Consider for instance the economic inequality contemporary India showcases, wherein a narrow spectrum of its population owns a huge chunk of the overall wealth.

This is when the truism of India being a difficult place to navigate for anyone not born into privileges, remains.

Forces that iron out such anomalies are hard to come by because over time our political parties, in their quest for financial resources, have become more and more indebted to the classes that possess wealth, as opposed to ones that don't or are have only their vote for wealth.

The question I ask myself is -- if we are expected to lose "socialist" and "secular" in the Preamble, then what do we have in play as forces to make sure that our political parties don't keep us servile to the wealthy or the high priests / politicians of religion?

Will the Indian citizenry -- the electorate -- be able to compensate adequately by itself for the absence of a constitutional safeguard or should there be constitutional safeguards in place?

I ask myself what the case may be if any of the communal riots of the past -- in the limited memory of this 1960s-born; from the 1992 Ayodhya riots to the Gujarat riots and the riots in Delhi -- had occurred without a constitutional commitment to secularism as compulsion for the state to spur itself into action and contain the conflagration.

It is in circumstances like this that the Constitution becomes extremely important.

It reminds us that we have a commitment towards higher human values to fulfil, a path to get back to.

To my layperson's mind therefore, even if "socialist" and "secular" are condemned to go from the Preamble, other comparable safeguards have to be present.

Else, we risk being rudderless in an ocean of money and majoritarianism.

Shyam G Menon is a freelance journalist based in Mumbai.

Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff.com