It is on record that 'at least twice in the Constituent
Assembly efforts were made to make a specific mention of the principle of secularism
in the Constitution. For example, an amendment had sought to ensure that no law
could be made which discriminates between man and man on the basis of religion,
or applies to adherents of any one religion and leaves others untouched. All
such amendments were summarily rejected by Dr Ambedkar. Later... he made it
clear that he did not believe that our Constitution was secular because it
allowed different treatment to various communities.' (Subhash C Kashyap, a renowned
constitutional authority, in Reforming The Constitution,
It is a fact of history that despite Ambedkar's
erudite view above, the Indira Gandhi government's Constitution (42nd
Amendment) Act, 1976, thrust the term 'secular' into the Preamble of the Constitution
without defining or explaining the significance of that term. It was, you see,
the period of the Emergency, and Madam Gandhi didn't need to explain anything
to anyone.
It is another fact of history that the Congress party
of the Nehru dynasty ran away from the definition of 'secular' in 1978. That
was when ex-Congressman Morarji Desai's Janata Party
government introduced the Constitution (45th Amendment) Bill seeking to define
'secular' to mean 'equal respect for all religions'. The Bill was passed in the
Lok Sabha where the Janata government had a large majority, but was voted down
in the Rajya Sabha by the Congress party's majority
in that house. The result: the nation has been subjected to a harangue of
'secular' language and to a haemorrhage of 'secularism' by those
'intellectuals' in the media or elsewhere who have never been called to explain
those two words.
Indeed, there are people around who endorse the term
remaining undefined. Thus, A M Ahmadi, a former chief justice of India, is on record
as having said that 'the term "secular" has advisedly not been
defined presumably because it is a very elastic term not capable of a precise
definition and perhaps best left undefined' (S R Bommai v Union of India, 1994,
Judges are known to pronounce verdicts based on reference
to the
The result of such nebulousness is clear: one can be
'very elastic' and interpret 'secular' according to one's fancy and fetish. One
can thus consider the Muslim League as 'secular' though that party doesn't
sport a member of any other community, and one can consider the BJP as
'communal' (also known as 'anti-secular') although it has a Muslim as a member
of the nation's council of ministers, another Muslim as a party general
secretary, yet another Muslim as its most respected leader in Rajasthan,
Christian members from Jabalpur, Mizoram and Nagaland and a Sikh as a prominent
party spokesman in television discussions. Similarly, one can dub the pope
'secular' though he has openly pronounced that man's salvation lies only through
Christianity.
Some other results of our undefined 'secular' country are
as follows:
The government extends financial assistance to religious institutions.
Why, under the 1925 Sikh Gurdwara Act, the state government spends millions of
rupees for conducting elections to the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee
that controls Akali politics. The State allows public celebration of religious
functions. Why, the holders of the highest offices of state and tallest
political leaders make it a point to visit religious shrines and make a demonstration
of paying obeisance to imams or Cardinals or sadhus or swamis. The
state grants funds to educational institutions run for the benefit of one
religion only. Why, the Government of India and state governments share the
financial burden of 'modernisation' of madrassas and the
Minority educational institutions can prescribe religious
courses and appoint or dismiss a teacher/faculty member according to their whims,
but rules and regulations are in force for majority religion educational
bodies. The various interpretations of the Supreme Court on Articles 29 and 30
have ensured that unholy scenario. Government subsidizes the salaries of imams,
naib imams and muezzins of mosques, but not of granthis in Gurdwara and pujaris
in temples. Why, the Supreme Court itself has prescribed the scale of these subsidies,
which amounted to over Rs 6,000 million annually, according to a publication of
the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Nyasa. Though the Jama Masjid of Delhi is not
classified as a protected monument, Rs 0.7 million were doled out to it in the
eighties by the governments of Indira Gandhi and V P Singh, while nearly Rs 10 million
were spent on that institution by the department of archaeology between 1990
and 1996. This 'secular' largesse is in contrast to the denial of even a rupee
to ancient Hindu temples like Badrinath and Kedarnath. Government-appointed
administrators run several Hindu temple trusts while the mosques of Hazratbal
and Charar-e-Sharif are free of such control. Public holidays for religious
occasions are accepted as being in consonance with a 'secular' State. Why, V P
Singh's government declared the birthday of the Prophet as a gazetted holiday
although no Islamic country gives that privilege to its citizens. It is the
above perverse version of 'secular' that's been in vogue in
That is why N S Rajaram, a leading
pro-Hindutva intellectual, had, in an article in Organiser of
It's a great pity therefore that the National Commission
to Review the Working of the Constitution simply shut out the resolution of that
deadly, dangerous issue by recommending a definition of 'secular' and
'secularism' even when, as its tenure was ending, the nation was witness to the
gory aftermath of Godhra.
The irony of it all is that the NCRWC was headed by M
N Venkatachaliah, who, on the day he retired as India's chief justice in 1994,
had told PTI in an interview that secularism cannot mean anti-majority.