ELECTORAL POLITICS AND SECULARISM: LEGAL FACET

Abstract

A layman perception of secularism will encompass a view of religious coexistence. However, such a narrow thought doesn't suffice the true spirit of the same. As quoted by Shashi Tharoor, the Member of Parliament, Lok Sabha from Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, “Western dictionaries define secularism as absence of religion but Indian secularism does not mean that irreligiousness. It means profusion of religions." Mere coexistence is insufficient to indicate if equality persists between the existing religions. Thus, secularism might fail to serve the very purpose for which it was introduced into the Indian society: equal protection to all religions.

India might have officially declared itself a secular country in the year 1976 when the words secular and socialist were added to the Preamble through the 42nd amendment, but a very careful analysis of the Constitution of India will very well indicate that secularism had always been an innate part of the political ambition of the Drafting Committee. Article 15 under Chapter III of the Constitution of India dictates that no individual will be discriminated by the state on the ground of religions. Other fundamental rights which supplement the efforts in preserving the status of a secular state include articles 16, 17, 25, 26, 27 and 28. In Chapter IV, articles 44 and 46 highlight the state's endeavour to further ensure equality among religions through a mechanism of Uniform Civil Code and through promotion of the economic and political interests of the weaker sections of the society, especially the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. The question thus we are faced with at this stage is, why was it omitted in the original text? In this regard, the Constitutional Debates throw some light. It has been explained by Dr. B.R. Ambedkar that there was no need to include something separately which was already inherently present in the original manuscript. On the inclusion of the term socialism, he reasoned how such an act of deciding the type of the people's economy in the Constitution was very much contradictory to the basic principles of democracy, where people get to exercise their freedom of choice.