The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh on Thursday said that the inclusion of the words “secular” and “socialist” in the Preamble to the Constitution should be reviewed, reported PTI.

“The words were added during [the] Emergency, when fundamental rights were suspended, Parliament did not function, and the judiciary became lame,” said RSS General Secretary Dattatreya Hosabale.

He added: “So, whether they should remain in the Preamble should be considered. The Preamble is eternal. Are the thoughts of socialism as an ideology eternal for India?”

The RSS is the parent organisation of the Bharatiya Janata Party.

Hosabale made the statements while speaking at an event marking 50 years since the Emergency was declared by former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s government in 1975.

Speaking about the “several injustices” meted out during the Emergency, the RSS general secretary demanded an apology from the Congress for the “draconian” actions, The Hindu reported.

Hosabale stated that more than one lakh persons were jailed during the period, including 250 journalists. He also said that the then-government had violated fundamental rights by forcibly sterilising more than 60 lakh persons.

The Congress criticised Hosabale’s remarks, saying “the RSS-BJP’s very ideology stands in direct opposition to the Indian Constitution”.

The party alleged that the remarks were not merely a suggestion, but “a deliberate assault on the soul of our Constitution”.

“It is part of a long-standing conspiracy to dismantle Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar’s vision for a just, inclusive and democratic India – something the RSS-BJP has always been plotting,” the party stated.

The words “socialist” and “secular” were not part of the Constitution adopted in 1950 and were added in 1976 through the 42nd constitutional amendment.

In November, the Supreme Court rejected a batch of petitions seeking the deletion of the two terms from the Preamble to the Constitution. The court said there was no legitimate justification for challenging the constitutional amendment nearly 44 years later.

In 2015, a controversy erupted after the BJP-led Union government’s newspaper advertisements on Republic Day featured a Preamble with the two words omitted.

In September 2023, Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury claimed that the two words were missing from the Preamble in the copies of the Constitution distributed to the MPs in the new Parliament building.