Even before Bharat formally became Independent, its Constituent Assembly was formed with representatives from Princely States and Provincial Assemblies forming parts of British India. The United India had 389 members in the Constituent Assembly which was later reduced to 299, after the Partition of India. Majority of the members were Congressmen along with a handful showing affiliation to the Muslim League.
On this day, Jawaharlal Nehru presented the Objective Resolution of the Constitution, which later took the shape of Preamble, just a month before the conclusion of proceedings of the Assembly in November 1949.
Discussions on ‘Socialist, Secular’
While deliberating on the political formation of India, ingrained in Article 1 of the Constitution of India, Prof KT Shah, a member of the Assembly with socialist leaning, moved an amendment to Article 1 of the Constitution; “India, that is Bharat shall be a Union of States.”
The amendment mooted was: “India shall be a Secular, Federal, Socialist Union of States”. Moving the amendment, Shah said in the Constituent Assembly; “Next as regards the Secular character of the State, we have been told time and again from every platform, that ours is a secular State. If that is true, if that holds good, I do not see why the term could not be added or inserted in the Constitution itself once again, to guard against any possibility of misunderstanding or misapprehension. The term ‘secular’, I agree, does not find place necessarily in Constitutions on which ours seems to have been modelled. But every Constitution is framed in the background of the people concerned. The mere fact, therefore, that such description is not formally or specifically adopted to distinguish one state from another or to emphasise the character of our state is no reason in my opinion, why we should not insert now at this hour, when we are making our constitution, this very clear and emphatic description of that State.
The secularity of the state must be stressed in the view not only of the unhappy experiences we had last year and in the years before and the excesses to which, in the name of religion, communalism or sectarianism can go, but I intend also to emphasis by this description the character and nature of the state which we are constituting today, which would ensure to all its peoples, all its citizens that in all matters relating to the governance of the country and dealings between man and man the relation of the citizen to state, the relations of the states inter se may not be influenced by those other considerations which will result in injustice or inequality as between the several citizens that constitute the people of India”
Opposing the amendment, Dr Ambedkar stated: “Sir, I regret that I cannot accept the amendment of Prof KT Shah. My objections, stated briefly, are two. In the first place the Constitution, as I stated in my opening speech in support of the motion I made before the House, merely a mechanism for the purpose of regulating the work of the various organs of the State. It is not a mechanism whereby particular members or particular parties are installed in office. What should be policy of the State, how society should be organised in its social and economic side are matters which must be decided by the people themselves according to time and circumstances.It can not be laid down in the Constitution itself, because that is destroying democracy altogether. If you state in the Constitution that the social organisation of the State shall take a particular form, you are in my judgement, taking away the liberty of the people to decide what should be the social organisation in which they wish to live. It is perfectly possible today for the majority of the people to hold that the socialist organisation of society is better than the capitalist organisation of society. But it would be perfectly possible for thinking people to devise some other form of social organisation which might be better than the socialist organisation of today or of tomorrow. I do not see why the Constitution should tie down the people to live in a particular form and not leave it to the people themselves to decide for themselves. This one reason why the amendment should be opposed.”…
“The second is that the amendment is superfluous. My Hon’ble friend, Prof Shah, does not seem to have taken into account the fact that apart from the Fundamental Rights which we have embodied in the Constitution, we have also introduced other sections which deal with directive principles of state policy. If my Hon’ble friend were to read the Articles contained in Part 4, he will find that both the Legislature as well as the Executive have been placed by this under certain definite obligations and to the form of their policy..”(Constituent Assembly Debates,15th November,1948)
Then Ambedkar details the state obligations in the Directive Principles to strive for its citizens adequate means of livelihood, common ownership of material resources and its egalitarian distribution, caution against concentration of wealth to the detriment of common good, equal pay for equal work etc…
The damage done by 42nd Amendment to the Constitution which amendment itself is often called a ‘Mini-Constitution’ and was notorious for its onslaught on Constitution, was greatly undone by 44th Amendment
Dr Ambedkar was perfectly justified in opposing the inclusion of the word ‘socialism’ in the Constitution. Socialism, as we understand now, is an alien political philosophy, though in its core it is equality, equivalent to Bharatheeya concept of ‘Samatha Bhavana’, but in practice aiming for dictatorship of proletariat-the harbinger of Communism. Socialism, as a Western philosophy, is not individual centric but Society centric. Sarvodaya (progress of all), Swadeshi (domestic or indigenous) and Gram Swaraj (village self rule) are the quintessentials of Indian political philosophy where egalitarianism is the material product manifested through the spiritual upliftment of every individual. The thorough spiritual refinement of body, mind, intellect and soul of a human being fundamentally makes the individual firstly as the pure and solid unit of society, with the resultant permeation and integration of the individual into the society and then finally to the Nation. This is the basic philosophy of Integral Humanism- the soul of Indian political philosophy. This is eternal and perennial. Confusing Indian concepts of egalitarianism with Western socialism would be the biggest folly every political philosopher in India is presently doing. Prof Shah, being blindly biased towards the Western notions of socialism, wanted to infuse the words ‘socialism’ into the Indian Constitution which was successfully scuttled by Ambedkar. With his assertive tone that it is for the people of India to decide what form of social or economic order they had to follow in future and not the Constituent Assembly to goad them, Ambedkar managed to defeat the amendment to include ‘socialist and secular’ in the Constitution. But Mrs Gandhi, by freezing all Fundamental Rights of citizens with the proclamation of Emergency and thus bulldozing democracy, inserted the word ‘secular’ and ‘socialist’ in the Preamble to the Constitution. The damage done by 42nd Amendment to the Constitution which amendment itself is often called a ‘Mini-Constitution’ and was notorious for its onslaught on Constitution, was greatly undone by 44th Amendment and the decisions of the Supreme Court. Can we sincerely, after 48 years of insertion of the word ‘socialist’ in the Preamble, say that socialism in its originally propounded form prevails anywhere in the world? The apex court also acknowledged this change in its recent decision, though it dismissed the challenge to the insertion of ‘secular and socialist’ in the preamble (W.P(C)645/2020 and connected cases). The Bench observed: “India has consistently embraced a mixed economy model where the private sector has flourished, expanded and grown over the years, contributing significantly to the upliftment of marginalised and underprivileged sections.”
Amendment to the Preamble
The Preamble contains the philosophy of the Constitution. In the Berubari case (AIR 1960 SC 845) eight Judges bench declared that the Preamble is not part of the Constitution and hence cannot be amended, being beyond the amending power of the Parliament. But when the insertion of ‘secular and socialist’ was challenged in 1976 and 2020, the Supreme Court approved the addition by purely applying constitutional principles hither to set in for adjudication of constitutionality, especially following Kesavanandabharathi case, a thirteen Judges Bench decision. The political overtones of insertions, a constitutional court cannot legally examine; strictly speaking. But it is rightly in the realm of larger polity to deliberate on, and build public opinion on objectionable State adventures. When amendments are attempted on fundamental aspects like redistribution of legislative powers, appointment to constitutional courts etc , a special majority with ratification from State legislatures is required under the Constitution. Likewise, when one touches the fundamental philosophy enshrined in the Preamble to the Constitution, any change therein must have been with the ratification by State Legislatures- though not expressly provided, constitutional legitimacy and acceptance courteously requires so. Tinkering with Preamble by ingraining ‘secular and socialist’, during a period when the freedom of speech and expression in the country was suspended, is not reflective of the collective will of the people arrived at after a meaningful national deliberation.
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