Now that “We the People” are at the forefront of the movement to save the Constitution, the BJP and its leadership, which assails the Constitution, must be defeated in the elections.
For the first time in India’s electoral history, saving the Constitution from the onslaught of the BJP and RSS has become as much an election issue as a core agenda of the people. The opening words of the Preamble — “We the People of India” — transmit unequivocally the idea that the people are united, regardless of religion, language and caste, and are resolved to constitute India into a “Sovereign Socialist Secular Democratic Republic”.
People across the country are anxious because some BJP candidates contesting the Lok Sabha elections have reportedly hinted that their party’s target of winning 400-plus seats is aimed at changing the Constitution. Dalits and other communities that have suffered due to the caste system fear that altering the Constitution would mean, among other things, removing reservation and affirmative action. Muslims too fear that the architecture of equality, liberty, and fraternity enshrined in the Constitution would be dismantled.
On November 30, 1949, four days after the Constituent Assembly adopted the Constitution, the RSS opposed it in an editorial in Organiser. It wrote, “The worst thing about the new Constitution of Bharat is that there is nothing Bharatiya about it… there is no trace of ancient Bharatiya constitutional laws, institutions, nomenclature, and phraseology in our Constitution; there is no mention of the unique constitutional development in ancient Bharat. Manu’s Laws were written long before Lycurgus of Sparta or Solon of Persia. To this day, his laws enunciated in the Manusmriti excite the world’s admiration and elicit spontaneous obedience and conformity. But to our constitutional pundits, that means nothing.”
In 1999, Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s government proposed that the Constitution be reviewed. Many opposed this, and K R Narayanan, who was the President of India at the time, in a historic speech delivered on the occasion of our Republic’s golden jubilee in 2000, said, “Let us examine if the Constitution has failed us or we have failed the Constitution.” The Vajpayee government was forced to abandon the decision to review the Constitution and instead appointed a commission to review the workings of the Constitution.
After Modi became Prime Minister, he described the Constitution as a holy book. Yet, in 2017, one of his ministers, Anantkumar Hegde, said that the Constitution would be changed. He later apologised for his remarks. Last month, he said again that if the Modi regime returns to office after winning 400 plus seats, it would change the Constitution.
Even before this, last year, the Vice President of India, Jagdeep Dhankar repeatedly criticised the Basic Structure of the Constitution, held by the Supreme Court to be beyond the amending power of the Parliament. Even the Chairman of the Economic Advisory Council, Bibek Debroy, in an article published last year, gave a mischievous interpretation to a Chicago Law School study, which stated that the “mean life span” of written constitutions worldwide since 1789 is 17 years. He wanted our Constitution to be replaced by a new one, writing, “We should go back to the drawing board and start from first principles, asking what these words in the Preamble mean now: Socialist, secular, democratic, justice, liberty and equality.”
It is against this background that we must see recent statements by BJP leaders like Anantkumar Hegde, Arun Govil, Lallu Singh, and Jyoti Mirdha regarding changes to the Constitution. In the face of this threat, people have come forward to make saving the Constitution an electoral issue. This is truly refreshing. We have seen how President Narayanan defended the Constitution from the BJP’s assault. Now, the INDIA bloc has come together to do so. In the face of such resistance, the Prime Minister’s statement that even Ambedkar himself cannot alter the Constitution sounds hollow. The Home Minister too expressed his newfound love for secularism when he said that the BJP would never change the Constitution and even the word “secular” would not be removed from the Preamble. Union Minister Nitin Gadkari was also forced to reiterate this.
Now that “We the People” are at the forefront of the movement to save the Constitution, the BJP and its leadership, which assails the Constitution, must be defeated in the elections.
The writer is general secretary, CPI
