The Congress party’s newfound obsession with “saving the Constitution” might have been mildly amusing if it weren’t so tragically hypocritical. The very party that trampled on India’s constitutional spirit time and again—from suppressing free speech during the Emergency to distorting the Constitution’s Preamble with ideologically loaded insertions—now claims to be its saviour. One might ask: Which Constitution is the Congress referring to—the one drafted by Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, or the one mutilated by Indira Gandhi during her dictatorial Emergency in 1976?
Let’s get a basic fact straight: the words “secular” and “socialist” were never part of the original Preamble to the Indian Constitution. Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, the principal architect of the Constitution, deliberately refrained from inserting these terms explicitly. He believed the values of religious neutrality and social justice were already embedded within various articles and institutional mechanisms of the Constitution.
Yet in 1976, during one of India’s darkest chapters—the Emergency—Indira Gandhi amended the Constitution (42nd Amendment), forcibly inserting these two words into the Preamble. This wasn’t a reflection of national consensus, but the product of an authoritarian regime trying to impose ideological control. Parliament was a rubber stamp, opposition voices were jailed, the media were muzzled, and civil liberties were suspended.
To pretend that these insertions are foundational principles rather than emergency-era distortions is not only intellectually dishonest, it is also a betrayal of Ambedkar’s original vision.
Even more tragic is the silence and complicity of today’s Dalit leaders, many of whom claim to be followers of Ambedkar. The irony couldn’t be starker. These very leaders continue to remain loyal to a party that actively sabotaged Ambedkar’s rise in post-independence India.
It is well documented that Jawaharlal Nehru repeatedly opposed Ambedkar, denied him electoral opportunities, and even attempted to block his entry into Parliament. He was eventually brought into the Constituent Assembly from Bengal under pressure, and later inducted into the Cabinet only after Gandhi’s insistence.
And yet, today’s Dalit leaders, while waving Ambedkar’s photo during elections, are content playing subservient roles in a party that humiliated their tallest icon. Their silence is bought with Rajya Sabha seats and party posts, not earned by standing up for the truth Ambedkar stood for.
When the current Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge thunders about protecting the Constitution, one can’t help but wonder—is he even allowed to make decisions within his party?
The farcical internal elections of the Congress, where Kharge contested against a far more articulate and ideologically sound Shashi Tharoor, were a stage-managed affair. Everyone in the political class knows who holds the real reins—Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, and Priyanka Gandhi. Kharge himself admitted as much when he said that the “high command” takes the final call.
Much like his predecessor Manmohan Singh—a world-renowned economist and a man of personal integrity—Kharge is reduced to a ceremonial puppet who defers to a dynastic family. And this, somehow, is the party that believes it is fighting for democracy?
Let’s also remember that the same Congress party that claims to uphold secularism has practiced the most divisive and dangerous form of vote-bank politics. From the Shah Bano case, where the party overturned a Supreme Court judgment to appease fundamentalist clergy, to Rajiv Gandhi’s unlocking of the Babri Masjid gates, Congress’s record on secularism reeks of political opportunism.
They have never upheld secularism as neutrality—they have used it as code for minority appeasement and Hindu alienation. No wonder the Congress manifesto barely mentions the word “Hindu” except in terms of “Hindutva extremism”, but goes out of its way to promise benefits for minorities, especially Muslims. What kind of constitutional equality is that?
The greatest betrayal, however, is not ideological—it is moral and national. When Sonia Gandhi, a woman of foreign origin, was on the cusp of being named Prime Minister in 2004, several Congress leaders—including Sharad Pawar—raised red flags. They warned of the long-term implications of having someone born outside India holding India’s highest executive office.
Yet, within years, those same leaders forgot their conscience and chose convenience over conviction. Today, Pawar is an ally again, willing to cozy up to the same family he once warned us about.
And Manmohan Singh, despite all his academic accolades, presided over a regime where policy was outsourced to a “National Advisory Council” chaired by Sonia Gandhi, and key decisions were vetted not in Cabinet but in drawing rooms.
What was that if not mortgaging national sovereignty to preserve dynastic power?
It is high time India reclaimed Dr. Ambedkar’s Constitution, not Indira Gandhi’s edited (read as amended) version, nor Nehru’s selectively interpreted socialism. The original Constitution envisioned equality before law, not preferential appeasement. It protected freedom of belief, not enforced pseudo-secularism. It promoted merit-based opportunity, not dynastic entitlement.
The Congress party, with its long record of constitutional distortions and democratic hypocrisies, has no moral standing to lecture the nation on what Ambedkar stood for. If anything, it is the party most responsible for betraying his legacy.
Let the nation remember this: Ambedkar gave us the Constitution. Indira Gandhi tampered with it. Sonia Gandhi controlled it. Rahul Gandhi misreads it. And Mallikarjun Kharge parrots it.
If we are to defend the Constitution, we must first liberate it from Congress.
