We have entered the 75th year of the Constitution. At such a time, a new debate has started centered on the framer of the Constitution, Dr. B. R. Ambedkar. The debate began with a part of the speech of the Honorable Home Minister of the country, Amit Shah, where the Hon’ble Home Minister said, “Avi ek fashion ho gaya hai – Ambedkar, Ambedkar, Ambedkar, Ambedkar, Ambedkar, Ambedkar. Itna naam agar Bhagwan ka lete toh saat janam tak swarg mil jata.” He also clarified why he made such a comment. For the past few months, the entire country has witnessed how the opposition political parties have been doing everything to portray themselves as Ambedkar lovers or Constitution lovers. Can one become a lover of the Constitution just by carrying it in their pocket and showing it during every debate, whether on a TV show or in Parliament? Definitely not. Rather, the respect and dignity of an individual or party towards the Constitution depend on how much respect is given to the Constitution in reality.
Now let’s come to the Congress, the party whose ’54-year-old youth leader’ literally takes the Constitution in his pocket. When we open the history of the Congress, the dark chapters of the 1975 Emergency come to our minds. What did the Congress, which today stands in Parliament and verbally proclaims the Constitution, do then? All the leaders of the opposition parties were arrested overnight. Now, when the opposition stands in Parliament and raises the demand that ‘democracy khatre mein hai,’ no leader of the opposition party at that time was in a position to even say this because their members were behind bars. What happened to a high-level opposition leader like Jai Prakash Narayan is evident from his own writings. At that time, on July 26, Jayaprakash Narayan wrote from jail, “I have spent almost a month today in this particular prison, and I would like to add that this one month has been equivalent to spending one full year in prison.” He also wrote, “The government’s behavior towards me was worse than that of the British government.”
Since Article 352 of the Indian Constitution requires Parliament to approve the proclamation of a state of emergency within two months, the President summoned a session of Parliament on July 9. The session was filled with debate, although 59 members of the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha were in jail at that time. The fourth pillar of democracy, the media, also came under the severe wrath of the government at that time. Speaking about the role of the media during the declaration of the National Emergency in 1975, LK Advani said, “Indira Gandhi asked the media to bend; it crawled.” Although it would be wrong to say that all the media had sold themselves out, the way the Indira government strangled the media made it clear that surrender became the only alternative for many. After Stalin’s Russia, the greatest attack on freedom of speech and freedom of the press anywhere in the world was probably in India during the rule of Indira Gandhi. Newspapers that were very anti-government, such as Rajmohan Gandhi’s weekly ‘Himmat’, the Tamil Nadu fortnightly ‘Tughlaq’, and ‘Mainstream’, edited by the renowned journalist Nikhil Chakraborty, were brought under censorship. Renowned journalist K. R. Malkani, editor of ‘Motherland’, and Lala Jagat Narayan, the editor of Hind Samachar, were imprisoned for the entire twenty-one months of the Emergency for exposing the human tragedies during that time. Malkani wrote, “Motherland was the only newspaper in the country which in its edition published on June 26 not only informed people about emergency but also about arrest and protest at national level against emergency.”
It seems incongruous to see a party that is now showing its support for the Constitution; a party that detained more than 1 lakh opposition leaders and activists under the MISA Act and took away fundamental rights and freedom of the press during 1975 Emergency.
Not only this, on the one hand, when almost all the opposition leaders were in prison, several important constitutional amendments were successfully passed, one of which was the 42nd Constitutional Amendment. This 42nd Amendment was a significant amendment in history that modified most parts of the Constitution, which is why it is also known as the mini-Constitution of India. This Amendment Act made the following changes to the Preamble: it added the words ‘socialist’ and ‘secular’. The phrase “unity of the nation” was changed to “unity and integrity of the nation.”
But was the framer of the Constitution, Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, actually in favor of adding these words to the Indian Constitution? In this regard, it is necessary to look at the debate on the Preamble of the Constitution in the Indian Constituent Assembly on November 15, 1948. Professor K. T. Shah demanded that the words “secular, federal, socialist” be included in the Preamble of the Constitution. However, Dr. B. R. Ambedkar strongly protested against his demand. He said, “Mr. Vice-President Sir, I regret that I cannot accept the amendment of Prof. KT Shah…. 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 judgment, taking away the liberty of the people to decide what should be the social organisation in which they wish to live.” (Source – Constituent Assembly Debates, Volume 7; 15 Nov, 1948)
In short, he clearly states that what the policy of the state should be, and how society should be organized in its social and economic aspects, should be decided by the people themselves according to the time and circumstances. If the constitution specifies this, it will be a deprivation of the freedom of the people. The part of the Constitution that the leaders of the current opposition party repeatedly highlight—those who see a danger to secularism whenever they observe the construction of the Ram temple or any major Hindu festival—hold up the framer of the Constitution, Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, and the special phrases added to the Constitution during the Emergency as a shield to block the wind of Hindutva. In fact, it is proven that the framer of the Constitution, Ambedkar himself, was against these changes. In other words, the addition of the words “socialist” and “secular” through the 42nd Amendment to the Constitution during the Emergency is a direct disregard for and insult to Ambedkar’s instructions.
The history of Congress’s insult to Ambedkar does not end here. The year was 1932 when Dr. Ambedkar demanded separate elections for Dalits to ensure their political empowerment. However, Mahatma Gandhi, by exerting pressure through a fast unto death, forced Ambedkar to compromise through the Poona Pact. Ironically, this same Mahatma Gandhi supported separate elections for religious minorities like Muslims but strongly opposed separate elections for Dalits.
One of the biggest examples of Congress’s neglect of Ambedkar’s contributions is its refusal to install Ambedkar’s portrait in the Central Hall of Parliament until 1990. More notable was Congress’s reluctance to award the Bharat Ratna to the framer of India’s Constitution. Dr. Ambedkar was awarded the Bharat Ratna in 1990, 44 years after his death.
The Congress, which has consistently disrespected Ambedkar and the Constitution, is today seen as having become supporters of the Constitution only for political interests. Keeping history in mind, people today will have to judge who are true Ambedkarites and who are pseudo-Ambedkarites; who truly respect the Constitution and who wear the mask of being lovers of the Constitution for political gain.