Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath's declaration that Hinduism is India's "national religion" and his standing palm-to-palm on one leg with Baba Ramdev after the announcement that a 501-page Hindu Constitution for an "Akhand Hindu Rashtra" (united Hindu nation) would be unveiled on February 2 at the Maha Kumbh to coincide with Basant Panchami has evoked concern among minorities.

This "Hindu Constitution" would be sent to the Union government because it was prepared by a 25-member committee of scholars who drew inspiration from the Ramayana, the teachings of Krishna in the Bhagwad Gita, the Manusmriti and Chanakya's Arthashastra.

Adityanath's declaration following a similar statement by the RSS Sarsanghchalak (chief) Mohan Bhagwat, that India won its true "independence" on the day the Ram Temple was "liberated" from foreign invaders (presumably Muslims) is again an incendiary statement because it implies that our hard-won independence from the British was of little importance. The statement equates Hinduism with nationalism, thereby insinuating that religious minorities like Muslims, Christians and Jews have hardly any voice in this Akhand Hindu Rashtra.

We have to read these statements side-by-side with those of the Allahabad high court judge, Justice Shekhar Yadav, who declared the wishes of the bahusankhya (majority) the true law and asked if Hindus could reform their laws by abolishing sati and child marriage, why could the "kathmullas" not reform their personal law?

The 50th CJI Dhananjaya Chandrachud noted that this putative judge had links with the RSS and VHP. Still, the government quickly cleared his file like that of Lekshmana Chandra Victoria Gowri while objecting to the elevation of Somasekhar Sundaresan to the Bombay High Court, John Sathyan to the Madras High Court and Saurabh Kirpal to the Delhi High Court. Sathyan and Sundaresan (who was finally sworn in as an additional judge last year) were seen as being critical of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Yogi Adityanath defended these seemingly indefensible utterances by saying the judge had uttered the truth, and when such judges spoke the "truth," action was taken against them. The good yogi apparently takes no interest in the Constitution because he has said that our founding fathers made the biggest blunder by declaring Bharat a secular state.

All these statements, which follow earlier reported statements of a Karnataka high court judge, Justice V Srishananda, who called a Muslim majority area of Bangalore "Pakistan," spell out the fact that, like it or not, we live in a Hindu majority nation. A Madras high court judge, L Victoria Gowri, referred to Muslims as "green terror" and Christians as "white terror," but was sworn in as a high court judge even as her elevation was being challenged in the Supreme Court.

Yogi Adityanath, Justices Shekhar Yadav, L Victoria Gowri and V Srishananda have taken an oath to uphold the Constitution, which is alarming because their utterances contradict their oath.

These Hindutva protagonists assert that Indira Gandhi inserted the words "secular, socialist" in the preamble through the 42nd amendment in 1975. They argue that the original preamble enacted did not carry the words "secular, socialist," which can be removed, as it was inserted without the consent of the majority during the Emergency.

Constitutions are always written in generalised terms, which cannot visualise changing scenarios that are yet to unfold in the future. However, certain parts of the Constitution are set in stone and cannot be changed despite the views of those who espouse the majoritarian agenda. Volume VII of the Constituent Assembly Debates records that Purnima Banerji objected to any reference to God being made in the preamble as sought by HV Kamath. She said that references to God should not be included in the Constitution since that would make the sacred dependent on the vagaries of democratic voting. She requested Kamath "not to put us to the embarrassment of having to vote upon god."

Yet Brajeshwar Prasad from Bihar moved that the first sentence of the preamble begin as follows: "We the people of India, having resolved to constitute India into a secular cooperative commonwealth to establish a socialist order and to secure to all its citizens…." because he said this word "secular" was dear to India's national leaders and its inclusion in the preamble would tone up the morale of the minorities as well as prevent disorderly activity."

KM Munshi said, "We are a people of deeply religious moorings ... but our state could not possibly have a state religion, nor could a rigid line be drawn between the state and the church as in the US." Adityanath, Mohan Bhagwat and even high court judges like Shekhar Yadav and L Victoria Gowri violate the founding fathers' vision of a secular state.

Two Constitutions
Every nation can have just one Constitution. Hence, replacing this Constitution with a "Hindu Constitution" is tantamount to betraying the wishes of the founding fathers of this Republic, who clearly visualised this country as a beacon of secularism where even non-Hindus could occupy top Constitutional posts such as the President, Prime Minister, or Chief Justice of India.

In fact, we have had non-Hindu heads of state and even a Muslim, Sikh and Parsi CJI. Secularism is the seed of the "basic structure" doctrine formulated by the Supreme Court in the Keshavananda Bharati case, where the judges laid down that Parliament could not tamper with the basic structure of the Constitution, although other parts were amenable to amendment.

The Vice President of India, Jagdeep Dhankar, took umbrage at the Supreme Court formulating this "basic structure" doctrine by saying the judiciary had overstepped its laxman rekha or boundary by preventing the Parliament from amending the Constitution. He hinted that when it enjoyed an absolute majority, Parliament could amend any part of the Constitution, including, perhaps, its preamble, which forms part of the "basic structure."

This is a dangerous doctrine because, as Justice Shekhar Yadav has opined, this will lead to the rule of the majority or "bahusankhya," which contradicts the guarantee enshrined in Article 14 of the Constitution that the state will not discriminate between its citizens or deny them the equal protection of the law, irrespective of their caste, religion, language, gender, domicile, or other criterion. Denying minorities equal rights becomes an offence in law, and the state is bound to make recompense.

The announcement of the 501-page Hindu Constitution that allegedly disenfranchises Muslims and Christians because they will not be allowed to contest elections runs contrary to fundamental human rights and the 1981 United Nations' "Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief" which declares that discrimination based on religion is a gross violation of human rights because the religion of the majority is equated with nationalism.

Yogi Adityanath has further clarified that the aim of these groups is to turn India into an "Akhand Hindu Rashtra" by 2035, so the laws will be inspired by the values of the Ramayana, the Bhagwad Gita, the Manusmriti, and Chanakya's Arthashastra, apart from other Hindu texts. The values of the Manusmriti, which uphold casteism and the fact that women and shudras should not enter temples or recite the Vedas, are antithetical to the Constitution.

These Hindutva protagonists have justified an Akhand Hindu Rashtra by saying there were 126 Christian nations and 57 Muslim nations with one Jewish country (Israel). It was a shame that a country with 126 crore Hindus had not yet declared itself an "Akhand Hindu Rashtra."

The point is that such inflammatory utterances attract the criminal provisions of the new penal law, apart from violating the Constitution, which is the guiding beacon of Indian democracy. Today, this democracy lies in tatters due to the inflammatory statements of these Constitutional dignitaries.