On the 75th year of independence, India has just celebrated the 72nd anniversary of her becoming a Republic. ‘We, the people of India’ will naturally look back to the sagas of the struggle waged by our predecessors for the liberation of this great country. The foundation of the Republic and the Constitution is the outcome of those immense struggles and sacrifices. Various streams of thoughts and paths of resistance came together around the common cause of freedom. The fight was unique and consistent, forcing the mighty British imperialism to pack up and return.
The colonial oppressors used the venomous weapon of ‘divide and rule’ to sustain their unwanted hegemony over the freedom-loving people of India. Religious fundamentalism was used by them as a tool to meet their ends. Since those days, India's secular values came under attack from the forces of religious fundamentalism and obscurantism. As a result, the country was divided into two with the support of the imperialist masters.
India’s commitment to democracy, secularism, sovereignty and socialism are not at all accidental. It is the sum and substance of a great struggle against a foreign rule which lasted for about 190 years. A free and prosperous India was the promise of the freedom movement. At the call of that promise people fought and won the battle.
Even after this Republic Day, the confrontation between religious fundamentalism and secular democracy remains the decisive factor in national life. The RSS-controlled BJP that rules the country has only superficial allegiance to the founding principles of the Republic. Time and again it has spit venom against the cardinal ideas of the Constitution.
According to them, secularism is a western concept, democracy is unwanted, and socialism is alien. All their programme and policies are moulded in the framework of this philosophy of hatred.
