Why did India's original Constitution exclude the words ‘secular’ and ‘socialist’ in the preamble?

The Constituent Assembly debated at length on the inclusion of the words ‘secular’ and ‘socialist’ in the preamble. Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, the Chairman of the Drafting Committee explained why it would not be in the interest of democracy to tie the nation for eternity to concepts which seemed attractive at the time.

The Indian Constituent Assembly comprising 389 of the best and brightest minds worked for three years to produce the longest written Constitution in the world. The wise men of the Constituent Assembly debated the inclusion of the words ‘secular’ and ‘socialist’ at length and decided to leave them out of the Preamble. Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, the Chairman of the Drafting Committee opined that inclusion of these terms in the Preamble would limit the scope of democracy.

Ambedkar felt that the democratic system of governance with its stress on equality for all citizens would ipso facto ensure equal religious rights. He was of the opinion that the inclusion of the word ‘socialist’ would deprive the people of a possibly better system of governance than socialism at a future time. Here was what he had 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. 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 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 therefore why the Constitution should tie down the people to live in a particular form and not leave it to the people themselves to decide it for themselves.”(Italics added.)*

It appears Ambedkar was prescient about the possibility of leaders or political parties using Constitution-tinkering as a political tool to usurp power. Here was what he had said in his speech:

“In the first place, the Constitution, as I stated in my opening speech in support of the motion I made before the House, is 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.” (Ibid. Italics added.)

The Constituent Assembly thereafter rejected a motion to include the words ‘secular’ and ‘socialist’ in the Preamble. However, Ambedkar’s prediction about political leaders using amendments to the Constitution as political tools did not have long to wait. In less than eighteen months after the Constitution was adopted on November 26 1949, Jawaharlal Nehru enacted the first amendment inserting Article 19 (2) to curtail the fundamental right of freedom of speech. There were other amendments but it was his daughter Indira Gandhi, who made wholesale changes to the Constitution during the 1975-77 Emergency, she imposed on the nation. Her 42nd amendment act included the words ‘secular’ and ‘socialist’ in the Preamble. Enacted in 1976, the one amendment rewrote more than 50 articles and Schedules! With the entire opposition in jail, she did not have to bother with the nuisance of debate and discussion of the clauses.

Thus, there are three different meanings to the word ‘secular’. The first was the original European connotation in which it meant separation the Church and the State. Then there is the connotation as envisaged by the Constituent Assembly and as defined by Ambedkar, which meant equality of all religions. The third connotation is the political tool, which the Congress party and more specifically Indira Gandhi and her successors put to good use for garnering minority votes. In essence, the use of secularism as a political tool involves appeasing minority vote banks to queer electoral arithmetic for electoral gains. It has different connotations in different political contexts. It has one meaning in Hindu majority states and quite a different meaning in other states where Hindus are in a minority. By the by Indira Gandhi’s famous Constitutional amendment which inserted the words ‘secular’ and ‘socialist’ in the preamble is yet to be applied in Jammu and Kashmir. The Hindu religious bodies alone are state controlled and their incomes appropriated by state governments. The Right to Education Act (RTE) 2009 enjoins public and private educational institutions to provide free education to students to the extent of 25% of their strength. However, the RTE act is not applicable to educational institutions run by minorities.

Excerpted from ‘TWISTING FACTS TO SUIT THEORIES’ & OTHER SELECTIONS FROM VOXINDICA pp. 126-128

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* Debate on November 15, 1948: “Constituent Assembly Of India - Volume VII”. Accessible from http://goo.gl/21N47W

Diwali Ban — Unwarranted Judicial Activism?

The Hindus of Delhi will not celebrate Diwali this year, at least not with the usual fervour associated with the festival of lights and crackers, thanks to an ill-conceived judgement by the Supreme Court. 

The ban was ordered on November 11, 2016 in response to a petition filed by three children stating that bursting of crackers on a single night – that is on the Diwali night – increased the suspended particulate matter in the air threefold and that “residents and children [were] feeling breathless and vulnerable to asthmatic attacks” in the air following the bursting of crackers on Diwali. Obviously agreeing with the petitioners, the Supreme Court “observed that the direct and immediate cause of the spike in air pollution during this time is because of burning ofcrackers for Deepavali.”

In trying to understand the Hon’ble Court’s judgement it is necessary to understand

1.  Whether there is a causal relationship between bursting of crackers on a single night – that is on the Diwali night – and increase in particulate matter in the air

2. Whether there is a causal relationship between increase in particulate matter in the air and respiratory diseases as is being made out to be

In order to answer our first question, let us turn to Inside Story -China's pollution dilemma originally published on the Al Jazeera website on December 23, 2015. It features a panel discussion on the problem of air pollution in China. A report by Adrian Brown preceded the panel discussion moderated by Kamahl Santamaria. The panelists were Einar Tangen, (Political and economic affairs analyst advising the Chinese government), Steve Tsang (Senior fellow at the China Policy Institute at the University of Nottingham, UK) and Tamara Savelyeva (Professor at the Hong Kong Institute of Education). 

Here is the gist of the panel discussion:

Air pollution contributes to 17% of all deaths in China; 90% of cities failed to meet national air quality standards. Air pollution accounted for 1.6 million deaths in a single year. This means 4400 people die every day. The levels of air pollution are seven times the maximum exposure recommended by the World Health Organisation (WHO).

The government is forced to close schools, colleges and factories in order to protect people from pollution on the days on which there is a spike in the particulate matter in the air. 

In the words of Einar Tangen, “China polluted its way to success!” The major contributing factors of the air pollution were the coal and steel industries. Attempts to transit from coal as the energy producer have been on but it is a difficult trade-off in view of the highly labour-intensive nature of the industry. The economic costs of air pollution are already telling on the economy. The nation can be said to have reached its threshold limit.

[By the by the YouTube video is worth watching to understand how panel discussions are conducted on international television. There is no screaming; no talking over each other and the presenter let everyone talk!]

By no stretch of imagination could one ascribe the problem of air pollution in China to firecrackers or Diwali. The problem therefore should lie elsewhere. Here is a snapshot of a news report published in 2015 in Mail Today, according to which there are 110,000 smoke emitting cottage industries in Delhi. 


What causes pollution then? An IIT study report of 2013-14 published in Bloomberg identified industry, vehicular pollution, power plants and cottage industries as the main pollutants.

Now to the second question: several medical experts have appeared in television debates (as they did last year too), to testify that increased air pollution due to bursting of crackers on the one night of Diwali indeed causes respiratory diseases. As experts they are entitled to their individual opinions on the subject. As experts in a scientific discipline, they would also agree that voicing opinions in public fora without adequate studies is not exactly a scientific way of voicing opinions. For here is an excerpt from a scientific study on the subject which appeared in Lung India, a specialist magazine on the subject of lung diseases (with a formidable line-up of editors) intended not for laymen but for medical specialists in the subject:

An extensive Medline search revealed that a strong evidence of the impact of fireworks on respiratory health is lacking in susceptible as well as healthy individuals with no formal studies on COPD or asthma, other than a few case reports in the latter 

Here are a few noteworthy excerpts from the article which definitely warrant serious scrutiny, especially in view of, not conclusive proof but scientific “speculation” about a few hours on one night of fireworks causing serious health problems:

Fireworks and asthma Few investigators have identified the association between asthma and exposure to fireworks.

Fireworks and COPD We could not find any publications identifying an association between COPD and firework exposure.

An association between repeated exposure to firework emissions and respiratory symptoms has not been definitely identified.

One can argue that typical exposure to such pollutants is limited, as assessed by Singh et al., ranging from a few hours to a few days, depending on the duration of the firework festival, thus probably only causing minimal exposure. Also, fireworks are often let off following sunset when most people would go indoors to sleep after seeing the show, hence limiting exposure time to the ambient air pollutants.

There is limited literature describing the physical characteristics of firework particles themselves including size distribution, number concentrations, modal characteristics as well as particle density

Following a thorough review of the literature available, further studies are necessary to consolidate current evidence and speculation. (Emphasis added.)

Is everyone, the “children”, the activists and the Supreme Court oblivious of the elephant in the room and barking the wrong tree?

Or is there any other ulterior motive for the “activists” which the Hon’ble Supreme Court, to give it the benefit of doubt, did not sense?