CDS (I) 2022 General Knowledge · Question 47 of 120

Correct — B, Radical Socialism. The other three labels each name a strand that Indian political thought has actually produced and argued over. Democratic socialism is the description India applies to itself: the Preamble was amended to read Sovereign Socialist Secular Democratic Republic by the Forty-second Amendment of 1976, and the socialism meant there has always been understood as one pursued through parliamentary and constitutional means rather than revolution. Nehruvian socialism is the strand named for Jawaharlal Nehru — a mixed economy, five-year planning and a public sector holding the commanding heights, arrived at through the ballot box. Communitarian socialism is the Gandhian line, working from the village community, trusteeship and Sarvodaya rather than from state ownership. Radical socialism carries no such Indian address; it is a general category of Western political vocabulary for revolutionary or far-left socialism, and no Indian school goes by that name.

• (a)Democratic Socialism — Democratic socialism is the most firmly Indian of the four. It is the reading given to the word socialist that the Forty-second Amendment inserted into the Preamble in 1976, and it names the tradition of the Congress Socialist Party and the socialist parties that grew out of it.
• (c)Communitarian Socialism — Communitarian socialism is the Gandhian strand, which locates the unit of economic life in the village community and works through trusteeship, decentralised production and the Sarvodaya and Bhoodan movements rather than through the state.
• (d)Nehruvian Socialism — Nehruvian socialism is named after an Indian leader and describes an Indian policy regime — planned industrialisation, a large public sector and a mixed economy pursued within a parliamentary democracy.

Indian socialism is not one doctrine but a family of them, and what they share is a commitment to reducing inequality by means that stop short of a one-party revolutionary state. The constitutional expression of that commitment is the word socialist in the Preamble, inserted by the Forty-second Amendment in 1976 in place of the original Sovereign Democratic Republic, and read alongside the Directive Principles in Part IV on the distribution of material resources and the prevention of concentrated wealth.

This is a classification item, and it should be handled honestly. The typology of Indian socialism into democratic, communitarian and Nehruvian strands comes from textbook writing on Indian political thought rather than from any single authoritative document, so the safe route is elimination rather than recall of a list. Ask of each label whether it points to an identifiable Indian person, party, policy or constitutional text. Democratic socialism points to the Preamble and to the socialist parties; Nehruvian socialism points to Nehru and the planning era; communitarian socialism points to the Gandhian and Sarvodaya tradition. Radical socialism points to nothing in particular in India, and that is what makes it the answer. One near-miss worth clearing up: M.N. Roy did use the word radical, but for the Radical Democratic Party and for the philosophy he called radical humanism, which he developed after the Second World War as he moved away from orthodox Marxism. That is a different label and a different doctrine, and it is not what the option says.

• The word SOCIALIST was inserted into the Preamble by the Constitution (Forty-second Amendment) Act, 1976, substituting SOVEREIGN SOCIALIST SECULAR DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC for SOVEREIGN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC, with effect from 3 January 1977.
• Nehruvian socialism refers to the planned mixed economy pursued after Independence, with a large public sector, inside a parliamentary democracy.
• The communitarian strand is the Gandhian one, built on the village community, trusteeship and the Sarvodaya and Bhoodan movements.
• The Congress Socialist Party was founded in 1934 and led by figures such as Acharya Narendra Dev, Jayaprakash Narayan and Minoo Masani.
• M.N. Roy's Radical Democratic Party and his post-war philosophy of radical humanism are the nearest Indian use of the word radical, and both mark a move away from Marxism rather than a school of socialism.

• Reading radical as an Indian label because of M.N. Roy's Radical Democratic Party — his doctrine was radical humanism, not radical socialism.
• Assuming the word socialist was in the Preamble from 1950; it was added in 1976.
• Treating communitarian socialism as a foreign import when it is the Gandhian strand.

As an odd-one-out among named strands of Indian thought, or through the Preamble amendment and the parties and leaders associated with Indian socialism.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The word SOCIALIST was added to the Preamble of the Constitution of India by which amendment?

  • (a)The Twenty-fourth Amendment
  • (b)The Forty-second Amendment
  • (c)The Forty-fourth Amendment
  • (d)The Fifty-second Amendment

  Answer(b) The Forty-second Amendment, 1976 — it substituted Sovereign Socialist Secular Democratic Republic for Sovereign Democratic Republic with effect from 3 January 1977.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The philosophy of radical humanism in Indian political thought is associated with

  • (a)Jayaprakash Narayan
  • (b)M.N. Roy
  • (c)Ram Manohar Lohia
  • (d)Acharya Narendra Dev

  Answer(b) M.N. Roy — he turned to radical humanism after the Second World War, moving away from orthodox Marxism.