Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge has declared that his party will fight with tooth and nail RSS General Secretary Dattatreya Hosabale’s demand to reconsider calling India a ‘secular, socialist country in the Preamble of the Constitution. At an event marking the 50 th anniversary of the Emergency, the RSS secretary said that the expressions that Babasaheb Ambedkar had not included in the preamble were added amending the Constitution during the Emergency when the fundamental rights were suspended. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh has long been convinced that it cannot ever accept India as a secular socialist country. Because it is an ultra-radical Hindutva nationalist movement that has been working for a hundred years to make India a Hindu Rashtra. The BJP, the political façade of RSS, has been in planned efforts for eleven years using the government machinery to pull off this goal. The Sangh Parivar faced the Lok Sabha elections last year looking for a third term alongside dreaming a two-third majority to transform India into a complete Hindutva state. However, it did not happen for the time being when the secular alliance, India bloc rose to the occasion. Each bill they pass in the Parliament proclaims that they have not given up their dream of a Bharat where majority religion prevails with religious minorities having no equal citizenship and not even considering to recognize India as secular democratic socialist republic. The Waqf amendment bill, which was passed most recently, is an example of this. Experience has taught the saffron party that as long as the clauses that ensure complete religious freedom and equal right to religious minorities continue in the Constitution the Supreme Court will question all the amendments they bring in. They know only too well that the goal cannot be fully achieved as long as the secular democratic socialist constitution, which guarantees equal citizenship, religious freedom and equal justice, remains. Although it is almost impossible to entirely dismantle the constitution, the Sangh fascists believe that at least removing the name secular socialist democratic from the preamble can accelerate the journey towards the goal.
The phrase 'secular and socialist' were added to the name of the republic in the 42nd Constitutional Amendment Bill that Indira Gandhi brought in when she imposed the Emergency in 1976. When the Janata Party came to power defeating Indira Gandhi and her party in 1977, one of its first steps was to pass a bill in the Parliament to repeal the 42 nd Constitutional Amendment. Passing the 44th Amendment Bill in the Parliament repealed all the new provisions related to the Emergency. But most notably the 'secular and socialist' adjectives added to the Preamble were retained. The relevant question is why the ruling party, consisting of Atal Bihari Vajpayee and L.K. Advani, retained these words alone. Why was only this amendment made to Ambedkar’s Preamble left? The reason for this is the preamble of the Constitution proclaims that the Indian state belongs to all people of all castes and religions living here, and there should be no discrimination among them, while complete religious freedom and equal rights are the birthright of all citizens and the state will not show partiality towards any religion. That is one of the main obstacles before complete Hindutvaization. Hence, the RSS has started a campaign against it.It is quite timely that Kharge, the president of the Congress that leads the India Front, announced that it will be opposed with tooth and nail. But surprising many, one of the top leaders of the Kharge’s party has taken a strange step. Shashi Tharoor, a senior Congress Parliamentary Party leader and former UPA cabinet member, has discovered that the RSS is not what it used to be, but has changed a lot. The timing of Tharoor's whitewashing of the RSS, being not content with praising Narendra Modi's diplomacy, is particularly noteworthy. When Shashi Tharoor tries to give a good certificate to the RSS, wholly forgetting the truth that the secular-religious minority votes got him elected to the Lok Sabha from Thiruvananthapuram against Kummanam Rajasekharan in 2019 and Rajiv Chandrasekharan in 2025, one cannot help but ask, ‘Tharoor, you too?’