Secular Constitution

Third World Quarterly
Hindu Bias in India's 'Secular' Constitution: Probing Flaws in the Instruments of Governance
Author(s): Pritam Singh
Source: Third World Quarterly, Vol. 26, No. 6 (2005), pp. 909-926
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.
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Third World Quarterly, Vol. 26, No. 6, pp 909- 926, 2005 Tl FrandcigsGroup
Hindu Bias in India's 'Secular'

Constitution: probing flaws in the
instruments of governance
PRITAM SINGH
ABSTRACT There has been almost a consensus among the political opinion
makers in India that the Constitutionof India that came intoforce in 1950 has
been a secular constitution. This paper critiques that consensus and
demonstrates that the secularism of India's constitution is Hindu-tainted. It
takes up some key articles of the Indian constitution and, by analysing the
constitutional debates of the 1940s that went into the making of those articles,
highlights the Hindu bias features of the Indian nationalist movement and the
constitution. While acknowledgingsome admirable and progressivefeatures of
the constitution, the paper argues that its Hindu bias must be read as
symptomatic of the depth of institutionalisedHindu communalismin India and
the shallowness of the secularfoundations of the Indian republic. The existence
of institutionalised Hindu communalism means that the power of Hindu
communal sectarianism is greater than that which is merely represented by
Hindu nationalist organisations. The paper concludes by suggesting that the
secular reconstructionof India demands critical combat with the institutiona-
lised communalism embedded in a range of societal and state institutions.
Examining Hindu bias in the constitution is an instance of an examination of
institutionalised communalism in one key institution of the Indian state and
society.
This paper is an attempt to demonstrate Hindu bias in the Constitution of

India. During Indira Gandhi's Emergency rule (1975-77) an amendment to
the constitution (42nd Amendment, 1976) formally inserted the word
'Secular' (along with 'Socialist') as a characterisation of the Indian republic.
However, informally there has been almost a consensus among the political
opinion makers in India that the Constitution of India, which came into force
in 1950, has been a secular constitution. In this paper, I question that
consensus.
This paper demonstrates that the secularism of India's constitution is
Hindu-tainted. Through this critique, an attempt is made to question the
complacency of Indian secular opinion about the secular foundations of the
Pritam Singh is in the Business School at Oxford Brookes University, Wheatley Campus, Wheatley, Oxford
OX33 IHX, UK. Email: p.singh@brookes.ac.uk.
ISSN 0143-6597 print/ISSN 1360-2241 online/05/060909-18 ?C2005 Third World Quarterly

DOI: 10.1080/01436590500089281 909

PRITAM SINGH
Indian republic. I am not suggesting a rigidly fixed template of secularism

which must be made the basis for evaluating the secularism of India's
constitution. Secularism as a concept and ideal is a contested terrain and I
start from what might be considered the minimalist and possibly the least
controversial norm, that a state and its institutions must enable equal
opportunities to all individuals and groups in society. Converting this norm
to the sphere of secularism would imply that a secular state should, at least,
treat all religious communities on an equal footing. A secular state could do
better if it also goes further than this and makes provisions for safeguarding
the numerically disadvantaged religious minorities. In assessing the absence
or otherwise of Hindu bias in India's constitution, I am using the less
demanding definition of secularism, ie equal treatment of all religious
communities. 1
I start below by briefly providing the politico-historic context of my
argument. I then reproduce those articles of India's constitution which reflect
its Hindu bias.2 My comment on each of these articles contains arguments
and evidence to further substantiate the point about the Hindu bias in the
constitution.
Context
Some sections of the progressive and secular opinion in India faced with the
powerful rise of Hindutva forces since the 1980s believe that a campaign to
emphasise that our constitution is a secular one can be used as an ideological
weapon against the Hindutvaforces' attempt to transform India into a Hindu
nation. I consider that this belief in the political utility of the constitution is
not well grounded. I wish to argue that, although the Constitution of India
has many admirable and historically progressive features, it has significant
elements of retrogressive Hindu bias in it. A point which I am not going to
dwell upon here but is worth making very briefly is that this Hindu bias must
be seen in the larger context of the continuation of Hindu bias in the national
movement for India's independence,3 and in the world-view of most of the
leaders of the movement, including Mahatma Gandhi.4 The rise of Hindutva
forces can be considered more a continuation and deepening of that bias than
a rupture with it. If the Hindutva forces have not made this claim self-
consciously, it is mainly because of the intellectual poverty of the Hindutva
ideologues. I have no doubt that it is only a question of time before the
cleverer sections of Hindutva ideologues start invoking the heritage of the
national movement in their favour. They already do this in an eclectic
manner when they promote Sardar Patel, KM Munshi and the others but
they can be expected to do this in a systematic manner in the future. Had
Mahatma Gandhi not been murdered by a Hindu fanatic, the ambiguous and
contradictory nature of his thought would have made him a very valuable
source of legitimacy for some version of Hindutva ideology. The anti-
Hindutva forces can use the fact of his murder by Godse only in a tactical
fashion against Hindutva organisations and even that, perhaps, for not too
long. In the larger strategic scheme of things, Hindutva ideologists are quite
910

HINDU BIAS IN INDIA'S 'SECULAR' CONSTITUTION
capable of owning Gandhi as a Ram bhagat (devotee of the Hindu god Ram}
and a great Hindu thinker, while disowning Godse as a misguided patriot.
The progressive and genuinely secular forces in India need to recognise a
bitter truth, namely that uncritically claiming a secular heritage from the
national movement and the Constitution of India is to play a potentially
losing game from the very beginning against their Hindutva opponents. What
the progressive forces need to do is to project a truly secular and egalitarian
perspective for India-a perspective which does not hesitate to subject the
national movement for independence, its leadership and the existing
Constitution of India to unwavering criticism where it is needed.6 It is from
this perspective that the paper now subjects the existing Constitution of India
to criticism over one of its flawed aspects, namely its Hindu bias.
Hindu bias elements in the constitution

Article 1. Name and territory of the Union (1) India, that is Bharat, shall be a
Union of States.
Comment
The naming of India as Bharat reflected the power of the Hindutva-minded
sections in the Constituent Assembly who wanted the name to reflect the
ancient pre-British and pre-Muslim era of a 'glorious' Hindu past. This might
be considered harmless cosmetic Hindutva but, if we bear in mind the
alienating impact of this on non-Hindus, it is certainly not harmless. The
famous British geographer of the Indian subcontinent, OHK Spate, wrote:
'In Hindu literature the sub-continent as a whole is styled Bharat-Varsha, the
land of the legendary king Bharata; but it seems safe to say that there was
little feeling of identity over the whole country'.7 According to Spate, "'
Bharat"...is used mainly by.. .the romantic Hindus'.8 In August 1949 a
Hindu sanyasin went on a fast which she threatened to continue till her death
unless two of her demands were met, namely that Hindi should be adopted as
a national language and India should be renamed Bharat.9 According to
Austin, 'Nehru, among others, visited her. She broke her fast on 12 August,
claiming that Nehru and other Congress leaders had assured her that Hindi
would be adopted'.10 The fact that in the rest of the constitution's text the
word Bharat is not used again suggests that its insertion in the opening article
was meant to suggest a word of huge symbolic significance.
Further, a member of the Constituent Assembly who was heavily
Hindutva-minded in his political outlook (he claimed himself to be a
Gandhian) highlighted the symbolic significance of the word Bharat by
suggesting a more favourable positioning of it in the Article. Jagat Narain
Lal (from Bihar) said: 'I would have liked the name "Bharat" to come before
India. It is a fact that "Bharat" and India have come in, but I would have
liked "Bharat" to come before India'.1' The symbolic significance of 'Bharat'
in the opening article was meant to suggest a sense of Hindu ownership of the
new India-the India which was perceived to have achieved self-rule after
911

PRITAM SINGH
many centuries of foreign rule. The name Bharat signified the birth of a new
India, with whose government and state the Hindus felt a sense of
identification.
The word 'Union' in the opening article was also consciously preferred
over 'Federation'.12 It does not have direct Hindutva implications but, once
we understand the context of the use of the word, we can start seeing the
Hindutva sentiments and arguments associated with this word. In the
negotiations leading up to independence and partition the Cabinet Mission
had suggested a plan in 1946 which envisaged India as a loose federation with
a weak centre and relatively strong states, with residuary powers vested in the
states. This federal framework had been suggested in order to accommodate
the Muslim League's concerns about the dangers of Hindu domination if the
centre were to be too powerful. This plan did not succeed for various reasons,
the main one being the Congress's resistance to the idea of a federation with a
weak centre. This is what eventually led to the creation of Pakistan. Ayesha
Jalal has demonstrated this very convincingly, although the majority of
Indian historians still blame the Muslim League leader Mohammad Jinnah
for partition.13 Once the partition plan was accepted, the Indian political
leadership (at least the majority) was relieved that they could get on with
their plan for a strong centre.
Let me quote KM Panikkar, one of the leading figures in the Constituent
Assembly. He wrote on May 1947: 'Federation with limited powers for the
Centre, was an unavoidable evil in India, so long as the Muslim majority
provinces had to be provided for in an all-India centre...It is no longer
necessary to provide for the very large measure of power for the units, which
a full union with the Muslim majority provinces would have rendered
unavoidable'. 14 This seemed to reflect a sense of relief that Muslim
bargaining power had vanished and the centralising agenda could now be
implemented without any resistance. Nehru expressed similar views:
The severe limitations on the scope of central authority in the Cabinet
Mission'splan was a compromiseacceptedby the Assemblymuch, we think,
against its judgment of the administrativeneeds of the country in order to
accommodatethe MuslimLeague.Now that partitionis a settledfact we are
unanimouslyof the view that it would be injuriousto the interests of the
countryto providefor a weak centralauthority.15
Some other members of the Constituent Assembly went even further in

articulating a Hindutva view of history as a justification for a strong centre.
Jaspat Roy Kapoor and Ram Chandra Gupta (both from United Provinces)
and Jagat Narain Lal (Bihar) argued such a position. Kapoor said: 'History
undoubtedly proves that whenever there has been no centralisation in this
country it has been overrun by foreigners'.16He dubbed anyone questioning
centralisation almost as a foreign government spy: 'The two fundamental
things about this Constitution are the unity of the country and a strong
Central Government...nobody should be sorry for it excepting one who
would like to bring about confusion and chaos in this country because his
sympathies may be lying somewhere else outside the borders of this country'.
912

17
Kapoor expressed his disappointment 'about the special provisions for
Kashmir'"8and concluded his speech with strong Hindu nationalist fervour:
'Our motto and slogan hereafter should be: Bharat samvidhan ki Jayaho,
Bharat Mata ki Jayaho'.19 Ram Chandra Gupta justified centralisation as a
response to the creation of Pakistan and then articulated a Hindutva-oriented
view of Indian history in favour of centralisation:
Prior to the partition of the country, it was thought that all the provinces
should be practicallyindependentof the Centre except in certain matters-
defence,communicationetc-the residuarypowersto vest in the units;but the
partitiondid demand,and rightly demandedthat Centre should be made as
strongas possible.The Constitutionhas effectedthis change....A strongCentral
Government is the needof the hour...All along the ages, and our history bears
ampletestimonyto this fact, the overmasteringproblembeforeIndia has been
one of integration,and consolidationand unification.20
Jagat Narain Lal equated more central power with national solidarity and
said, 'Time after time in history, we have found this solidarity being broken
and India falling at the feet of the foreign conquerors'. 21 It is not difficult to
imagine that by 'foreigners', in this context, Kapoor and Lal were referring
mainly to the Muslims. KM Munshi, in a weaker Hindutva tone than that of
Kapoor, Gupta and Lal, also eulogised the virtues of 'strong central
authority' in the Indian historical experience.22
There were others (most prominent being Ambedkar) who also argued for
centralisation for different reasons. There seemed to be a convergence of
positions: Hindu nationalists, secular Indian nationalists (Nehru) and
Ambedkar all seemed to agree on the need for a strong centre for different
reasons. Although Ambedkar was a centraliser, he also played the most
influential role in critiquing Nehru's over-centralising approach (mainly for
economic reasons) on many issues. For example, he opposed and defeated
Nehru's view that a simple majority of the parliament should be able to
amend some features of the constitution. He also showed a critical awareness
of the fact that many of the centralising features of the proposed constitution,
in the framing of which he had himself played a key role, 'invaded provincial
autonomy'.23 There was, of course, strong opposition to the emerging
consensus for a strong centre. This opposition came mainly from southern
states: NG Ranga, K Santhanam, Mahboob Ali Bai and Ramalingam
Chettiar all opposed the move towards centralisation. 4 Prof Ranga said:
'centralisation, I wish to warn this house.. .would only lead to Sovietisation
and totalitarianism and not democracy'.25 Mahboob Ali Baig argued for
institutional mechanisms like the electoral system of proportional represen-
tation to safeguard the interests of religious minorities. He criticised the
moves towards a unitarist political system: 'in the hands of a Central
Government which wants to override and convert this federal system into a
unitary system, it can be easily done. Now there is a danger of this sort of
Government becoming totalitarian. This is the danger in the form of the
Constitution that is embodied in the Draft Constitution.' 26 TT Krishna-
machari, who was sympathetic to giving some powers to the centre in order
913

PRITAM SINGH
to introduce uniform labour welfare measures (as proposed by Jagjivan Ram)

and to maintain public health standards, feared that creating a strong centre
'would also mean the enslavement of people who do not speak the language
of the legislature, the language of the Centre'.27 He feared 'Hindi
imperialism' and 'totalitarianism' as a result of centralisation.28 Socialists
HV Kamath and Prof Shibban Lal Saksena made spirited criticisms of the
many pro-centralisation proposals, especially the ones relating to the
president's rule. Kamath looked upon these measures as a threat to
democracy and characterised them as a Hitler-like takeover by the Union
government.29
Some other well known critics of centralisation were the jurist HN Kunjru
and the United Provinces premier GB Pant who, 'seems to have been the
unofficial spokesman of the provincial premiers in the Assembly'.30
Kamlapati Tiwari criticised centralisation from a Gandhian perspective:
'The first fundamental defect of the Constitution appears to be that it is
terribly centre-ridden. . .Everyone knows that effective power in the hands of
the centre can only be based on military strength and the concentration of
military power is the sure road leading to the complete destruction of popular
rights. This is a historic truth. Our Constitution obviously presents this
danger.' 31
Regarding the Sikhs' opposition to the centralisation proposals, Justice
Ajit Singh Bains has highlighted the well known historical fact that 'The Sikh
representative in the Constituent Assembly did not siFn the Constitution of
India as it had not given any autonomy to the states'. Hukam Singh, a Sikh
representative, stated:
the Sikhsfeel utterlydisappointedand frustrated.Theyfeel that they havebeen
discriminatedagainst.Let it not be misunderstoodthatthe Sikhcommunityhas
agreed to this Constitution.I wish to record an emphaticprotest here. My
communitycan not subscribeits assent to this historic document...In our
Constitution, each article tends to sap the local autonomy and make the
provincesirresponsible...The minoritiesand particularlythe Sikhs have been
ignoredand completelyneglected.The Provincialunits have been reducedto
Municipal Boards...there is enough provision in our Constitution...to
facilitatethe developmentof administrationinto a fascist State.33
Another Sikh representative Bhupinder Singh Mann (spelt wrongly in the

CAD Official Report as Man), said, 'I will be failing in my duty if I do not
give the reactions of my own community, the Sikhs of East Punjab, so far as
this Constitution goes. Their feeling is that they can not give unstinted
support or full approval to this Constitution.' 34 Bains argues that the Sikh
unrest in Punjab since 1947, and especially in the 1980s and the 1990s, can be
attributed to this unitarist constitution which empowers the centre vis-a-vis
the states.35 Bajpai captures the dominant Hindu majoritarian and
nationalist mood in the Constituent Assembly debates and points out that
'Minorities were referred to as "disfigurement", "cancerous?', "poisonous"
for the body politic'.36 Khilnani notes that 'Hindu voices' had become
'emboldened' in the Congress Party after the 1947 partition.37
914

Hindutva elements both before and after 1947 have been the most ardent
proponents of strong centralisation and Union power. Although there were
other supporters of centralisation, as pointed out above, if one were to
construct a league table of support for centralisation, Hindu nationalists
would come out at the top. Strong central power in the Indian constitutional
framework and the Indian political structure is associated, in the Hindutva
vision, with strong Indian Hindu nationhood. Decentralisation and minority
rights are viewed, in this vision, with suspicion as potential threats to that
nationhood.
Article 25. Freedom of conscience andfree profession, practice andpropagation

of religion (1) Subject to public order, morality and health and to the other
provisions of this Part, all persons are equally entitled to freedom of
conscience and the right freely to profess, practise and propagate religion.
(2) Nothing in this article shall effect the operation of any existing law or
prevent the State from making any law...
(b) providing for social welfare and reform or the throwing open of Hindu
religious institutions of a public character to all classes and sections of
Hindus...
Explanation II. In sub-clause (b) of clause (2), the reference to Hindus shall
be construed as including a reference to persons professing the Sikh, Jaina or
Buddhist religion, and the reference to Hindu religious institutions shall be
construed accordingly.
Comment
The Article 25 (2) (b) fundamentally undermines the secular character of the
state in favour of Hindus. If one adopts a strict definition of secularism,
namely the separation of state and religion, this is an unambiguous violation
of secularism. Even with a looser definition of secularism, the so-called
Indian version of equal treatment of all religions, it violates secularism
because of the clearly expressed special interest of the state in favour of
'social welfare and reform' of the Hindu religion.38 Why should a secular
state be concerned about the social welfare and reform of only one religion?
Why should a secular state be concerned with social welfare and reform of
only Hindu temples?39 It seems that the overriding concern behind these
social reform measures was to prevent the exodus of the dalits (literal
meaning 'oppressed' and referring to the lowest caste strata in the Hindu
caste system) from the Hindu fold.40 This was an instance of active state
intervention to consolidate Hindu identity. Pratap Mehta has rightly
emphasised this point:
The Indian state has used state power to consolidateHindu identity in more
ways than one can list. The state,for the firsttime,createda territoriallyunified
body of Hindu law, transcendingnumerousregionaldivisions.SupremeCourt
judges not only promulgate public purposes; they act as authoritative
interpretersof Hindu religion,definingwhat is essentialto it and what is not.
915

PRITAM SINGH
The state runs thousandsof temples across the country, appropriatedin the name
of social reform or financialpropriety.4'
Explanation II above reflects a Hindu assimilationist perspective towards the

Sikhs, Jains and Buddhists in India. The welcome accorded to this clause by
Jaspat Roy Kapoor illustrates this assimilationist attitude: 'One very good
thing which I have found mentioned in Article 25(2).. .This includes the
Buddhists among the Hindus... .This is a provision of which I am particularly
happy'.42 All these three religious communities have, in varying degrees and
at different points in time, protested against this section of the constitution.
During the Akali agitation of the 1980s even a moderate and the most pro-
Hindu Akali leader, Parkash Singh Badal, joined the Akali protest against
this clause of the constitution. He led a procession of Akali volunteers in
Delhi which burnt the pages of the constitution containing this clause. Singh
has discussed the political significance of this phase of the Akali agitation.43
In a paper, 'Secularism in India: a critique of the current discourse', Anwar
Alam has examined the definition of Hindu in the context of the Hindu Code
Bill of 1955. His examination of the bill as a move towards Hindu
homogenisation and assimilation is particularly striking because it took place
during the Nehru era, the era most often advertised as the golden period of
secular Indian nationalism. According to Alam, 'the Hindu Code Bill
produced a tendentious legal description of a "Hindu". It included
Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs despite their protest'. It included anyone in the
definition of a Hindu who was not a Muslim, Christian, Parsi or Jew. 'The
negative description of a Hindu, as one who was not a member of the four
excluded religions, produced a Hindu so tightly manacled to his/her birth
that even non-belief could not provide an exit. Even though the Constitution
provided for the right of non-belief and atheism, the reformed Hindu law
took away the freedom of legal self-definition and self-designation from
individuals born in Hindu families'.44 This was clearly a legal move by the
Indian state to construct a consolidated, homogenous and assimilationist
Hindu identity. Alam's examination of the cultural policy of the Indian state
demonstrates that 'the Brahmanical features of Hinduism were deliberately
selected, promoted and projected at the national level in a manner that, for
all practical purposes, blurs the distinction between Hindu nationalism and
Nehruvian secular composite nationalism'.45 Taking his story further to the
more open 'Hindu card' policy of Indira Gandhi in the 1980s, he notes
(quoting an article by Sumantra Bose) that, after Operation Bluestar, Mrs
Gandhi had publicly stated 'that Hindu dharma [faith] was under attack from
the Sikhs'.46
Article 48. Organisation of agriculture and animal husbandry. The State shall
endeavour to organise agriculture and animal husbandry on modern and
scientific lines and shall, in particular, take steps for preserving and
improving the breeds, and prohibiting the slaughter of cows and calves and
other milch and draught cattle. (emphasis added)
916

Comment
The specific insertion of 'prohibiting the slaughter of cows and calves' in the
constitution, as one of the directive principles of state policy, was an
unmistakable reflection of the religious preferences and powers of the
dominant upper caste Hindus among the constitution makers. This specific
inclusion also meant the exclusion of the preferences of others for whom the
cow did not signify what it did for some upper caste Hindu groups.
Kancha Ilaiah, a dalit scholar and activist, considers the cow protection
measures by the state as spiritual imposition by upper caste Hindus on dalits
and non-Hindus. He argues: 'Indians do not live with one mode of scriptures.
We have the Buddhist scriptures, we have had the Bible as a living book for
2000 years in India. The Quran has been in India for more than 1000 years.
The Dalits in the spiritual realm have more affinity with Buddhism and
Christianity than Hinduism. In their spiritual realm, the cow is not sacred.
How can Hindutva forces impose their spirituality on others?'.47 He
condemns this as 'cow nationalism' of the Aryan Brahmins and counterposes
to it the 'buffalo nationalism' of the dalits because, in his view, the black
coloured buffalo represents the dalits and the Dravidians.48 According to
Smith, 'The cow protection legislation is undoubtedly the result of Hindu
communalism: the coercive power of the state is pressed into the service of
Hindu religion, to the detriment or at least inconvenience of beef-eating
Muslims and Christians'.49The political philosopher Pratap Mehta calls cow
protection 'the most symbolically potent of Hindu demands',50 while
Harkishan Singh Surjeet, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of
India (Marxist) (CPI (M)), considers that the strong Hindu revivalist outlook
in a section of the Congress leadership was responsible for including the cow
protection provisions in the constitution.51 Jagat Narain Lal had provided an
unhesitating Hindu majoritarian viewpoint in the CAD for justifying 'the
banning of cow-slaughter'. He said: 'The majority of the people of the
country hold the cow sacred. They hold very strong views on this question.'52
Article 343. Official language of the Union. (1) The official language of the
Union shall be Hindi in Devanagari script.
Article 351. Directive for development of the Hindi language. It shall be the
duty of the Union to promote the spread of the Hindi language, to develop it
so that it may serve as a medium of expression for all the elements of the
composite culture of India and to secure its enrichment by assimilating
without interfering with its genius, the forms, style and expressions used in
Hindustani and in the other languages of India specified in the Eighth
Schedule, and by drawing, wherever necessary or desirable, for its vocabulary,
primarily on Sanskrit and secondarily on other languages. (emphasis added)
Comment
The importance accorded to Hindi language and especially to the Devanagari
script and the Sanskrit language in the constitution reflects the strong pro-
917

PRITAMSINGH
Hindi and pro-Hindu bias of a very powerful section among the constitution
makers.
David Lelyveld highlights the legacy of the Gandhi and Nehru led national
movement on this question, which reveals several degrees of closeness
between the Congress tradition and the Hindutva tradition. A passage from
Lelyveld helps to demonstrate this point. According to Lelyveld:
[Gandhi]supportedHindior Hindustanias the nationallanguage,the language
that would take the place of Englishfor communicationbetweenIndians of
different linguistic backgrounds.In that spirit, Gandhi campaignedmost
vigorouslyfor Hindiin the South,establishingin 1927the HindiPracharSabha,
a networkof teachersand a body of teachingmaterialsaimedat teachingHindi
to speakersof Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam,all in the name of
patriotism and national service. Ignoring anti-Sanskritsentiment in Tamil
Nadu, Gandhi arguedthat the common Sanskritvocabularywould serve to
bind the languagesof Indiatogether.At the sametime, Gandhiadvocatedthat
all Indianlanguagesbe writtenin the samescript,Devanagari,in orderto make
them easierto learn.53
It is necessary to mention here that many other statements by Gandhi and

Nehru could be cited to reflect their conciliatory attitude towards Urdu and
non-Sanskritised Hindi. Nehru was particularly sympathetic to Urdu and felt
an emotional bond with the language and its script. Both Gandhi and Nehru
were genuinely worried about the negative consequences of Hindi extremism
for India's unity. However, both of them eventually succumbed to the
pressure of the pro-Hindi forces in the country.54 The often contradictory
and ambiguous nature of Gandhi's many political positions was reflected in
his position on Hindi and Devanagari script also. If, on one hand, he feared
that imposing Hindi in Devanagari script would harm national unity, he also
believed, on the other, that promoting Hindi in Devanagari script was in the
interests of building a unified Indian nationalism. He eventually seems to
have veered more towards the latter position.
Sadhana Saxena, in an excellent paper 'Language and the nationality
question', has criticised the oppressive role of Hindi, her own mother tongue,
as a link language in crushing the growth of several mother tongues in 'the
so-called vast Hindi belt'. She points out that the Constitution of India
disenfranchised these non-Hindi mother tongues by excluding them from the
Eighth Schedule (ES), which lists only 14 languages (Assamese, Bengali,
Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri, Malayalam, Marathi, Oriya, Punjabi,
Sanskrit, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu). In 1967 Sindhi, and in 1992 Konkani,
Manipuri and Nepali, were incorporated in the ES, bringing the total to 18.
The Brahmanical Hindu bias speaks loudly and clearly through the
Constitution of India when one notices that Sanskrit, which is the claimed
mother tongue of only a few hundred people, is included in the ES while none
of the tribal mother tongues such as Santhali (3.6 million), Bhilli (1.25
million) and Lammi (1.2 million) etc are constitutionally recognised.55
Saxena has pointed out that the 1981 census data listed official figures for
Hindi speakers at around 260 million, but that this number was arrived at by
918

grouping several widely spoken tribal languages under Hindi.6 Hindi has
been further privileged over the other ES languages by according it the status
of National Official Language, the language of the Union and of centre-
state exchanges.
The Hindi lobby was very powerful during the pre-1947 period but it
became even more powerful after 1947. The Hindi lobby had become so
arrogant after 1947 that some of the Hindi fanatics opposed constitutional
recognition of any other language apart from Hindi. One such fanatic, Ravi
Shankar Shukla, a member of the Constituent Assembly and the prime
minister of the Central Provinces, characterised the move to give official
recognition to non-Hindi languages as a 'reactionary provision' because,
according to him, such a provision would 'delay the introduction of Hindi as
the Official Language of the Union.57 TT Krishnamachari of Madras decried
this 'Hindi imperialism'. He said, 'I refer to this question of language
imperialism... .I would, Sir, convey a warning on behalf of the people of the
South.. .that there are elements in South India who want separation.. .and
my honourable friends in uP do not help us in any way by flog5ing their idea
"Hindi imperialism" to the maximum extent possible'. Non-Hindi
linguistic groups had to unite against this Hindi imperialism. According to
Krishnamachari and Mrs Durgabai/Durgabai Deshmukh, both members of
the Constituent Assembly, 'We had these languages [non-Hindi languages]
listed in the Constitution to protect them from being ignored or wiped out by
the Hindi-wallahs'.59 Although the non-Hindi linguistic groups succeeded in
getting this constitutional recognition for their languages, they could not
prevent the pre-eminent status of the 'Official Language of the Union' being
accorded to Hindi. Austin summed it up aptly: 'It was one of the unfortunate
coincidences of Indian history that Hindustani was a northern language and
that it was given special status by North Indians, like Nehru, Prasad, and
Azad and by north-oriented Gujaratis like Gandhi and Patel'.60
Alok Rai characterises this constitutional victory of Sanskritised Hindi 'as
a vehicle of "national" aspiration for a regional upper-caste elite'.61 He
translates a piece of Hindi poetry, which captures the emotive link between
Hindi and Hindutva imagination:
If your well-being you really want,

O children of Bharat!
Then chant for ever but these words-
Hindi, Hindu, Hindustan!62
The Constituent Assembly members who were Hindi extremists were,

generally, also Hindu nationalists who 'envisagaedthe new India in terms of
the glories of the ancient Hindu kingdoms'. Purushottam Das Tandon,
Seth Govind Das, Balkrishna Sharma, GS Gupta and Dr Raghuvira were
some of the leading Hindi extremists who were also known to be Hindu
revivalists. GS Gupta had a long association with Arya Samaj. Dr Raghuvira
contested the parliamentary elections in 1962 as a Jan Sangh (precursor of
the Bharatiya Janata Party) candidate. Many of the Hindi/Hindu nationalists
919

PRITAM SINGH
worked within the Congress Party. Some of the Hindi extremists, like Algurai
Shashtri, VD Tripathi and Prof SL Saxena, were secular and socialist in their
political outlook but their Hindi extremism, which took the form of
opposition to English, Urdu and other non-Hindi languages, brought them
closer to the sentiments of the dominant Hindi/Hindu nationalist tradition.64
The special constitutional status accorded to Devanagari as the script for
the Hindi language reflects the strong bargaining power of the Hindutva-
minded lobby in the Constituent Assembly. Alok Rai provides a brilliant
historical overview of the contestation over the script issue. He shows that,
although Kaithi script was more widely used than the Devanagari script,
Kaithi was dumped in favour of Devanagari because of the latter's perceived
closeness to Brahmanical Hindu identity. He points out that the Bengal
Provincial Committee reporting to the Education Commission in 1883-84
had spoken up in favour of the Kaithi precisely on the grounds that it was
widely in use. He highlights an interesting aspect of data provided by
Vedalankar on this issue. According to Vedalankar, the number of primers in
the schools in North Western Province in 1854 that used different variants of
the script were: Kaithi 77368, Devanagari 25 151, Mahajani 24302.65 But,
according to Rai:
Kaithi was unacceptableto the Nagari/Hindipropagandists.It appearsthat
there were some crucial disqualificationsthat attached to Kaithi. It was
perceivedto have some associationwith Hindustaniratherthan with Sanskrit.
It was, moreover,known to Hindusand Muslimsalike and so might not have
appeared'pure'enough to proponentsof the Nagari variant-Devanagari,no
less, the scriptof the scriptures.Perhapsmost crucially,for instance,it could
not serveas a basis of 'differentiation'.
66
Another dimension of the Devanagari script, namely that it was also known
by another name 'Babhni, the script of the Brahmins'67signifies further the
upper caste Hindu bias of the constitutional provision regarding the
Devanagari script. The linguist Suniti Kumar Chatterji has highlighted the
Hindu cultural significance attached to the Nagari script by the supporters of
the script. He has pointed out that the first society established to propagate
the cause of Hindi in North India was named as Nagari Pracharini Sabha
(Society for the Propagation of the Nagari Script) because, in his view, 'the
Hindu thought leaders in Northern India realised the importance of the
Nagari script for the maintenance or preservation of Hindu culture'.68
According to Brass, the religious attachment of Hindus to the Nagari script is
'profound'.69Krishna Kumar has highlighted that the Hindu revivalist Arya
Samaj provided the inspiration behind the setting up of the Nagari Pracharini
Sabha. He points out: 'A biography of Shyam Sunder Das, the founder
secretary of the Nagari Pracharini Sabha, has recorded that the idea of
starting the Sabha had come from a speech delivered by Arya Samajist
preacher, Shankar Lal... Hindi soon acquired the title of 'Aryabhasha' [the
language of the Aryas] in Arya Samaj parlance, and its Sanskritised form
became a part and parcel of the movement's vision of a reformed Hindu
society in which Vedic ideals would be practised'.70
920

The third component of the Hindu bias in the constitutional provision on

the language issue is Article 351 quoted above, which specifies the duty of the
Indian central state to promote the vocabulary of the Hindi language by
relying primarily on Sanskrit. The proposition that 'Sanskrit is a dead
language'71would outrage Sanskrit enthusiasts. In their imagination Sanskrit
represents the glorious spiritual richness of the Hindu heritage and is a key to
unifying the Indian Hindu nation. According to Rai, 'Sanskrit belongs
certainly at the level of myth, where it is the literal and always-already perfect
language of the gods'.72 The known Hindu revivalists in the Constituent
Assembly had argued passionately for giving the primary importance to
Sanskrit eventually accorded to it in the constitution. In the words of these
Hindu revivalists, 'The highest dictates of nationalism require that our terms
of any technical value must be based on Sanskrit. This way lies the linguistic
unity of India.' 73
The Hindu, Hindi, Devanagari and Sanskrit lobby managed to put a
powerful stamp on the Indian constitution and thus inflicted a damaging
blow to its secular content.
Conclusions
This paper has attempted to demonstrate that the Constitution of India is not
a document which the secular and progressive forces in India can use
unproblematically against their Hindutva opponents. This constitution has
several elements of Hindu bias in it. The symbolic insertion of 'Bharat' in the
opening article naming the country; the provisions for strong centralisation
supportive of Hindu nationalism; the active intervention of the state to
consolidate Hindu identity through reform of the Hindu religion; the
definition of 'Hindu' supportive of a Hindu assimilative agenda towards
Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs; cow protection; pre-eminent status for Hindi in
the Devanagari script and special importance for Sanskrit are all features of
the constitution which make its secularism seriously Hindu-tainted. It is time
for the uncritical celebratory references to the secularism of India's
constitution to cease and for the compromised nature of its secularism to
be recognised.
Recognising the Hindu bias in India's constitution helps to show that
Hindutva in India is widespread and deeply rooted and goes beyond what is
represented by the Hindutva group of organisations known as the sangh
parivar. It could be called institutionalised communalism akin to the
phenomenon of institutionalised racism in Western societies. Institutiona-
lised racism is more than that which is represented by racist political
organisations. Institutionalised racism in Western societies manifests itself
through a whole range of institutions in these societies. Similarly,
institutionalised communalism in India is embedded in and manifests itself
in varying degrees through a range of societal and state institutions like the
civil service, police and the other security services, prisons, legal institutions,
media, culture, arts and education.74 Examining and combating institutio-
nalised communalism demands an interrogation of communalism in each one
921

PRITAM SINGH
of these institutions.75 Examining Hindu bias in the Indian constitution is an

instance of an examination of institutionalised communalism in one key and
foundational institution of the Indian state and society.
Notes
1 A Sen defines secularism in similar terms as symmetrical treatment of different religious communities in
politics. See AK Sen, 'Secularism and its discontents', in R Bhargava (ed), Secularism and its Critics,
Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998.
2 The Constitution of India is available at the website http://constitutionofindia.nic.in/coiweb/
welcome.html. I have also used PM Bakshi, The Constitution of India, Delhi: Universal Law
Publishing, 2002 and Constitution of India, Lucknow: Eastern Book Company to verify the exact
wording of the articles of the constitution. All the three sources had the same wording.
3 'If the mainstream of the nationalist movement has been secular, it has also stimulated Hindu
revivalism and a tendency to identify with patriotism'. M Galanter, 'Secularism East and West', in
Bhargava, Secularism and its Critics, p 237.
4 Let us look briefly at Bhikhu Parekh's take on this: 'Neither Gandhi nor many other Congress leaders
could look upon the Muslims as anything other than ex-Hindus' (p 299). 'Although Gandhi himself
never put it this way and would probably have disowned it, he tended to equate India with the pre-
Muslim Hindu India and define Indian identity in Hindu terms. For him India's history began with the
arrival of the Aryans and continued for several thousand years during which it developed a rich
spiritual culture. It was rudely interrupted by the arrival of the Muslims and then the British, and was
to be resumed at Independence. The Muslims and British periods were largely aberrations made
possible by Hindu decadence, and had little impact on India. The Muslims were little more than
converted Hindus or ex-Hindus whose religion was but an icing on their essentially Hindu cake. And as
for the British rule, it imported an alien civilisation unsuited to the Indian genius and which the
culturally revitalised Hindu India must reject' (p 308). See B Parekh, 'The legacy of the partition', in A
Singh (ed), Punjab in Indian Politics, Delhi: Ajanta Publications, 1985. Two interesting studies, with
different approaches, of the interface between Hindutva and Indian politics, including the Indian
national movement, are C Jaffrelot, The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics, London:
Hurst, 1993; and S Joshi & B Josh, Struggle for Hegemony in India, Volume III, Delhi: Sage, 1994.
Brass describes very vividly the Hindu bias in Gandhi's thought and practice: 'Gandhi himself was, in a
sense, the most successful of the Hindu revivalist politicians, but his great stress in bringing the Hindu
masses into participation in the nationalist movement, by infusing Indian nationalism with the symbols
of Gita, the ethics of non-violence and the promise of Ram Rajya, was also his greatest failure, for his
revivalism had no appeal to Muslims' (p 127). See P Brass, Language, Religion and Politics in North
India, London: Cambridge University Press, 1974.
5 Nanaji Deshmukh, a leading Hindutva ideologist, in a document entitled 'Moments of soul searching',
dated 8 November 1984 and circulated by the Hindu supremacist organisation Rashtriya Swayamsevak
Sangh (National Volunteer Force-RSS) soon after Indira Gandhi's assassination, gives an indication
of the line of revisionist rethinking ('soul searching') on the part of the Hindutva forces. He writes, 'on
January 30,1948 a Hindu fanatic who was a Marathi and had no relation with the RSS, rather was a
bitter critic of the Sangh, committed unfortunate killing of Mahatma Gandhi... .We ourselves saw how
selfish elements, who were well acquainted with this incident, deliberately declared a murderer to be a
member of the RSS and also spread the rumour that the RSS people were celebrating throughout the
country death of Mahatma Gandhi, and thus they succeeded in diverting the love and the feelings of
loss and hurt in the hearts of people for Gandhi.' This document has been reproduced in full in S Islam,
Undoing India. The RSS Way, Delhi: Media House, 2002, pp 53 - 60. It is worth noting here, in passing,
that in this document, Deshmukh endorses Rajiv Gandhi, Mrs Gandhi's son, unhesitatingly: 'he
[Rajiv] is entitled to get full cooperation and sympathy from the countrymen, though they may belong
to any language, religion, caste or political belief.. .so that he can take the country to real prosperous
unity and glory' (ibid, p 60). A similar revisionist view is discernible in an interview given by Prof
Rajendra Singh, a former RSS chief, to Outlook magazine (19 January 1998) published from Delhi. In
this interview he makes a mild criticism of Godse by characterising him as a well intentioned
nationalist whose killing of Mahatma Gandhi was the wrong method to achieve his goals. To the
question 'What is your opinion about Nathuram Godse who killed Gandhi?' Prof Singh replied,
'Godse was motivated by [the philosophy of] Akhand Bharat. Uske mantavya achhe thhepar usne achhe
uddeshya ke liye galat method istemal kiye [His intention was good but he used the wrong methods]'.
This interview has been reproduced in CommunalismCombat, 11(100), August 2004, p 19.
6 In an Indian Communist Party (cPi (M)) booklet containing articles by Harkishan Singh Surjeet,
Prakash Karat, Prabhat Patnaik, AG Noorani and Harish Khare, all the contributors made good
922

criticisms of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government's politics in setting up a Constitution Review
committee. However, in their attempt to criticise the BJP, they all adopted a defensive attitude towards
the existing Constitution of India. Khare even entitled his contribution 'Leave the constitution alone'.
In the whole booklet there was only one criticism of the existing constitution, made by Surjeet. He
rightly pointed out that 'the strong Hindu revivalist outlook in a section of the Congress leadership
also forced the inclusion of cow protection in the Directive Principles. This initial compromise with
obscurantist forces was, in the later years, extended to dangerous lengths.. .The later assumption of
power at the centre by a rank communal party like the BJP, was a natural corollary of this compromise'
(pp 18-19). See cpi (M), Subverting the Constitution: The RSS-BJP Gameplan, Delhi, 2000. The
Communist Party of India (Marxist) is the biggest and the most influential of all the communist
formations in India.
7 OHK Spate, India and Pakistan: A Generaland Regional Geography, London: Methuen, 1963, p xxvii.
8 Ibid, p xxi.
9 G Austin, The Indian Constitution: Cornerstone of a Nation, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004, p
293.
10 Ibid, p 293. Although Austin's account of the incident is silent on whether her other demand for the
renaming of India as Bharat was accepted by Nehru and other Congress leaders who visited her, it
nonetheless highlights the strong emotive association of the Hindus with Bharat.
11 Constituent Assembly Debates: Official Report (henceforth CAD), 12 Vols, Delhi, 1946- 50, Vol XI, 25
November 1949, p 948.
12 Bhattacharya has brilliantly captured the context and the process of this change from 'federation' to
'Union'. See M Bhattacharya, 'The mind of the founding fathers', in N Mukarji & B Arora (eds),
Federalism in India, Delhi: Vikas, 1992.
13 Ayesha Jalal, The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.
14 Quoted by Bhattacharya, 'The mind of the founding fathers', p 99.
15 Ibid, p 96.
16 CAD, Vol XI, 21 November 1949, p 760.
17 Ibid, p 762. From the context of the debate, it is clear that the reference here is to Pakistan.
18 Ibid, p 762.
19 Ibid, p 763. This can be translated as 'Victory to Bharat Constitution, Victory to Mother India'.
20 CAD, Vol XI, 24 November 1949, p 920, emphasis in the original. Austin, The Indian Constitutionnotes
that at one stage of the debate on the issue of residuary powers, it led to communal polarisation 'with
Hindus claiming that residuary powers should vest in the centre and Muslims strongly holding the
opposite view' (p 196).
21 CAD, Vol XI, 25 November 1949, p 946. Lal was one of the three-member Linguistic Provinces
Commission in 1948, which had argued against the creation of linguistic states on the grounds that
such states would harm the interests of Indian nationhood. Austin, The Indian Constitution,p 242. As a
votary of strong centralisation, he reiterated his opposition to the demands for the creation of linguistic
states and said that he 'strongly held the view that if a redistribution of provinces has to take place, it
should be carried out on an administrative basis'. CAD, Vol XI, p 947. The Hindu nationalist
organisations in post-independent India have almost always taken a similar position on the
reorganisation of states. Secular linguistic nationalism is viewed, and viewed correctly, by Hindu
nationalists as a threat to the consolidation of a singular Indian Hindu identity.
22 CAD, Vol VIII, pp 927- 928. Munshi, an early associate of Gandhi, later became one of the founders of
the right-wing Swatantra Party and was president for many years of Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, a
publication house that promotes Hindu culture in India and abroad.
23 See Austin, The Indian Constitution, pp 262-264.
24 Bhattacharya 'The mind of the founding fathers', pp 100-101.
25 CAD, Vol VII, 9 November 1948, p 350.
26 Ibid, 8 November 1948, p 296.
27 Ibid, 5 November 1948, pp 234-235.
28 Ibid.
29 CAD, Vol IX, 3 August 1949, pp 135-142 for Kamath; and pp 142-145 for SL Saksena.
30 Austin, The Indian Constitution, p 315.
31 CAD, Vol XI, 23 November 1949, pp 863-864.
32 Ajit Singh Bains, 'Punjab situation', in PV Rao (ed), Symphony of Freedom: Papers on Nationality
Question, Hyderabad: All India People's Resistance Forum, 1996, p 179.
34 Ibid, p 722.
35 Bains, 'Punjab situation'.
923

PRITAM SINGH
36 R Bajpai, 'Constituent Assembly debates and minority rights', Economic and Political Weekly (EPw),
27 May 2000, p 1839.
37 Sunil Khilnani, The Idea of India, London: Penguin, 1997, p 29. These 'Hindu voices', Khilnani points
out, had gone to the extent of demanding 'that the Indian state should explicitly declare itself defender
of the interests of the nation's Hindu majority' and that powerful Congress leaders like Sardar Patel
and Rajendra Prasad had called for 'the dismissal of Muslim state officials, and suggested that there
was little point in the army trying to protect Muslim citizens' (p 31). This distrust of the minority
community officials was revealed again at another critical point in the history of independent India.
During the anti-Sikh carnage in Delhi in 1984 after Indira Gandhi's assassination, the Sikh police
officials in the Delhi police were disarmed and taken off duty.
38 Bajpai sums up very cogently the two conceptions of secularism as debated during the framing of the
Indian constitution: 'More generally, secularism was regarded to imply the exclusion of religion from
the political domain: religion, it was argued, should be a "personal matter" for citizens, restricted to
their individual and associational private practices. Another conception of secularism as separation
between state and religion was that of state impartiality between different religions: the state would not
give preference to any particular religion' (p 182). See R Bajpai, 'The conceptual vocabularies of
secularism and minority rights in India', Journal of Political Ideologies, 7(2), 2002, pp 179- 197. The
state's interest in the welfare and reform of religious institutions exclusively of the Hindus articulated
through Article 25 militates against both these conceptions of secularism.
39 For an examination of several layers of the state-religion relationship, see DE Smith, 'India as a
secular state', in Bhargava, Secularism and its Critics; and Smith, India as a Secular State, Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1963. For a critical appraisal of Smith, see M Galanter, 'Secularism
East and West'. For a refreshing analysis of the role of religion in the domain of the economy, see B
Harriss-White, India Working, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003 and for a comparative
view of the role of religious and secular institutions in India and America, see R Archer, 'American
communalism and Indian secularism', EPW, 10 April 1999. J Chiriyankandath, 'Creating a secular state
in a religious country: the debate in the Indian constituent assembly', Commonwealth& Comparative
Politics, 38(2), 2000, pp 1-24, employs the term 'deliberate ambiguity' to explain the co-existing
character of religion and secularism in the Indian constitution.
40 'Much of the upper-caste effort in reforming caste was, and still remains, motivated by the desire to
consolidate Hinduism. The idea was that as the lowest castes became politically conscious, they would
dissociate themselves from Hinduism, if it did not reform itself.' P Mehta, The Burden of Democracy,
Delhi: Penguin Books India, 2003, p 58.
41 P Mehta, 'Why the BJP iS calm: what would a Hindu state do that the secular state has not done
already?', The Telegraph, 4 March 2004, emphasis added.
43 P Singh, 'Akali agitation: the growing separatist trend', EPW, 4 February 1984, pp 195-196.
44 A Alam, 'Secularism in India: a critique of the current discourse', in P Brass & A Vanaik (eds),
Competing Nationalisms in South Asia, New Delhi: Orient Longman, 2002, p 95. For a review of this,
see P Singh, 'Political economy of nationalism: minority left and minority nationalisms vs mainstream
left and majority nationalism in India', InternationalJournal of Punjab Studies, 9(2), 2002, pp 287 - 298.
45 Ibid, p 101.
46 Ibid, p 100. The Bose article he cites is Sumantra Bose, 'Hindu nationalism and the crisis of the Indian
state: a theoretical perspective', in Sugata Bose & A Jalal (eds), Nationalism, Democracy and
Development, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998. An analysis of Operation Bluestar, the Indian
army operation at the Golden Temple at Amritsar, and its aftermath would stretch the scope of this
paper too far but it might be worth pondering over whether it marked a shift from an assimilationist
approach towards the Sikhs to a confrontational or even selective liquidationist approach in the 1980s
and 1990s. For an examination of how the policy of state power the Sikhs had to confront has
determined the cycles of violence and non-violence in their history, see P Singh, 'Violence and non-
violence in the Sikh struggle for survival and political power', paper submitted to the Annual
Conference of the British Association for the Study of Religions, Harriss Manchester College, Oxford,
September 2004.
47 K Ilaiah, 'Cow and culture', The Hindu, 25 October 2002.
48 K Ilaiah, Buffalo Nationalism: A Critique of Spiritual Fascism, Kolkata: Samya, 2004, passim.
49 Smith, India as a Secular State, p 489.
50 Mehta, 'Why the BJP is calm'.
51 See cPi (M), Subverting the Constitution, pp 18-19.
53 D Lelyveld, 'Words as deeds: Gandhi and language', in Brass & Vanaik, Competing Nationalisms in
South Asia, p 181.
924

54 Nehru expressed his helplessness to protect Urdu from the onslaught of the Hindi lobby. He said in a
speech in 1948, 'if my colleagues do not agree, I can not help it'. Quoted in M Hasan, Legacy of a
Divided Nation: India's Muslims since Independence,London: Hurst, 1997, p 159.
55 Figures from S Saxena, 'Language and the nationality question' in Rao, Symphony of Freedom, p 292.
56 Ibid. For a review of this, see Singh, 'Political economy of nationalism'. It is worth adding here that not
only the tribal languages but even Braj, Avadhi and Maithili were also included in the Hindi fold.
Avadhi, Braj and Maithili have their own distinctive character but have been relegated to the status of
dialects of Hindi by privileging 'Khari Boli' as the official Hindi. What greater irony could there be
than that Braj, which was a Bhasha (language), should become a boli (dialect) of the Khari Boli. There
are strong voices of protest against this unfair denial of the status of language from many linguistic
groups in North India, the area characterised as the Hindi region. Perhaps the denial of the linguistic
diversity of North India was to foster a homogenous linguistic identity among the Hindus there. I owe
this point to Prof Satya Pal Gautam of the Philosophy Department at Punjab University, Chandigarh.
Paul Brass, Language, Religion and Politics in North India, has provided an excellent account of how
the struggle of the Maithili speakers to get constitutional recognition for their language was defeated
by the Hindi nationalists. He points out that some Maithili speakers used the term 'Hindi imperialism'
to decry the Hindi nationalists (p 113). According to Brass, 'A Maithili "devotee" put it, "the wolf of
Hindi wants to swallow the whole of the language of north Bihar"' (p 70). Brass has also discussed,
though in less detail, the role of the Hindi movement in denying constitutional recognition of the
Bhojpuri and Magahi languages.
58 CAD, Vol VII, 5 November 1948, p 235.
60 Ibid, p 274. It is another unfortunate coincidence that one is forced to observe that in contemporary
India the strongest regional blocs of support for Hindutva forces come from North India and Gujarat.
61 A Rai, Hindi Nationalism, Delhi: Orient Longman, 2002, p 109.
62 Ibid, p 90.
64 Ibid, pp 284-285. See also Rai, Hindi Nationalism, for his comments on the Indian socialist leader
Ram Manohar Lohia's Angrezi Hatao (Remove English) agitation of the 1960s (p 117). Brass,
Language, Religion and Politics in North India, also discusses the proximity of ssP (the Socialists) and
Jan Sangh as proponents of Hindi in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar (p 271). The shared sentiment of Hindi
chauvinism among Hindu nationalists and some North Indian socialists in that period could be a clue
to understanding the seemingly paradoxical behaviour of some Indian socialists openly aligning with
Hindutva forces in India in the past decade and a half. Some Indian Gandhians also get roped into this
shared space of Hindi enthusiasts opposing 'Western' English.
65 S Vedalankar, The Development of Hindi Prose Literature in the Early Nineteenth Century (1800-1856
AD), Allahabad: Lokbharti, 1969.
66 Rai, Hindi Nationalism, p 52. See also Vedalankar, The Development of Hindi Prose Literature.
67 Rai, Hindi Nationalism, p 53.
68 SK Chatterji, Indo-Aryan and Hindi, Calcutta: Firma KS Mukhopadhyay, 1960, p 241.
69 Brass, Language, Religion and Politics in North India, p 186.
70 K Kumar, The Political Agenda of Education, Delhi: Sage, 1991, p 128.
72 Rai, Hindi Nationalism, p 77.
73 Quoted by Austin, The Indian Constitution, p 283.
74 I tested some of these ideas on institutionalised communalism and racism first at the workshop on 1984
Anti-Sikh Pogroms organised jointly by the Centre for South Asian Studies, Coventry University and
the Association for Punjab Studies (UK) on 30 October 2004 at Coventry University. I am thankful to
the workshop participants and especially to Vrinda Grover and Urvashi Butalia for their very useful
reactions and comments.
75 For an early attempt to examine institutionalised communalism in the media in the context of the
Punjab crisis in the 1980s, see P Singh, 'Role of media', in A Singh, Punjab in Indian Politics; P Singh,
'Punjab and the government media', EPW, 12 January 1985; and Singh, 'AIR and Doordarshan coverage
of Punjab after the army action', EPW, 8 September 1984. Vrinda Grover provides a useful contribution
towards examining institutionalised communalism in the police and judiciary. V Grover, 'Prejudice
and democracy: law, police and anti-Sikh massacre, 1984', paper presented at the Workshop on 1984
anti-Sikh Pogroms, Coventry, 30 October 2004. B Cossman and R Kapur are also taking steps in this
direction. See especially their excellent chapter 2, 'The Supreme Court Hindutva judgements', in
Cossman & Kapur, Secularism's Last Sigh? Hindutva and the (Mis)Rule of Law, Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 2001.
925

PRITAM SINGH
Acknowledgements
A first attempt at articulating the idea behind this paper was made at two
seminars at St Anthony's College and Balliol College, Oxford some years
ago. Thanks to Gowhar Rizvi and Amitabh Mattu, the organisers of these
seminars, respectively, for the opportunity to present my ideas there. Thanks
also to Tapan Raychaudhury for a discussion on some aspects of the issues
covered in the paper. Rohini Banaji encouraged me to write the paper,
circulated its first draft among the members of Insaniyat, a Mumbai-based
organisation and provided feedback. Robin Archer, Rochana Bajpai, James
Chiriyankandath, Meena Dhanda, Satya Pal Gautam, Hardeep Gill, Ben
Rogaly, Tanya Singh and Rajeswari Sunder Rajan gave very valuable
comments on the later versions of the paper. I have benefited also from
several general discussions with Jairus Banaji, Barbara Harriss-White and
Iftikhar Malik. The staff at the India Institute Library, Oxford provided
generous support. Shahid Qadir showed keen interest in the paper and acted
as a catalyst in its completion. Thanks to all of them. Responsibility for the
views expressed and any errors is entirely mine.
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Some other members of the Constituent Assembly went even further in

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to introduce uniform labour welfare measures (as proposed by Jagjivan Ram)

Another Sikh representative Bhupinder Singh Mann (spelt wrongly in the

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Article 25. Freedom of conscience andfree profession, practice andpropagation

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Explanation II above reflects a Hindu assimilationist perspective towards the

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It is necessary to mention here that many other statements by Gandhi and

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If your well-being you really want,

The Constituent Assembly members who were Hindi extremists were,

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The third component of the Hindu bias in the constitutional provision on

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of these institutions.75 Examining Hindu bias in the Indian constitution is an

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