From Dharma to Constitutional Reason: Is India Turning Back?
India’s constitutional journey can be understood as a movement from authority to reason, from inherited hierarchy to constitutional equality, and from unquestioned tradition to the right to question.
The Constitution did not seek to eliminate religion or faith. Instead, it sought to ensure that no particular religious doctrine became the governing principle of the Indian State.
This distinction is crucial today.
For centuries, Indian society was deeply influenced by the idea of dharma. Social duties, customs, religious authority, and inherited traditions often carried their own legitimacy. The individual was frequently expected to accept rather than question.
The makers of the Indian Constitution attempted a fundamental transformation.
The Constitution placed reason, individual liberty, equality, dignity, and the rule of law above religious authority. Sovereignty was transferred from kings, religious authorities, and social hierarchies to the people.
The citizen was no longer merely a follower of an established social order.
The citizen became the holder of constitutional rights.
That was one of the great transformations of modern India.
The Constitution did not abolish religion—it limited its political authority.
Indian Secularism: Freedom of Faith, Not Rule by Faith
Indian secularism was never intended to mean that religion must disappear from public life.
Indians remain free to believe, worship, and practise their faith.
But the State was not supposed to become the instrument of any one faith.
A constitutional State asks a fundamentally different question from a religious State.
Religion may ask:
“What does our tradition command?”
The Constitution asks:
“Is this consistent with equality, liberty, dignity, and fundamental rights?”
That difference is fundamental.
A democratic government must sometimes be able to say no, even when a majority demands yes. It must protect an individual even when society disapproves of that individual.
A constitutional democracy must also permit criticism—of religion, government, and tradition—because the right to question is an essential part of democracy.
The Return of Religion as Political Authority
The concern is not that Indians have become religious.
India has always been a deeply religious society, and there is nothing inherently wrong with faith.
The concern is whether religious identity is increasingly becoming a principal measure of political legitimacy.
When political debate revolves primarily around temples, religious symbols, historical grievances, religious identity, and the defence of a particular civilisation, important questions of governance can become secondary.
Questions such as:
- Where are the jobs?
- What is happening to farmers?
- Why do young people struggle to find secure employment?
- Why is education becoming inaccessible to many?
- Why do citizens face difficulties in obtaining justice?
- Why are public hospitals and government schools inadequate in many places?
- Why does inequality continue to grow?
These are not merely religious questions.
They are constitutional and governmental questions.
A government must ultimately be judged by how it governs—not simply by the religious identity it projects.
When Questioning Becomes Disloyalty
One of the most dangerous developments in any democracy occurs when questioning the government is portrayed as questioning the nation itself.
The Constitution deliberately created institutions that allow disagreement:
Parliament. Courts. Opposition parties. A free press. Peaceful protest. Independent constitutional bodies.
Democracy is not the celebration of agreement.
Democracy is the constitutional management of disagreement.
If citizens are encouraged to discuss religion but discouraged from questioning government policy, the balance between religion and citizenship begins to change.
If criticism of the government is treated as anti-national, while historical and religious controversies dominate public discourse, economic and social problems can receive inadequate attention.
Gradually, the citizen risks changing from an active participant in democracy into a spectator of political spectacle.
The RSS, BJP, and the Question of the Constitutional State
The ideological influence of the RSS and the political dominance of the BJP raise an important constitutional question.
The question is not whether members of any organisation have the right to hold religious or cultural beliefs. They certainly do.
The deeper question is:
Should a particular ideological conception of the nation become indistinguishable from the constitutional conception of India?
The Constitution does not define an Indian citizen according to religious faith.
It defines citizenship through constitutional law.
India belongs equally to:
- The believer and the non-believer
- Hindus
- Muslims
- Sikhs
- Christians
- Buddhists
- Jains
- Parsis
- And those who reject religion altogether
That is precisely why the Constitution is greater than any political organisation.
No political party, however powerful, and no cultural organisation, however influential, can legitimately replace the Constitution as the ultimate source of political authority.
From Scientific Temper to Unquestioned Belief
The constitutional vision of India was also closely connected with the idea of scientific temper.
Scientific temper does not mean that a person cannot have faith.
It means that public policy and public reasoning should remain open to:
- Evidence
- Questioning
- Rational examination
A modern democratic government cannot run an economy on mythology.
It cannot build hospitals through faith alone.
It cannot create employment through slogans.
It cannot solve poverty through religious symbolism.
Faith may give meaning to an individual’s life. Governance requires evidence.
A nation may require both—but they must not be confused.
Are We Returning to a Pre-Constitutional Mindset?
This is perhaps the most serious question.
India cannot literally return to the past. The Constitution remains supreme. Elections continue. Fundamental rights remain legally enforceable.
But constitutional democracy is more than constitutional text.
It is also a political culture.
If citizens gradually stop asking questions, if political loyalty becomes more important than public accountability, if religious identity becomes more important than citizenship, and if dissent is treated as betrayal, constitutional culture can weaken—even while the Constitution formally remains intact.
Democratic decline does not necessarily begin with the abolition of elections.
It can begin with something far more gradual:
The erosion of the habit of questioning.
The Real Issue Is Not Hinduism
This argument should not be misunderstood as an attack on Hinduism.
Hindu philosophical traditions are extraordinarily diverse, pluralistic, and intellectually rich. They include materialist, sceptical, devotional, rational, and philosophical traditions.
The Indian intellectual tradition has historically included vigorous disagreement.
The real issue is not religious belief itself.
The real issue is the conversion of religious belief into political authority.
The State must not tell citizens what to believe.
Equally, one citizen’s religious belief must not determine the constitutional rights of another citizen.
That is the constitutional bargain.
India’s Unfinished Constitutional Revolution
The makers of India’s Constitution attempted something extraordinarily ambitious.
They sought to create a modern democratic republic from a society marked by centuries of hierarchy, poverty, religious diversity, and social inequality.
They did not ask Indians to abandon their faith.
Instead, they asked citizens to accept something higher in public life:
Constitutional Morality
Constitutional morality means that even when our emotions, traditions, religious beliefs, or majoritarian instincts tell us one thing, we remain bound by:
- Equality
- Liberty
- Dignity
- The rule of law
That is the real dividing line between a constitutional republic and a State governed primarily by religious authority.
Conclusion: India Needs More Reason in Governance
India does not need less faith.
India needs:
- More reason in governance
- More accountability in politics
- More evidence in public policy
- More tolerance for dissent
- Greater fidelity to the Constitution
The danger is not that India is becoming religious.
India has always been religious.
The deeper danger is that religion may once again become a substitute for reason in the political sphere.
If that happens, India may not formally abandon the Constitution.
But it could gradually move away from the constitutional spirit that transformed India from a society largely governed by inherited authority into a republic governed by the rights of its citizens.
So the question before India is not simply:
“Dharma or secularism?”
The question is much deeper: