The preamble of Indian Constitution does a good job of describing how people of India welcomed this land in the mid 20th century. Except it's a mouthful for s-worded adjectives, something every writer despises. But in its defence, it was only sometimes the case. As the early snaps would agree, there were days when the only adjective was 'sovereign'. The other, secular and socialist, were added using several amendments culminating in 1975. And needless to say, these terms have guided the political compass throughout the later part of the century.
Now that we are as old to the amendments as they were to the constitution, a question on its impact remains. The Idea of secularity, which commands a independence of the state and the religion, seems a streched affair in India. We are a country where even the minority hold pious beliefs close to their heart. So, in India the, unbiasedness is maintained by an equal involvement of the state in all religions. And, thus has there been a long struggle to understand the equitable ratio.
With socialist, we have a greater agreement but a bigger problem. The long standing argument against socialism it that it punishes the profit pockets for feeding the unprivileged. And in doing so, it hinders the will of the capital makers. So, for countries unlike the Nordic states, which had vast resources, socialism often led to declining development. A remarkable example is that Japan and India both began their industrial revolution toward the late 60s. Within 3 decades, Japan was amongst the leading economies, a result India dreams of achieving. Infact, the problems of Indians aggressive nationalisation campaigns of banks in the 70s have put an ineffective bad-loan-ridden banking sector before us, and similar is the case with ports and granaries.
Now, it may seem that the article does question the legitimacy of the secular and socialist adjective in Indian context. I assure you it doesn't. With its addition the history of India has been changed, and irreversibly so, much like jumping into a early conclusion. I say so because no sudden geographic or demographic changes in India in the 70s asked for such radical changes to the country's laws. But, it's only wise to put that behind us, but remember that these adjective in Indian context are far from their intellectual inception.
The final adjective to consider is sovereign. Which stands for Indian authority in matters about Indians. With the world becoming globalised and international politics shaping the laws and lives of people, sovereign has been a sticky topic to debate on. But today, we are far from the libertarian view of one world, one government. The leading economies, like the US and China, have scorned at comments made of their affairs, and so should any other sovereign state have the right to. Now that we no longer want wars to decide boundaries, the question giving up sovereignty is left to the people. To be decided democratically ( that's another adjective from the constitution ).
The Idea of India that was agreed upon in 1947 was distinctly different front the one that was snatched away in the nineteenth century. And so was the idea in 1975. But we have come a long way, with liberalisation of economy and our development in software technology. What remains undisputed is the trust in the Indian Republic and our democracy ( representative in our case ).