It is for the people to collectively determine if the nation is secular, says J. Chelameswar New

“We have to look at all human beings as human beings and not by their cultural practices,” he said in his address on ‘Clamour for Removal of Secularism & Socialism: Whether Justified?’ as part of the lecture series organised by the Ernakulam Law College Old Students’ Association in Kochi on Saturday.

He said that it was the maturity level of the civil society that preserved or destroyed the Constitution. “Dropping one word and introducing another word are not going to make any difference. Let us be aware of why these words are there. It is ultimately we the people who make the nation,” he said.

He said that lawyers had the responsibility to ask the question to society on “whether we live in a country where you have no freedom of conscience or no freedom of liberty. That is the question, ultimately. This country is home to people of all parts of faith. The Constitution was created to provide a harmonious environment for all these people to live together,” he said.

He said that Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister, who drafted the Karachi Congress resolution, adopted socialism to destroy poverty and create a prosperous society. He and his colleagues had seen the Russian revolution and hoped that something good might happen.

“But the doctrine was abandoned by the Congress party itself in 1990 by then Prime Minister Narasimha Rao and Finance Minister Manmohan Singh. Without deleting the word socialism, they did everything to destroy the concept. I am not blaming them. Perhaps the survival of the nation was at stake unless they made a deviation from the doctrine,” he said.

K.M. Joseph, former Supreme Court judge, presided over the programme. P. Rajeeve, Minister for Law and Industries, was present.