The politics of Constitutional secularism

One of the “millionaire Marxists” from the South has sent to his friends and fellow-travellers a video-clip of his appeal to save the Constitution of India. I think it is the Left’s idea of using their “opinion leaders” to reach out to the public. Though he knows me, and we used to have regular WhatsApp wars on our conflicting views on socio-political and economic issues, he avoided directly mailing it to me; but sent it through a common friend.

Let us call him Qumar, as one of our North American friends would. In the beginning of the 2 minutes video Mr.Qumar quoting the Indian Constitution’s Pre-amble “We the people of India having solemnly resolved to constitute ourselves into a sovereign secular, socialist, democratic Republic” proclaims that “we cannot allow anyone to rob us of these basic rights!”

I was amused by our Communist friend’s new-found love for Indian Constitution and the “constitutional patriotism” (German: Verfassungspatriotismus) - the idea that political attachment ought to centre indirectly on certain politically correct norms, and certain select “values” and, or rather the procedural aspects of a liberal democratic constitution, dissimilar to nationalism which acquired horrible connotations following the Nazi variety in Germany! In its original German context of a forlorn hope for uniting the East and West Germanys, it meant that a people divided culturally and politically could perhaps re-unite only espousing the cause of common nationalism by saluting the constitution rather than an ideology or a cultural construct. It is an absurd concept in the Indian context unless you take seriously the rootless Indians who spent decades gazing at the USSR and since its collapse and are fervently gazing at China seeking inspiration for liberation!

Constitutional patriotism was a mechanism created in the absence of a shared history or culture, an alternative concept to create a sense of political belonging which India didn’t need! It is a cruel joke on the people of India that liberals are grappling to their souls with hoops of steel a couple of expressions inserted into the pre-amble of the Constitution during the Emergency as a ploy to hoodwink the minorities as though it was a special privilege for them! Remember, the Fundamental Rights in the Indian Constitution were suspended during the period when this hoax of “secularism” and “socialism” was introduced into the Constitution by the 42nd Amendment of the Constitution of India enacted in 1976. The Preamble asserting that India is a secular nation was rather strange since, neither India's constitution nor its laws defined the relationship between religion and state! Indira Gandhi and our Leftists never realised that the Indian Constitution flowed from the Indian nationalism, and not the other way around. So much for their sense of history, and sense of justice.

Till recently Indian Communists used to oppose the Constitution of India as an “Imperialist” one! They had in principle also forsaken nationalism since the Communism celebrated “internationalism” in its quest to conquer the whole world. Like pan-Islamic ideology, Communists hated borders of non-Communist nations they hoped to vanquish. Let us, for example, see how Jawaharlal Nehru, a Communist fellow-traveller had to say about them in 1957: “The whole communist creed, apart from economic contexts, seems to be based on hatred and violence”! T T Krishnamachari, Nehru’s finance minister addressing Communist members in the LS in August 29, 1957 said: “Every action you take, every meeting that you address, every crowd that you gather, you only want to divert not only the economy of the government, but the Constitution of the Country...” The Communists attacked the Gandhian Vinoba Bhave’s Bhoodaan movement aimed at solving India’s land problem by inducing landlords to make charitable gifts of land to the poor because they thought it was a sop to smother the revolutionary ardour of the landless masses! How did their revolutionary ardour morph into “Constitutional patriotism”?

When did Indian Communists start respecting and loving the Constitution of India? I believe it is much like the Islamic Taquiyya, dissimulation of original intent by silence or omission to suit temporary needs. Their accommodation to work within the framework of the Indian Constitution is only tactical, like supporting Congress candidates to beat BJP in elections or putting up hard-core Muslim communalists and members of Christian bodies as own candidates to garner minority votes!

Did Indian Constitution become dear to the Leftists since it was amended to include “Secularism” and “socialism” in it? Do they think people don’t know how those words came in? The Constitution of India which the people of India gave themselves to, through the august body that drafted it – the Constituent Assembly didn’t mention in the Pre-amble or anywhere that India will be “secular”, or “socialist” though there was a general consensus that while the members agreed on the nature of the Indian state adhering to secular principles and socialist economic policy. But the Communists opposed it because Socialism as it was described by Karl Marx - dictatorship of the proletariat - cannot co-exist with parliamentary democracy which according to the Master was only bourgeois democracy! So the two words introduced into the Pre-amble made the Constitution of India sacrosanct for some people when the basic feature of the Constitution, namely, the Fundamental Rights was suspended? If this isn’t hypocritical and sanctimonious humbug, what is it?

Matters get out of hand when Comrade Qumar expands his idea of the sanctity of the Constitution they had all along reviled. “When Gauri Lankesh, Dhabolkar, Kalburgi and Pansare, are murdered, they are stabs on the Constitution...” (The 3 dozen or more murders of political opponents belonging to the RSS during Pinarayi Vijayan’s rule in Kerala are Constitutionally consecrated human sacrifices, I suppose!) Do we understand that there were exactly 4 murders since the Constitution of India came into effect, signifying that the Constitution of India was under attack? This assertion comes from people for whom violence becomes its own argument; for whom political change can’t come from debate or democracy, but only from physical force! The whole country knows that the Marxian left intellectual stream, deluded by its hegemonic status in the cultural map of their pocket-boroughs, panchayats or any local self-government bodies, or a State like Kerala they rule, forcibly deny space to diverse thoughts and icons. Fascists-style Leftist violence on those who disagree are on the rise on campuses and in the streets of towns and villages. In Universities like JNU or Jadavpur under Marxist student bodies, “there is no room for other voices” while they consider it their “democratic right” to allow incremental creep of their views into the liberal system! Marxist violence against their political opponents seems to have this imprimatur (licence) of what they consider to be politically right!

Apart from the words secularism and socialism, the entire text of the Indian Constitution is what Communists had Mr.Qumar’s love for and the eloquence about the Constitution of India reminds me of what George Orwell said about the political language of Communists – that it is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind...Their willing capitulation to Islamic mores, that too in the name of tolerance, multiculturalism, political correctness is an example!

Qumar is frothing at his mouth as he defends the recent Supreme Court ruling in the Sabarimala case, referring to the popular protests and the review petition accepted on file by the Apex Court as acts of affront to the judicial system! It may be observed that a review petition is presented before the S.C Justice in his chambers, usually during a lunch break, and more often than not decided within 5 minutes if there is no substantial basis for review in the petition. In the late 60s and 70s they were lashing out at the judiciary. Coming to the sanctity of the Supreme Court or other judicial orders, the Communists’ record while in Government at the States has been consistently viewing them as an obstruction to popular justice! There are several Supreme Court rulings ignored long after they have been made, the most glaring one being in Kerala by both Communist-led and Congress-led State governments in Kerala doing nothing to implement the Supreme Court order in the Tribal Land Alienation issue decades after it was made, and had also tried to introduce Ordinances and State laws to defeat the said order unsuccessfully, Why are the Commies anxious to implement an order post haste in the current pilgrim season when the devotees have en masse protested in the streets and contested it in the Court itself? It smacks disregard of Hindu religious sentiments, which is displayed by bringing to Sabarimala activist atheists belonging to religious beliefs that question Hindu belief system, and plain arrogance of sate power,

Communists claim that they are fighting for equality of male and female Swami Ayyappa devotees. What they have constantly fought for is a one-party society where the notion of individual freedom or human rights for all citizens is as alien as it is in North Korea, Cuba, or China, where democracy means no democratic election and where the despotism of one-party rule invariably ends in terror and death! Like all factions of radical Islam deny the concept of nationalism, and believe in reviving the Islamic nation as a single political entity governed by Islamic law, Communists of all hues deny the concept of nationalism in the hope of bringing all “states” together as a single political entity governed by Class War and the “Dictatorship of Proletariat”! People, popular will or popular sentiments have never had any place in Communist political system.

The world over, it is a feature of the Communists to bask in the comfort and security provided by the countries they live in and even as their sappers and miners plant explosives under their foundations. When England granted India freedom in 1947, the undivided Communist party (CPI) denounced the whole thing as a false freedom “yeh azadi jhooti hai” (B T Randive) and actually tried to instigate armed resurrections in the Telangana region of Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. But in 1950, after India became a Republic, Stalin decided that India under Nehru could be a potential ally in the Cold War where the Soviet Union and the US led two ideologically opposed camps that sought global domination. The CPI promptly discarded the idea of an armed overthrow of the Indian State and participated in the first Lok Sabha elections of 1951-52. Please note once again: the Marxists who accused others of being stooges of Imperial powers were in the habit of taking orders from Moscow. Now they look towards China for inspiration!

Communists consistently seek to undermine free speech by painting it as bullying or hate speech! (Why, you can’t get a “Letter to the Editor” published in The Hindu if it is against Communists or it supports the Modi Government! A Non-Communist cannot give a lecture in JNU or Jadavpur University!) Perhaps the biggest hate speeches or bullying had come from within their party, starting with the talk of class war! So Communist intolerance has to be accepted as a legitimate political platform! They have long shown that they have no scruples, no shame, when it comes to letting their platforms use anti-Indian/pro-Pakistani/pro-terrorist propaganda.

Is Hindu “majoritarianism” aggravating our religious differences making the rest of Indians less national/nationalist? Is there any majoritarian intimidation in the country, any signs of a breakdown in our national fabric to the extent sensationalised by our Comrade Qumar that the only way to survive as a sovereign secular, socialist, democratic country is for all of us to tangentially respect our Constitution as a sign of our patriotism? Are we to follow the example of the remaining Communist countries in the worlds that are obviously pathological societies, cesspools of hate, mediocrity and misogyny? Public policies in India have been based on “integration,” not on “assimilation,” and hammered into a “composite” culture as the Commies would like to have. Communists and their Leftist fellow-travellers look at the world through their ideological monocles and blame every imagined injustice in India on communalism. Then enters the Hindu terror construct. That propaganda is used to whip minority communities into a frenzy of anger and resentment against "Hindutva forces". The Congress and Communists under the grip of existential crisis from the onslaught of BJP are exploiting every opportunity to fan the flames of this resentment is made a political currency during elections. In fact it as clear as day light that the primary communalists in India now are Communists and other "minorities" and a minuscule number of Hindus like Qumar, either out of guilt or for ulterior motives believe that they benefit somehow by separating Indians in groups including caste and communal. They attack Hindu Nationalism as if it is a Fascist movement when it is just an ideology based on the premise that the individual’s loyalty and devotion to the nation surpasses other individual or group interests, giving more importance to cultural unity including language and heritage. It is a universally recognized sentiment moulding public and private life and one of the great, if not the greatest, single determining factors of modern history. What holds together China now is its nationalism, not Communism/Socialism which is irrelevant as an ideology in modern China. What holds together Cuba, North Korea and Vietnam too are fierce nationalism! But then, the Indian Communists, Left’s standards, like its vision, are all double....

Next time Mr.Qumar goes to the US he must spend some time at The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation in Washington, an organization that does valuable work documenting the crimes of communism, interestingly funded by Hungary, a former Communist country! It will help him get rid of the crude left-wing populism and identity politics which seek to play into the divisions within the Indian society.