Ironically enough, even as in the Modi era the Constitution is being subjected to a relentless attack and citizens face a growing threat of mass disenfranchisement, we have official celebration of two additional days in the name of the Constitution and the elector. November 26 is observed as the Constitution Day to mark the anniversary of the adoption of the Constitution by the Constituent Assembly on 26 November, 1949. 25 January is observed as National Voters' Day to mark the anniversary of the foundation of the Election Commission of India on 25 January, 1950.
The Preamble to our Constitution describes India as a Sovereign Socialist Secular Democratic Republic. The Sangh-BJP establishment wants to remove the words 'socialist' and 'secular' ostensibly because these two words were not there in the original version of the Preamble and were inserted subsequently through the controversial 42nd Amendment during the Emergency. It is true that these two words were not there in the original Preamble, but it did not mean that Ambedkar and the Constituent Assembly were opposed to the notions of socialism and secularism. On the contrary Ambedkar had argued that the ideas and principles of socialism and secularism were built into the text of the Constitution and for the sake of brevity of the Preamble, the words sovereign and democratic were considered sufficient as the core characterisation of the Republic.
We should also remember that following the withdrawal and defeat of the Emergency in 1977, the Janata Party government had considerably undone the 42nd Amendment by means of the 44th Amendment. Bharatiya Jan Sangh, the predecessor of the BJP, had dissolved itself in the Janata Party and both Vajpayee and Advani were important ministers in the Morarji Desai government. Yet while reversing many of the changes made through the 42nd Amendment, the 44th Amendment did not remove the words Socialist and Secular from the Preamble. If the BJP today is desperate to remove these two epithets, it is clearly because of the Sangh brigade's essential ideological antagonism to the very notion of socialism and secularism.
That the Sangh is a sworn enemy of secularism and socialism is of course no revelation. Indeed, the Sangh has been opposed to the entire Constitution right since the time of its adoption. The Constitution, according to the RSS, was an un-Indian document as it did not draw on the 'ideal Indian code of Manusmriti'! It was only to wriggle out of the ban imposed by Sardar Patel following the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi that the Sangh had to give a written undertaking about its acceptance of the Constitution. Today we therefore have to experience the dichotomy of our constitutional republic being administered by forces that are ideologically inimical to the foundational principles and core vision of the Constitution.
Speaking on the occasion of the adoption of the Constitution, Babasaheb Ambedkar had warned us precisely against this eventuality. A good constitution in bad hands, Ambedkar had cautioned, would produce disastrous results. He had also pointed to the structural vulnerabilities of the Constitution. The Constitution, he reminded us, was only a top dressing of democracy on an undemocratic (social) soil. The equality of 'one vote, one value' would be rendered infructuous, Ambedkar had warned, if social and economic inequalities were not checked. Today even that formal universal adult suffrage principle is in grave danger with millions of voters having already been disenfranchised through the electoral purge being executed in the name of Special Intensive Revision of the electoral roll.
Parliamentary democracy, federal framework and separation of power among the executive, legislature and judiciary have provided the functional foundation till date for India's democratic republic. With relentless overcentralisation of powers in the hands of the executive, the powers and roles of both the legislative and judicial wings of the Republic have suffered considerable erosion. Constant executive intrusion into federal powers of the states and attempted steamrolling of India's cultural diversity into a centralised and standardised mould of uniformity are constantly undermining the very foundation of national unity. When a Hindi-speaking migrant worker from Chhattisgarh is lynched to death on suspicion of being a 'Bangladeshi infiltrator', a tribal student from Tripura gets killed in Uttarakhand for his allegedly 'Chinese look', Christmas celebrations are attacked across the country and Muslims are arrested even for the 'crime' of offering prayers at home, we can clearly see how the Sangh-BJP drive to turn secular India into a Hindu Rashtra is proving to be India's worst calamity about which Ambedkar had forewarned us eighty years ago.
No wonder the sovereignty secured by ending the colonial rule is also at stake. The way Indians are being deported from the American soil in handcuffs and chains and Indian goods and services are being subjected to punitive tariffs to stop India from buying oil from Russia or having transactions with Iran exposes an ominous erosion of India's sovereignty. Yet in the realm of foreign policy the Modi government continues to pursue a line of shameless appeasement of US imperialism and the Trump Administration.
While the Republic thus gets dented from all angles, the citizen is being constantly battered with relentless assault on livelihoods and liberties. The Citizenship Amendment Act turns citizens into refugees, the SIR disenfranchises citizens by dubbing them suspected infiltrators, and draconian laws like the UAPA subject dissenting citizens to prolonged incarceration without trial by terming dissent a threat to the nation. While the dissenting citizen is being disempowered in every possible way, lynch mobs are being empowered and granted impunity, and rape and murder convicts are being felicitated as heroes.
How do we rescue the Republic from this morass? How do we reclaim the spirit and vision of the Republic in such challenging times? How do we stop the corporate takeover of the economy and the fascist takeover of our polity and society? On Republic Day 2026, the seventy-sixth anniversary of the proclamation of our Republic, this is the foremost challenge that confronts us all who have inherited the legacy of the freedom movement and enjoyed the rights and dignity that came with India's independence and the adoption of the Constitution. There are no easy answers, but a country that could secure freedom from the British colonial rule and end the British Empire will surely be able to find its way through the current juncture of imperialist encirclement and fascist eclipse. We, the people of India who had the power to proclaim India as a sovereign socialist secular democratic republic also have the onus and power to defend it and steer it through to victory over fascism.
