Vice-President Jagdeep Dhankhar’s support for RSS General Secretary Dattatreya Hosabale’s call to remove the words “socialist”, “secular”, and “integrity” from the Preamble of the Constitution is not surprising. This idea has long been nurtured by sections of the BJP and the Sangh Parivar. Their core argument is that these words were inserted during the Emergency by the Indira Gandhi government and are, therefore, undemocratic and illegitimate. What they conveniently ignore is that the Janata Party government, which replaced the Emergency regime in 1977, thoroughly reviewed all Emergency-era decisions. It even brought in the landmark 44th Amendment, which removed “internal disturbance” as a ground for imposing Emergency and made........

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