As India observes the death anniversary of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar on December 6, a historical debate from the Constituent Assembly resurfaces with contemporary relevance. This debate centred on a proposal to formally embed the words 'secular' and 'socialist' into the very fabric of the nation's founding document. The move was ultimately rejected, with Ambedkar, the chairman of the Drafting Committee, playing a pivotal role in the decision.
The 1948 Amendment Proposal by K.T. Shah
On November 15, 1948, Constituent Assembly member K.T. Shah, a trained economist and socialist, moved a significant amendment to Article 1 of the draft Constitution. He proposed that the article should read: "India shall be a Secular, Federal, Socialist Union of States." Shah argued that explicitly stating the secular character of the state was necessary to prevent any "misunderstanding or misapprehension," especially in light of the tragic communal violence witnessed during Partition.
Regarding the term 'socialist,' Shah clarified that he envisioned a state ensuring "equal justice and equal opportunity for everybody," where each citizen contributes to their maximum capacity and receives what is needed for a decent, civilised existence. He candidly admitted, however, that India at that moment was "anything but Socialist."
Dr. Ambedkar's Decisive Opposition
Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, whose 69th death anniversary is marked on December 6, 2025, led the opposition to this amendment. In his response, he focused his critique squarely on the proposal to include the word 'socialist,' while notably not addressing the term 'secular' at all during the debate.
Ambedkar presented a foundational philosophical argument. He stated that a constitution is merely a mechanism for regulating the organs of the State, not a tool to install a particular policy or social organisation in perpetuity. "If you state in the Constitution that the social organisation of the State shall take a particular form, you are, in my judgment, taking away the liberty of the people to decide what should be the social organisation in which they wish to live," he asserted.
He believed that while socialism might be favoured by the majority at that time, future generations might devise a better system. Therefore, locking in a specific ideology in the Constitution would undermine democratic choice. He famously dismissed the amendment as "superfluous," pointing to the Directive Principles of State Policy already enshrined in the document, which he argued contained socialist-oriented goals.
The Vote and a Lasting Silence on 'Secular'
Socialist member H.V. Kamath supported Ambedkar's view, suggesting that such descriptive words, if needed, belonged in the Preamble, not in Article 1 which dealt with territory and jurisdiction. Following these arguments, Shah's amendment was put to a vote and rejected by the Assembly.
A striking detail of this short debate is that the word "secular" was not discussed or debated by anyone opposing the amendment. While Ambedkar and others gave detailed reasons for opposing 'socialist' and 'federal,' the proposal for 'secular' was left unaddressed. Writer Anand Teltumbde, in his biography of Ambedkar, suggests a possible reason: Ambedkar may have avoided the topic because he could not apply the same pragmatic argument he used for socialism, and perhaps he believed secularism involved more than just granting religious freedoms.
This historical episode gains modern context from recent calls by some political figures, including RSS general secretary Dattatreya Hosabale in June 2025, for a debate on removing the words 'secular' and 'socialist' from the Preamble. These words were added much later, during the Emergency in 1976 via the 42nd Amendment, reigniting discussions that trace their roots back to Ambedkar's principled stand in 1948.
