Badri Raina 
You may recall that after winning the general election in 2014, Narendra Modi prostrated himself at the portal of parliament house (a moment captured for history by the inevitable camera that goes everywhere with the enterprising numero uno), and expressed the view that independence had finally arrived after 1,200 years.
Clearly, the nation was to understand that not the British but the Muslims had enslaved India.
It remains to be debated whether this view was consonant with either the celebrated Indian struggle for freedom, or with the Constitution that it yielded.
Recently, the chief of the right-wing Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) has put a further gloss on the sentiment voiced by the honourable Narendra Modi.
Bhagwat has said that, as opposed to the “political” independence that came to us in 1947, “true” independence had materialised with the construction of the Ram Temple at Ayodhya where the Babri mosque had stood for centuries.
This is obviously meant to be read as a more defining gloss on the Muslim-related view of our Independence earlier expressed by Modi: to wit, that the independence achieved in 1947 was in essence inauthentic, because not aligned with Hindu supremacy of the post-colonial nation-state.
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Again, we may ask whether this construction squares with either the composite genius of the freedom movement or with the secular constitution of the Republic.
It may not be such a surprise then that Rahul Gandhi finds the state as it is now being reconstituted inauthentic for exactly the reasons for which Modi and Bhagwat find it authentic.
The Congress view cannot but remain that the Constitution as it stands reflects the social/cultural consensus forged by the learned founders over three long years of debate and cogitation, and therefore needs to be protected from deviations that seek to drive the philosophy of state as adopted by the post-independence nation away from that consensus as by law established.
Here is a question that Bhagwat may need to ponder: just as he has expressed the view that independence that came in 1947 was not “true”, some other segments of Indians may also voice the same view from a different perspective, perhaps more in alignment with the inscribed promise both of the egalitarian inspiration of the freedom movement and of the Constitution.
Consider that whereas B.R. Ambedkar had cautioned us that, lacking the achievement of “social and economic” equity, mere political independence may come to unravel at some point in the nation’s future; he had not recommended that the new nation be culturally pushed to any sectarian extreme.
It is significant that whereas the Directive Principles of State Policy nowhere envisage moving the new nation towards a majoritarian identity or validity, they surely provide for the sort of equity that Ambedkar cautioned us about.
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Articles 38 and 39 explicitly and forcefully enjoin that the people have the first right on all natural resources, that the state must ensure that no economic monopolies come to be established in independent India, and that disparities of income are reduced to as low a ratio as possible.
Is it not strange that the right-wing is loudly willing to drag the nation’s attention to Article 44 , recommending that eventually a Uniform Civil Code be attempted for all varieties of Indian citizens, but unaccountably bypass Articles 38 and 39 which clearly had priority over Article 44 in the minds of the founders.
Now, consider this: why should it seem outrageous that the democratic Left in India should think that our Independence that came in 1947 has proved insufficient for vast masses of this country because the provisions of the crucial Articles 38 and 39 have come to be rubbished with impunity by the classes that rule, defeating the explicit desire and caution of the founders of the constitution?
Indeed, would not this grouse seem more in line with the genius of the freedom movement and the contents of the constitution than Bhagwat’s view that only the establishment of Hindu supremacy now authenticated our Independence – a course against which both Ambedkar and other founders had strongly warned us.
Indeed, did Ambedkar not say that the worst thing that could happen in future would be the conversion of the republic into a Hindu Rashtra?
Why then are we asked to endorse the calumny that the complaints about the content of our independence that come from the Left – complaints that, as we have seen, are rooted in the unfulfilled promise of the Constitution – somehow constitute seditious activity whereas sentiments expressed by both Modi and Bhagwat are to be seen as kosher critiques of Independence?
It is indeed time that learned academics in relaxed institutions took upon themselves to flesh out these questions with sincerity and courage, and provide materials for nation-wide consideration and debate.
After all, Bhagwat’s questioning of the truth of what we attained in 1947 may not be less worrisome than Rahul’s anxiety about where the state may be headed.
Badri Raina taught at Delhi University.
This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire & Galileo Ideas – and has been updated and republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.