Who is the real saviour of our Constitution: RSS or Congress?

The RSS has played a key role in restoring democracy, despite repression.

(RSSFACTS is a column that demystifies the functioning, organisational structure and ideology of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.)

It couldn’t have been more ironic. The Congress Party has launched a fresh round of attacks on the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) for allegedly deriding the Constitution. The fact of the matter is that the very first amendment to the Constitution of India was carried out by Congress’ interim government even before the first general elections were held. One of the key objectives of this amendment was to curtail ‘freedom of speech’.

What happened in this regard needs to be revisited, as it can help one understand who the real savior of the Constitution is.

Before we delve deeper into the First Amendment to the Indian Constitution, it may be recalled that Congress used Article 356 in 1959 to dismiss a democratically elected, non-Congress state government in Kerala, imposing President’s Rule there.

During Indira Gandhi’s tenure as Prime Minister, President’s rule was imposed 35 times in the states that were ruled by non-Congress parties. It was a blatant misuse of Article 356.

In 1975, Congress imposed emergency and took away fundamental rights of the citizens of the Country. The opposition leaders and their party workers were sent to jail.

In fact, it was the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) led underground movement that led to restoration of democracy in the country. At least 87 RSS workers sacrificed their lives fighting against the Emergency (a list with names and details is available in ‘The People Vs Emergency: A saga of struggle’ by PG Sahasrabuddhe and Manikchandra Vajpayee). Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was an RSS Pracharak at that time, played an important role in this underground movement where RSS and Bharatiya Jana Sangh(the predecessor of BJP) provided the shock troops on the ground when all other non-Congress outfits had lost the steam.

As Indira Gandhi had banned the RSS and also censored the Indian media, it was foreign media that played an important role in telling the world about Indian Constitution was pummelled by a dictatorial Congress and how the RSS and BJS were on the forefront of this battle for saving Indian democracy and protecting the Constitution.

The Economist wrote on January 24, 1976, in an article titled ‘Yes there is an Underground’, “In formal terms, the underground is an alliance of four opposition parties: The Jana Sangh (the RSS’ political wing), the socialist party, the breakaway fraction of the Congress party and the Lok Dal. The shock troops of the movement come largely from the Jana Sangh and its affiliate RSS, which claim a combined membership of 10m (of whom 80,000, including 6,000 full-time party workers, are in prison).”

First Amendment

An RSS inspired weekly Organiser was publishing reports critical of Nehru in 1950. An upset Nehru got a pre-censorship order passed on March 2, 1950.

This order made it mandatory for ‘Organiser’ to submit all content related to communal issues or Pakistan to the government for approval before publishing it. This gag order even covered cartoons! Organiser hit back with a scathing editorial on March 13, 1950. On April 10, 1950, the publication challenged the Nehru government’s order in the Supreme Court of India. The Nehru government lost this case (Brij Bhushan vs The State of Delhi) that has become a landmark in the Constitutional history of India. Stung by the judicial verdict Nehru decided to bring in the first amendment. And he pushed this amendment despite opposition from within the Congress ranks also. The amendment was enacted as a law in June 1951.

But it was preceded by 16 days of stormy debate both within the parliament and outside the parliament. During the parliamentary debate Syama Prasad Mookerjee, the founder of BJS led the opposition attack. Mookerji led the charge against Nehru on this issue as he said, “You can pass a law and say that the entire task of framing, interpreting and working the Constitution will be left in the hands of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, assisted by such people, whom he may desire to consult…You are treating this Constitution as a scrap of paper.”

Post-Emergency record of Congress on Constitution

The Congress’ track record on how it implemented the Constitution of India gets reflected through a number of controversial steps. In 1986, under the Prime Ministership of Rajiv Gandhi, the Parliament of India passed ‘The Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act, 1986’. It nullified the Supreme Court's judgment in the Shah Bano judgment. The SC judgement had provided alimony to an old and poor Muslim woman divorced by her husband. The Congress government had surrendered to Muslim hardliners who wanted to overturn the judgement of the Supreme Court in the Shah Bano case.

This same government also got upset about the way the media was reporting on the Bofors scandal. So, the Congress government decided to bring a draconian anti-defamation bill in 1988 but it had to withdraw the bill due to a strong backlash across the nation.

In 2014, the Congress led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government tried to introduce an ‘Anti-Communal Violence’ bill. The critics of the bill said that it violated the principle of federalism encroaching upon the rights of the states. A stiff opposition led by the BJP and a strong reaction from various sections of society on the ground forced the UPA to drop the bill.

Earlier RSSFACTS columns can be read here.