There has been an unnecessary hullabaloo over Anant Kumar Hegde's comments on secularism and the Constitution. In actual fact, he never said what he hasbeen construed as saying. Indeed, the Central minister and BJP leader argued passionately for an assertion of national and religious identity of communities
It has become apparent from recent reactions to Central minister Anant Kumar Hegde’s comments on secularism and the Constitution to the effect that Dalit philosophy and BR Ambedkar’s thought are increasingly being hijacked by an emergent lobby of temporary populism, a hijacking which won’t be successful as this populism is neither rooted in any deeper ideology, history or leadership, that those who were quick to criticise him appear to be confused on a range of issues. That is why protests against Hegde’s comments invoked surprise, especially as he never actually said what he was construed as saying.
What Hegde had argued for was a strong assertion of national and religious identity of communities whose roots are ancient — and India providing ground for a spiritual amalgam and synthesis of this diversity. He further stated that secularism is something that cannot be accounted for in the Indian spirit. What this means is that while there is nothing cultural about secularism, it is purely a political construct.
In fact, it is a political import from the age of Renaissance — an age we should all study and know about but whose ideals can by no means be universalised since the Renaissance carried its own violent political and culture-specific baggage. Secularism is a modern, political construct and as such obviously limited in its scope.
In fact, sociologists have even documented how secularism in India and the world has led to more communal violence than the ‘pre-modern’ religious era ever did. So, why try to impose secularism on the cultural realm; why try to universalise this construct whose own history carries a dark political baggage of discriminationIJ It emerged as a political revolt in Europe against papal authority and ultimately its hard state-religion divide degenerated into an abolishing of religion altogether.
In India, one may like to claim that we have come up with our original relationship between state, citizen and secularism, which is that of equal respect for all religions, instead of obviating religion altogether — but the record of communal riots under secular Governments since Independence may belie that complacent ideal.
So, when Hegde says that secularists’ ancestry is unaccounted for, it is not said out of ill-will. This becomes obvious when one reads the full text of this speech. He was saying how various religions — Hinduism, Islam and Christianity — are rooted in certain historical and cultural traditions, while secularism had none. For, secularism was nothing but a recent, modern political phenomenon. It could never even come to India the way it did in the West after decimating the Church. In India, it remained limited to a crafty state machinery and its power brokers.
The pluralism that India is famous for is not the secularism of today, but the Indian impulse of seeking synthesis of all traditions since times immemorial. It helped harmonise the warring sects of Indian philosophy, even providing full ground to atheism and to the Semitic religions, much before secularism even emerged.
This is the broad sense one gets if Hegde’s speech is read unbiasedly. His comments on secularism do not appear ill-willed at all, neither do his comments on the Constitution. About the Constitution, Hegde simply said, “One might say, secularism is an ideal from the Constitution. I too respect the Constitution. But this Constitution has been changed many times in the past in accordance with changing time and it shall be changed even in future.”
The above statement is entirely in keeping with the spirit in which the Constitution was drafted. Proposals to include ‘socialist’ and ‘secular’ were blocked by Ambedkar. Present-day critics have justified this by arguing that Ambedkar only referred to the term ‘socialist’ when he elaborated on his objection. But then, in actual fact, he even blocked secularism from being included and the justification he gave was a universal one, applicable to all times, rather than simply being limited to socialism.
For Ambedkar, there was no such thing as a fixed ‘sacrosanct spirit’ of the Constitution. For him, the Constitution was only an administrative document. Even Sri Aurobindo pointed out, “Constitutions can only disguise facts, they cannot abrogate them: For whatever ideas the form of the Constitution may embody, its working is always that of the actually realised forces which can use it with effect. Most Governments either have now or have passed through a democratic form, but nowhere yet has there been a real democracy; it has been everywhere the propertied and professional classes and the bourgeoisie who governed in the name of the people.”
Therefore, a Constitution is no guarantee of the shape that our collective life will take. It is the spirit which shapes the form — the written material document — and not the other way around. The Constitution should be flexibly used to organise political unity, but must never be allowed to fetter our free self-expression and the free development of our collective political and national life. In fact, agitating supporters of Ambedkar should go back to his original writings to know that he actually opposed the formation of a Constituent Assembly in the first place. All students of the Indian Constitution are aware of the common fact that the Constitution had many provisions from the Government of India Act, 1935. Ambedkar felt the same way — and precisely for that reason, he suggested that modifications and additions instead of forming an Assembly.
Indeed, when Ambedkar himself treated the Constitution like an administrative document, it was obvious that he would oppose the fixing of Indian society in any fixed moulds by erecting unchanging ‘systems’ like secularism and socialism. For him, these were ideals to be practiced and imbibed — ideas which can change with time and place — not systems to be fixed. The West had done the opposite. It had done what the proponents of secularism wanted in India also — to fix Indian polity into the mould of secularism and socialism.
But as Ambedkar said, “What should be the policy of the State, how the 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 cannot be laid down in the Constitution itself, because that is destroying democracy altogether.” Isn’t this exactly what Hegde also meant when he said that while he respects the Constitution, it has changed many times in the past and will change in future alsoIJ Never did he say, ‘We are here to change the Constitution’ — a fabrication that has been passed on in his name and for which his party, instead of defending him, forced him to apologise.
(The writer is with the Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies and writes for The Resurgent India Trust)
