The preamble to the Indian Constitution reads as follows:
WE, THE PEOPLE OF INDIA, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a SOVEREIGN SOCIALIST SECULAR DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC and to secure to all its citizens:
JUSTICE, social, economic and political; LIBERTY of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship;
EQUALITY of status and opportunity;
And to promote among them all FRATERNITY assuring the dignity of the individual and the unity and integrity of the Nation;
IN OUR CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY this twenty-sixth day of November, 1949, do HEREBY ADOPT, ENACT AND GIVE TO OURSELVES THIS CONSTITUTION.
The purpose of this post is to examine this Preamble from a dharmic perspective.
The first point to note is the word secular. It is now so well-known that it was introduced into the Preamble during the period of Emergency (1975-77), imposed by Indira Gandhi, that there is no need to repeat it here. It is perhaps less well known that Dr BR Ambedkar beat back three attempts to introduce the word secular into the Constitution, during the debates in the Constituent Assembly, because he did not want to encumber the coming generations with trends of his own times.
His instincts were correct. If such a word had to be introduced into the Preamble, it should perhaps have been plural. This word is used a lot in modern secular discourse, along with the word secular, and this tends to create the impression that the words may be interchangeable. This is misleading. The two words represent two different orientations regarding how one might address the issue of religious differences in the public square. It is true that both wish to prevent the domination of the public square by a single religion or ideology, but they go about doing so in different ways. Secularism tries to do so by creating a wall of separation between religion and the state; pluralism tries to do so by providing all religions an equal place at the table. The confusion on this point is clear from the fact that two different words have been used in Hindi (and perhaps in other Indian languages as well), to translate the English word secular: dharma-nirpeksha and sarva-dharma-sama-bhava. Whereas in fact, the first expression connotes secularism and the second pluralism.
This would be one dharmic criticism of the Preamble.
The second point to note is that the Preamble invokes liberty, equality, and fraternity as its guiding values, along with a few others. It is difficult not to hear in this the rallying cry of the French Revolution: liberté, égalité, and fraternité. It would be tempting to conclude that Dr BR Ambedkar was drawing on the French Revolution when these were included in the Constitution, given that he earned his higher academic degrees in the Western world, but Arvind Neelakandan has pointed out that this temptation must be resisted. Dr Ambedkar himself claimed to derive them from Indic religious tradition, and in fact would have preferred the Buddhist word maitiri over Fraternity, if he had had his way.
Nevertheless, it is still possible to critique these values from a dharmic perspective because the dharmic perspective recognises something about them to begin with, which the West is only now becoming aware of — that these values can come into conflict. Our moral imagination is somewhat reluctant to accept that even noble moral ideals can come into conflict, but the level-headed dharmic thinkers caught on to this pretty early. Thus if one gives free rein to liberty, some people will soon become far richer than others, compromising equality, and perhaps even fraternity — to give only one example.
Hindu thinkers faced this issue when they came up with the doctrine of the Purusharthas, or the goals of human life. As is common knowledge, these are four: Dharma, Artha, Kama, and Moksha. Already, by the early centuries of the common era, even the Kama Sutra recommends the harmonious pursuit of these goals. What does harmonious pursuit of these goals involve? As diplomat Pavan Varma points out, it means that these ends should not be pursued in exclusion, that is to say, they should be pursued in proportion.
Let us see what happens when they are pursued exclusively at the social level. If dharma was pursued exclusively in an ancient Indic context, it would lead to unproductive ritualism; in the modern world it would lead to fundamentalism. If Artha was pursued exclusively in the ancient world, it would lead to plutocracy or vyapari-raj. As homespun wisdom has it: jab raja vyapari, tab praja bhikhari (When traders rule, the subjects get impoverished). The East India Company in India is a good example of this. In a modern world, it would lead to predatory capitalism (and intellectually to Marxism and Fascism).
If Kama was pursued exclusively in ancient India, society would be reduced to a brothel house. In the modern world, it would lead to hedonism (and intellectually to Freudism). If Moksha was pursued exclusively in ancient Indic society it would collapse. That is what was feared Buddhism was going to do to society, both in India and China, as people saw young men becoming monks. It would probably have the same effect in the modern world too.
This then would constitute the second critique of the Preamble — it seems to lack an adequate recognition of the possibility of conflict among noble ideals.
The author, formerly of the IAS, is the Birks Professor of Comparative Religion at McGill University in Montreal Canada, where he has taught for over thirty years. He has also taught in Australia and the United States and at Nalanda University in India. He has published extensively in the fields of Indian religions and world religions. Views expressed are personal.
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