What's in a name? India's tryst with secularism

Abstract

It has always been the claim of India's politicians that their country is a ‘secular’ state. However, although the Preamble to the Constitution of 1950 proclaims India to be ‘democratic’, it makes no mention of secularism. Fobbed off at the time as of no consequence, this omission was quite deliberate and reflected an awareness on the part of the designers of the constitution, notably Nehru and Ambedkar, that its provisions under ‘freedom of religion’ did not amount to what they understood to be ‘real’ secularism, namely the kind of polity famously embodied in the 1791 First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

Keywords:

• secularism
• India
• constitution
• Nehru
• religion

Notes

See e.g. the judgement of the Supreme Court in Kesavananda v State of Kerala, All India Recorder [hereafter AIR], 1973, Supreme Court [hereafter SC]: 1462–1463.

Nanda, Selected Works of Govind Ballabh Pant, 13: 123.

Parthasarathi, Jawaharlal Nehru: Letters to Chief Ministers 1947–1964, 3: 536.

Speech of 15 November 1948, Constituent Assembly Debates: Official Report [hereafter CAD], 7: 402.

Ambedkar to Rajendra Prasad, 21 February 1948, in Rao (1968b).

Amended and elaborated later by a subcommittee of the All India Congress Committee (AICC) and ratified at the AICC's Bombay meeting of 6–8 August 1931, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library [hereafter NMML], AICC Papers, file G-60 of 1945–1946.

Memorandum by S. P. Mookerjee on ‘Political Rights in General’, dated 17 April 1947, NMML, C. Rajagopalachari Papers, 5th Instalment, subject file 37.

Gopal, Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, 3: 37.

Kothari anachronistically heads his section on the Communal Award, ‘The Issue of Secularism’. Tejani's (2007: 13) argument that ‘nationalism before 1947 became secularism after’, is not compelling.

There was, it must be said, considerable opposition in the Fundamental Rights Committee to the framing of the clause in this way. Some members feared it could inhibit ‘future social legislation’ and ‘would be wide enough to cover cow-killing, music before mosques, etc’, religious practices that had caused endless trouble – often culminating in bloody communal riots – during the colonial period. Rajkumari Amrit Kaur to Sec., Constituent Assembly, 20 April 1947, and note by Sir Alladi Krishnamaswami Ayyar dated [April] 1947, NMML, AICC Papers, CL-5 of 1946–1947.

68 S.C. 461 and 82 S.C. 1261 The first case turned on whether it was constitutional for public schools to provide facilities for the teaching of religion, albeit on an optional basis, during school hours. The second involved the constitutionality of the New York School Board of Regents' decree that the school day in the city's public schools should begin with a common classroom prayer.

Embassy to Secretary State Washington (telegram), 5 December 1949, U.S. National Archives and Records Administration [hereafter NARA], State Department Central Files, decimal file 845.011/12-549.

AIR 1956 Madras: 491 at 390: What the judge may not have known is that the Constituent Assembly specifically rejected the American model, on 6 December 1948 voting down a motion from Professor Shah for the insertion of a clause replicating the first clause of the American First Amendment in Article 19. CAD, 7: 839.

Moon, Dr babasaheb Ambedkar's Writings and Speeches, 13: 447.

See e.g. statement by Sri Bharat Dharma Mandal dated 24 December 1929, NMML, AICC Papers, file G-21 of 1929.

CWC resolution, October 1937, NMML, AICC Papers, file G-60 of 1945-6.

Minutes of the FR Sub-Committee meeting of 26 March 1947, NMML, AICC, file CL-5.

In an explanation inserted in 1949, the reference to ‘Hindus’ was provocatively construed as referring also to ‘persons professing the Sikh, Jaina or Buddhist religion[s]’.

Moon, 14 Part 1: 35.

Speech of 7 December 1948, CAD, 7: 879.

Speech of 23 November 1948, CAD, 7: 546.

Speech of 27 December 1948, CAD, 7: 1057.

The phrase ‘In God we trust’ is not only printed on banknotes but also graces the walls of many US public buildings. See, for a list of other idioms and practices that fall within the province of what Bellah has called America's ‘civil religion’, Mahajan (1998: 75–76).

See e.g. speech of 23 November 1948 by Mohamad Ismail Sahib, CAD, 7: 540–541.

Judgement of Venkatarama Aiyer J in Narayan v State of Madras, AIR 1954, Madras, 385, at 393: on the Raj's connection with temples see, especially, Appadorai 1981.

Officiating Judge, Benares, to Registrar, Nizamat Adawlat, 5 February 1808, Br. Lib., O[riental and] I[ndia] [Office] [Collections], F/4/581/14152.

Court to Government of Bengal, 2 Februaary 1831, Parliamentary Papers, 1831–1832, IX: 345.

Minute by Auckland dated 17 November 1838, Br. Lib., India Office Records [IOR}, F/4/1819/74986.

Art. 32 allows citizens to approach the Supreme Court directly if they feel their Fundamental Rights have been infringed.

C. Rajagopalachari to Justice P. Govinda Menon, 13 December 1950, NMML, Rajagopalachari Papers, V Instalment, subject file 200.

For example, Nehru to Chief Ministers, 17 October 1952, Parthasarathy, Letters to Chief Ministers, 3: 132.

Minute by Panikkar dated April 1947, NMML, AICC Papers, file CL-5 of 1946-7.

V. Krishnamachari to C. Rajagopalachari, 10 November 1953, NMML, Rajagopalachari Papers, V Instalment, subject file 117.

Shastri to C. Rajagopalachari, 24 July 1964, NMML, Rajagopalachari Papers, IV Instalment.

When the Congress split in 1969, ownership of this evocative symbol was hotly contested. The Electoral Commission eventually adjudicated that it belonged to the breakaway Congress (I). It then became the subject of a court challenge by the Janata coalition on the grounds that it was a religious symbol and thus illegal under the Representation of the People Act 1951. However, in 1975 – in a case overshadowed by the Indira Gandhi government's declaration of an emergency – Justice Ray of the Supreme Court rejected the claim. Keesing's Contemporary Archives, 16 January 1976, p. 27526.

Although these laws were framed in the name of cow protection, they also prohibit the killing of calves, bulls and bullocks. The Bihar Act of 1955 refers to all ‘bovine cattle’, a formulation wide enough to include buffaloes.

Pant to Nijalingappa, 15 October 1957, Nanda, Selected Works, 17: 288–289.

Intervention by Bhupesh Gupta during a speech by Pant in the Rajya Sabha, 14 February 1958, Nanda, Selected Works, 17: 399–400.

[Illegible] to Rajagopalachari, 22 May 1952, and [illegible] to Rajagopalachari, 23 May 1952, NMML, Rajagopalachari Papers, V Instalment, subject file 119.

Ambassador, New Delhi, to State Department, 5 June 1963, NARA, State Department Central Foreign Policy Files, RG 59, 1963, POL 18, Box 3931.

Naranjan Singh Gill to S. Nijalingappa, September 1968, NMML, AICC file G-1 of 1968.

In 1983 Bhindranwale broke with his erstwhile patrons and put himself at the head of the Khalistan movement. Holed up in the Golden temple in Amritsar he looked impossible to touch, but Indira Gandhi authorised a paramilitary assault on the temple, the infamous ‘Operation Bluestar’. The assault succeeded in its immediate objective but enraged the entire Sikh community. In 1984, Indira was assassinated by two of her Sikh bodyguards.

A particular sore point with the Christian minority in central India was the Christian Missionary Activities Inquiry Committee appointed by the Madhya Pradesh Congress government of R. S. Shukla in 1954, which reported in July 1956. Chaired by a committed Hindu, Bhawani Shankar Niyogi, its terms of reference were loaded and the questionnaire distributed by the Committee was reckoned to be prejudicial. Quoted in Nehru to R. S. Shukla, Premier of MP, 9 April 1954, Gopal, Selected Works, new series, 25: 229; and Nehru to G. B. Pant, 13 January 1955, Gopal, Selected Works, 27: 439.

General Secretary, All-India Council of Indian Christians, to the President of India, n.d., NMML, AICC file PG-36 of 1959.

Acts of violence against Muslims, some condoned by the authorities, remained widespread, particularly in Uttar Pradesh. The perpetrators were often embittered Hindu refugees from Sind and West Punjab. For a Muslim perspective see the statement of Maulana Hizful Rahman on the June 1954 communal riot at Aligarh, published in Al-Jamiat on 10 June 1954, NMML, AICC file PG-67 of 1954.

Note by Prasad dated 15 September 1951, NMML, Rajagopalachari Papers, V Instalment, subject file 189.

For the background of the case, and the Court reasoning, see AIR 1985 SC 945.

Ray E. B. Bower, American Consul Madras, to Secretary State, Washington, 13 March 1948, NARA, State Department Central Files, decimal file 845.00/3-1348.

John J. Macdonald, American Consul-General Bombay, to Secretary State, Washington, DC, 21 May 1948, NARA, State Department Central Files, decimal file 845.00/5-2418.

Speech of 12 August 1949, Gopal, Selected Works, new series, 12: 168.

Parthasarathi, Letter to Chief Ministers, 2 May 1950, Letters, 2: 83–4; and see also Ambedkar's comment in the same vein in his speech on the Hindu Code Bill, 6 February 1951, Moon, 14, 1995, Part 2: 883.

Speech at Pathankote, 6 August 1954, Gopal, Selected Works, 2nd series, 26: 92.

Speech of 10 January 1955, NMML, AICC file G-1(B) of 1955.

Address by Bhopatkar to Mahasabha WC meeting, February 1948, NMML, Hindu Mahasabha Papers, file C-175 of 1948–1949.