How Jayaprakash Narayan, hero for the Sangh, pushed for ‘socialist’ to be added to the Constitution

Jayaprakash Narayan, popularly known as JP or Lok Nayak, is held in high esteem by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and its affiliates. After all, he played a key role in mainstreaming these Hindutva organisations in the mid-1970s when they were treated as political pariahs. But do these Hindutva advocates know that JP was the original force behind including the word “socialist” in the ​Preamble of the Constitution – a word whose deletion from the document they have frequently demanded?

The latest Hindutva leader to call for the terms “secular” and “socialist” in the Preamble to be reviewed was RSS General Secretary Dattatreya Hosabale. These terms, he said in a speech on June 27, were added to the Constitution through an amendment during the Emergency in 1976 when “Parliament did not function, and the judiciary became lame”.

Ironically, the idea of introducing the word “socialist” into the Constitution had been championed by JP – who is regarded with admiration by the Sangh because he, perhaps unwittingly, offered it a path to rehabilitation from the contempt it had faced because the role it was seen to have played in the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi in 1948.

When JP and others formed the Janata Party to stand against the excesses of Prime Minister Indira...

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