Opinion | This Republic Day, India Must Resolve To Drop ‘Secular’, ‘Socialist’ From Constitution |
At 77, John Glenn became the oldest person to travel to space; Grandma Moses gave up embroidery and started her million-dollar painting career; and Minuro Saito completed a solo, non-stop circumnavigation of the globe.
Humans only live till around 100, if lucky.
So, on its 77th Republic Day, it is not too late for a several-millennia-old civilisation to delete a couple of words erroneously introduced in its story: ‘secular’ and ‘socialist’.
It is not a matter of semantics. It is a matter of self-identity. It is how India of the present and future must define itself.
Last year, RSS sarkaryavah or general secretary Dattatreya Hosabale and Tamil Nadu Governor RN Ravi had brought it up, sending out hope that the surreptitious changes which then PM Indira Gandhi made to the Constitution during Emergency through the backdoor, bypassing Parliament, will be reversed after 50 years. This year, it is time for the Narendra Modi government to act.
Secularism was a European concept evolved after a conflict between the church and the king, Ravi argued. He said........