Constitution is the framework of principles, which guides the governance of a country. However, Constitution is not an unchangeable Asmani Kitab. It can be modified through amendments as per the situation and requirement. After its implementation on 26 January 1950, Indian Constitution has been amended 122 times as of October 2021.
The Supreme Court of India is the custodian of Constitution and it has been clarifying and interpreting different Articles of Constitution on different occasions. But neither the Constitution nor the Supreme Court is “holier than thou”. What we have in those are the reference points for governance which may be optimum or sub-optimum depending on the larger context.
The 42nd amendment of Indian Constitution has been the weirdest one. It was done in 1976 when the country was under the ‘Internal Emergency’ promulgated by Indira Gandhi government. All opposition leaders were behind the bars; Indira Gandhi government shifted the goal posts and scored the goal without any contesting team.
The 42nd amendment incorporated two additional words in the Preamble of the Constitution specifying India as a ‘Secular’ and ‘Socialist’ country. In 1971 Bangladesh got independence from Pakistan. On 16 December 1972 Bangladesh adopted its Constitution and made ‘Secularism’ as one of its principles.
Indira Gandhi government, the thekadar of Secularism, suddenly discovered that though Indian Constitution was Secular in letter and spirit, the ‘word’ was not explicitly mentioned in Indian Constitution. She did not want to lag behind the newly independent Bangladesh in the context of ‘secularism’ and 42nd amendment gave her that ego satisfaction.
During Bangladesh liberation war of 1971, USSR stood solidly behind India against all international odds and threats. Even USA was afraid of facing USSR in the event of its direct involvement in East Pakistan in favor of General Yahya Khan, the Pakistani Dictator. The obliged Indira Gandhi government thus incorporated ‘Socialist’ in the Preamble of the Constitution to please USSR. But nobody knew how a democratic country like India could be asked to follow the Leftist ideology by its Constitution?
It is another story that Bangladesh removed the word ‘secularism’ from its Constitution in 1977 and Islam was made its state religion in 1988. India was left with its sucking thumb. Subsequently, 42nd amendment of Indian Constitution was challenged in the Supreme Court of India, but the Apex Court upheld the amendment. So much is the holiness of the Constitution and the Supreme Court of India.
As per Indian Constitution, there are reservations for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes from Panchyat to the Parliament and from education to employment to even promotion. The philosophy behind such Constitutional provisions has come from the fact that these two communities were persecuted for centuries by high caste Hindus, which led to their humiliation and socio-economic degradation. The ‘reservation’, thus has been an honest, moral, just and ethical approach to undo the injustice done to them for centuries prior to independence.
In the same analogy, destruction of Hindu temples by Muslim invaders and bigoted Muslim rulers in India, since early eleventh century, needs to be undone. There are tons of historical evidences about the hatred, contempt and insult Muslims showed towards Hindus by desecrating and destroying their temples across the whole India and constructing mosques on those destroyed temples at many places. The Indian Constitution, the Supreme Court and the government of India cannot force Hindus to continue to live with such humiliation in Independent India anymore.
This issue has come-up recently with the Court-directed survey that discovered a Shivling in Gyanvapi mosque of Kashi (Uttar Pradesh). The said mosque was constructed in 1664 AD at the order of Aurangzeb by destroying a part of Vishwanath temple. While Hindus are claiming to reconstruct temple part by destroying the mosque, the Islamists and Congress-Left-Liberal cabal are behaving like ‘alternating current’. They are crying for application of 1991 law and threatening Hindu community with dare consequences in the same breath. The 1991 law stipulates that the status quo of religious character of all places of worship in India should be maintained as it was on 15 August 1947.
If status quo law is morally and ethically saturated, then it should be applied in other important spheres of national interest. In 1951 census, Muslims constituted 10 percent of India’s population. As per status quo approach, only 10 percent of Muslims in India should continue to have voting right. Why Indian Constitution should expose majority Hindus to the Muslim demographic onslaught over the decades?
As a correlated point it can be said that Islamic scriptures have no concept of Dargah and Mazar. Rather these are considered to be Kufr for being idolatry. But in India, thousands of such shrines have flourished in the name of Islam since centuries. The situation is no different even now. Every day in some part of India a new such shrine comes up. Dargah and Mazar are also tools for encroaching public and private land and show-off of Islamic muscle power.
The group of Rana Ayyub, Arfa Khanum Sherwani, Saba Naqvi, Muhammed Zubair and Aakar Patel et al should introspect a little. Had there been Hindu rule in India following Plassey and had Hindus destroyed Delhi’s Jama Masjid, Ajmer Sharif and the Nizamuddin Dargah to construct Hindu temples, what would have been their state of mind on the discovery of truth now? It is irony that many Hindus are also mocking the Shivling found in Gyanvapi mosque along with the Islamists. These Hindus will not hesitate to mock their parents to score a few ‘secular points’.
The Indian Islamists and Congress-Left-Liberal cabal think that India is within Pakistan. Their idea of secularism is the continuation of humiliation of Hindu religious sentiment 24 x 7 by appeasing the Muslims. Forefathers of ninety-nine percent of Indian Muslims fought a violent fight and created Islamic Pakistan (including present day Bangladesh) in 1947. But they stayed back in India to complete the unfinished job of Ghazwa-e-Hind. The Islamists and Congress-Left-Liberal cabal are in the same boat to destroy Sanatani India. For Indian Hindus it is the time of Uttisthata Jagrata, that is, arise and awake.
