A history lesson for Indian MPs

Rather than spend taxpayer money to reaffirm their faith in values of Constitution, MPs will do well to familiarize themselves with the history of the debates at the Constituent Assembly that led to the drafting of Constitution

It is something like this: we wanted the music of veena or sitar, but here we have the music of an English band,” K. Hanumanthaiah, Constituent Assembly member, said about the draft Indian Constitution on 17 November 1949.

In between snatching the latest updates from the exciting third cricket Test match between India and South Africa, much of India last week was riveted by a parliamentary debate on the Indian Constitution. It was meant to mark the day—26 November—in 1949, when the men and women preparing the tome (only around a dozen, or 5% were women) signed off the draft that was adopted two months later as India’s Constitution.

In the course of a 1.05 hour-long speech, Congress party leader in the Lok Sabha, Mallikarjun Kharge, a stalwart from Karnataka, warned that any attempt to review the Constitution would result in… Well, we can’t spell out the word because the Lok Sabha Speaker ordered it expunged from the records after an instant uproar from the treasury benches. “Consequences” is how Indian papers reported the word, which is incorrect.

But here’s a hint of the word in the form of a puzzle: what’s the phrase that’s common between the writings of the great Chilean poet Pablo Neruda and the American art-house rock band The Doors? Googling may not help. Found the answer? Now transliterate the entire phrase into a single word (Eureka!) and translate it into Hindi.

Many observers believe Indian politics today has reached a point where there seems to be a growing trust deficit between the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the opposition—the centrist Congress, the Left and a large group of parties bidding to build upon their regional influence to try and oust the federal government.

The trust deficit is what explains Kharge’s remarks—made no doubt in the heat of the moment. More calibrated were the remarks of Congress president Sonia Gandhi, who described the Constitution Day as an attempt by the BJP to claim a bit of constitutional history when it had played no role at all in India’s freedom struggle. The BJP, of course, did not exist at the time of that struggle, but she clearly meant “it and its ilk”—that is, the Hindu rather than secular nationalists.

Much of this had to do with the way home minister Rajnath Singh had spelt out a slightly disparaging view of the inclusion of the word “secularism” in the preamble to the Indian Constitution. The word secularism, he said—making an inexplicable and largely incomprehensible distinction—meant “non-sectarian” rather than “non-religious” as it has been translated in the Hindi version of the Constitution. The logic of this argument could be any number of things, such as: 1. India is not a “non-religious” state; 2. It’s okay for the state to fund religious institutions and religious schools; 3. All religions are not equal before the eyes of the state.

It is difficult to make sense of this parliamentary debate in the context of political science or the evolution of a democracy. It springs to life, however, the moment you see it from the prism of politics, specifically electoral politics. At that moment, the Indian Parliament becomes an arena of political grandstanding, much like a rally venue.

Rather than spend taxpayer money reaffirming their faith in the values of the Indian Constitution, members of Parliament will do well to familiarize themselves—or reacquaint for those familiar—with the history of the debates at the Indian Constituent Assembly that led to the drafting of the Constitution.

They would then learn that the word “secular” in the preamble of the Constitution is symbiotically linked to the words “federal” and “democratic” (and even the welfarist interpretation of “socialist”, although that’s a tiny bit more complex a relationship). The entire architecture of the preamble collapses like nine pins if you take out a word here, insert another there and conjure up arcane interpretations.

The Indian Constitution is not an anti-Hindu document, nor even “non-religious” for that matter. It could not have been, for the overwhelming majority of those drafting the Constitution were Hindu. The Congress party, of course, reigned supreme in the assembly, as the party of independence. But even within the Congress, there were members who were known for their strong Hindu rather than secular leanings. More to the point, those who led the debates were all listeners. True, diversity in less aware times was not the hallmark of the membership of the Constituent Assembly. “Women members were very few… of these, some dropped out for various reasons and their places were filled by men,” India’s first prime minister regretted in 1950, while urging political leaders to “keep up and add to the number of women in Parliament”.

The socialist, Damodar Swarup Seth, described the Constituent Assembly as representing, “at best”, the 15% of Indians who had elected the assembly’s members in an indirect election. Seth also made a heroic bid to enshrine the separation of the church and state in the Indian Constitution, which is one of the many definitions of secularism. In 1948, he proposed the following, rather bluntly put, provision in the Indian Constitution: “The use of religious institutions for political purposes and the existence of political organizations on religious basis is forbidden.”

It was shot down, which shows that the characterization of the Constituent Assembly as a homogenous unit dominated by Oxford-educated liberals, Fabian socialists and Congressmen is a mockery of history. Indeed, rather than dispute what kind of history should be taught to Indian schoolchildren, the prescribers of school textbooks can do no better than include a detailed exposition of the history of the Constituent Assembly and the wonderful debates surrounding the founding of the modern Indian state.