MUMBAI: RSS General Secretary Dattatreya Hosabale, while speaking at an event on Thursday, demanded an apology from the Congress Party for the imposition of the Emergency by Indira Gandhi’s government 50 years ago. In the same address, he strongly urged the removal of the words “Socialist” and “Secular” from the Preamble of the Constitution—terms he claimed were added during the Emergency by the then Congress regime, reported the Hindu.
Hosabale argued that the original Preamble, as drafted by Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, did not contain these terms. He asserted that these additions were made at a time when “fundamental rights were suspended, Parliament was not functioning, and the judiciary had been paralyzed,” suggesting that the inclusion was both politically motivated and legally questionable. The RSS has reiterated its longstanding demand to revisit the inclusion of these words, framing it as a correction of historical distortion imposed under duress during the Emergency era.
The Congress Party swiftly responded, with MP Manickam Tagore denouncing Hosabale’s remarks. He accused the RSS of attempting to dismantle Ambedkar’s Constitution piece by piece, alleging that the call to remove “Socialist” and “Secular” from the Preamble reflects a broader agenda to redefine the foundational principles of the Indian republic. These exchanges occurred as part of the 50th-anniversary commemorations of the 1975–1977 Emergency.
Political observers view this development as part of a larger strategy. Rather than making sweeping changes to the Constitution, the BJP-led movement appears to be opting for an incremental approach—altering it clause by clause to reshape the nation’s democratic structure. The terms “Secular” and “Socialist” are increasingly being portrayed as antithetical to the Hindutva vision upheld by the Sangh Parivar, with growing pressure to reframe the Constitution to reflect majoritarian ideology.
The debate reflects a deeper ideological conflict: one between Ambedkar’s inclusive, rights-based Constitution and the vision of India promoted by the Hindutva movement—where the foundational principles of secularism and socialism are seen as hurdles in the path to a cultural and political transformation.
