The act of a state minister who insulted and insulted the Constitution of India in public is undemocratic. In this country, where a common citizen who insults the constitution of the country has a legal system of imprisonment for up to three years, the discussion of insulting the constitution does not end even though minister Saji Cherian, who openly insulted the same 'system' that he took oath of office on, bowed to the pressure and resigned. India is a country where it is perfectly legal to discuss the shortcomings of the constitution for the sake of academic interests. But to openly challenge the very essence of the Constitution, and deliberately include vulgar remarks such as that it was written by the British and so on, is it nothing but a breach of oath and a crime of treason?
How can Saji Cherian's obscenity be equated with the factual criticisms of the jurists? By which documents does Saji justify his contempt of the Constitution? Do people want to understand from the party's point of view that the communists have lost the common sense to recognize that criticism (rishaserashe) and insult (shiueha) are two? The legislature was a rare confluence of genius then alive in the country. The consequences of the minister's statement insulting all those architects of the Constitution, including Ambedkar, are not removed by a resignation. By supporting the minister in the first phase, the CPM is reiterating the party's stand in the 1950s. Even after the resignation, the minister will have to face legal action.
Legislature without lumps of coal
It was a realization that enabled Saji to criticize the Constitution blindly. Realization that not a single communist contributed behind this constitution. This realization is behind the comrades observing the first Republic Day as Black Day under the leadership of Comrade Sardar Gopalakrishnan. Sardar Gopalakrishnan, who was killed in an encounter with the police that day after burning the Indian flag and protesting the constitution, is a martyr of the party, according to the CPM's official documents. How can such a communist party not support Saji Cherian?
When even Muslim Leaguers and Hindu Mahasabhas can claim their contribution to the constitution, why has nobody discussed the contribution of communists yet? Meanwhile, the words 'constitution', 'constitutional values', 'constitutional principles', etc. are used interchangeably by the CPM. There are unbiased journalists in Kerala who establish themselves as the only group that upholds constitutional values! But what is reality? What is the relationship between CPM and constitutional values?
Manavendranatha Roy put forward the idea of Constituent Assembly in the days when he left communism and became human and spread humanism. To be exact, at the same time that Roy was hosting Veera Savarkar in Mumbai. A pertinent question is how many communists were there in our Constituent Assembly which had 389 members before partition and 296 after it. No Communist was elected to the House except for one insignificant member named Somnath Lahiri. Why is that? Apart from the use of the term 'communist' as a slur against some Islamists by nationalist members in the Constituent Assembly debates, there are no other communist contributions. (One can read from the debates that those who were accused of being communists swore that they are not like us.) PC Joshi, Danke and Ranadivya, who are the key members of the communists, are nowhere to be seen in the debates. Instead, they mocked the Constituent Assembly, of which Ambedkar and Shyamaprasad Mukherjee were members, as servants of the British. It is these shameless mobs who often attempt to hijack the very constitution they have so vehemently vilified and opposed, and when they fail, they are disgraced. Even today, IMS is their ideologue who declared that the democracy envisioned by the constitution should be defeated from within. Even when the RSS was not a force in comparison to the CPI, those who study history properly will know that staunch Hindu nationalists and RSS sympathizers contributed the most during the constitution-making process. And the great truth that our governing structure is made up of mostly anti-communist members.
Communists, Enemies of the Constitution
Babasaheb Ambedkar has clarified in the closing speech of the assembly why the communists were not brought closer to the constitution during its construction. Ambedkar has clearly stated why the Communists including the Chief Ministers of today hate the Constitution. We can understand this from the words of Ambedkar, the most prominent patriot who branded the communists as traitors.
'The haters of the Constitution are mainly of two groups, the Communist Party and the Socialist Party. Why do they hate the constitution? Is it because this is a bad constitution? I say no. Communists want a constitution based on the doctrine of the dictatorship of the workers. The reason they hate the Constitution is because it is rooted in parliamentary democracy. Socialists want two things. First, if they ever come to power, this constitution should give them the freedom to nationalize all private property without compensation. Secondly, they want that the fundamental rights enshrined in the Constitution should be abolished. If so, if their party fails to come to power (through democracy), they can use this unlimited freedom not only to criticize (the government) but also to overthrow the regime itself,' said Dr. Ambedkar said.
The Organizer and Constitutional Criticism
While the state is debating Saji Cherian's treasonous statement, the mainstream media is also trying to settle for swallowing the 'capsule' propagated by CPM cyber-militants that the RSS was also against the Constitution. They find validation for this green lie in an editorial in Organizer Weekly. A 1949 editorial in the Organizer is the only widely used piece of evidence to establish that the RSS was unconstitutional.
First, Organizer Weekly is not an RSS mouthpiece. The mouthpiece is a communist concept. Deshabhimani and People's Democracy are CPM mouthpieces as they are owned by the party and editorial-management duties are held by the party secretary or party nominated leaders. RSS itself has stated many times that the Organizer is not its mouthpiece. None of the RSS propagandists carry editorial and non-editorial duties of the organizer. In India, where there are thousands of pro-Left publications, with CPM leaders as editorial heads, the Organizer is the only national media run by Swayamsevaks. Moreover, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh does not need a mouthpiece to communicate with its Swayamsevaks.
The Organiser, like all other political publications, was a forum for the open criticism and opinion-suggestions which were active in the formative days of the Constitution. Those who wrote all these were KM Munshi, Gopalaswamy Iyengar, Rajagopalachari and Shyamaprasad Mukherjee who were members of the Legislative Assembly. However, the Organizer, like all other news publications, published articles that captured the spirit and meaning of the debates in the Legislative Assembly. At that time, the organizer was the Malayali A.R. Nair (father of Krishna Raj, later editor of the left-wing publication Economic and Political Weekly) was a staunch socialist and left-wing ideologue. He held the senior editorial charge of all the leading newspapers in India at that time and was the editor of the Organizer for barely one and a half to two years.
Those who insist that the Organizer and associated publications approach a subject as the Communist mouthpiece approaches a subject must understand that the Organizer then, and still does, make room for opposing views when approaching a subject. Communist-Socialist-Congress leaders and intellectuals (including MN Roy Mudalinghot, founder of the Communist Party of India) wrote extensively on the Organiser. How ridiculous it would be to interpret all their views as those of the RSS.
CPM leaders and journalists representing their newsrooms say that the 1949 constitution was criticized by the organizer in 1950. How can they be corrected? While accepting the argument that the Constitution was adopted in November 1949, if there is any criticism against the Constitution enacted on 26 January 1950, it is to be found in the Organizer's Republic Day Special Edition. The organizer must have celebrated India as a sovereign republic better than any other publication. The organizer editorial described the first Republic Day as the day when the dream of Purna Swaraj was fulfilled. K.R., who was one of the patriarchs of Indian journalism, described it as a day that every patriot should rejoice. An editorial written by Malkaniji lauded the new constitution. 'Omasaha Njaluuyahasara !', which includes Nehru and Patel as 'Jakaghachata Chhae Thaori Tathaathri' and a special page on 'Constitutional Architects' with pictures of Ambedkar and others. Some left-wing journalists and political leaders have been spreading false stories about the organizer, which came out on January 30, 1950, with the salacious headline. After India became a republic, after the constitution came into force, in which organizer issue is this reference?
It can be understood that even after January 26, 1950, communist publications such as Cross Roads and some Islamist publications continued to criticize the constitution. But the Organizer, in articles published subsequently, described our Constitution as the 'new memory of India'. While the 'organizer' was celebrating Republic Day, the CPI and its comrades were observing it as Black Day. If, even after 75 years of independence, the CPM still feels that the Constitution is nothing more than a spear and a wheel, they have their own traitorous forefathers to blame, not the RSS. Since the Communist Party and its publications celebrated Republic Day and Independence Day as black days, history will not approve if the RSS and pro-publications insist on doing the same. Otherwise, what a history for communist propagandists, eh?