B.R. Ambedkar’s Defence of Constitutional Borrowing
by Vineeth Krishna E By August 1947, the Indian Constituent Assembly had been nine months into drafting India’s Constitution. Initial drafts of key provisions prepared by the Assembly’s Committees were presented for debate in the plenary Assembly. On 30 August 1947, during a debate around an early draft of the Directive Principles of State Policy,…
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The Women’s Indian Association and Indian Constitutional Thought
by Vineeth Krishna E This is a special International Women’s Day post by our project partner lead based at the Centre for Law and Policy Research, India. Unlike the American constitutional founding, which was exclusively led by men, the Indian Constituent Assembly included women. Until recently, the contributions and even the presence of these women…
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The Sanatanists and the Constituent Assembly
by Manas Raturi On 9 February 1947, advocate B. Bhima Rao, a former member of the Madras Legislative Council, wrote a letter of appeal to Dr. Rajendra Prasad, the President of the Constituent Assembly of India. Titled ‘An Appeal to the National Government of India,’ the letter carried signatures of over 150 people who had…
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Reflection: PACT reviews the Supreme Court of India in 2023
by Aishwarya Birla As the year draws to a close, we review the constitutional matters decided by the Supreme Court in 2023 as we celebrate the 74th Constitution Day on 26 November. This year was one that had the Supreme Court hear both landmark cases pertaining to constitutional interpretation and public importance. This piece reviews…
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Reflection: A Digital Humanities Approach to the Indian Constitution
by Lauren Davis Parliamentary procedure is underpinned by the understanding that each delegate involved in a negotiation knows exactly what text is under discussion at any given point. Presumably, delegates would be aware of the effect each proposed amendment would have on the text as it existed at that day and time. This understanding, however,…
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Reflection: Founding Mothers of the Indian Republic: Gender Politics of the Framing of the Constitution
by Aishwarya Birla Achyut Chetan’s new book Founding Mothers of the Indian Republic: Gender Politics of the Framing of the Constitution, remembers the women members of the Constituent Assembly and sheds light on their contributions to the making of the Constitution. The drafting of India’s Constitution has been the subject of a range of academic…
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Reflection: The Veil of Participation: Citizens and Political Parties in Constitution-Making Processes
by Dr Anna Dziedzic Alexander Hudson’s book The Veil of Participation: Citizens and Political Parties in Constitution-Making Processes inspires a great deal of self-reflection by those of us who study public participation in our scholarship and advise on constitution-making processes in practice. The book makes a compelling case that public participation during a constitution making process…
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Reflection: The Speaking Constitution
by V. Geetha K G Kannabiran’s The Speaking Constitution stirs memory in interesting ways. I was reminded of the time he was actively present in my home state of Tamil Nadu, with cases that pertained to the incarceration of minorities and political prisoners accused of left wing militancy. He wore his judicial competence lightly and…
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Reflection: Constitutional Resilience in South Asia
by Shree Agnihotri The edited collection explores extensively the related themes of stability and resilience in the constitutional democracies of South Asia. The collection attempts an equitable focus amongst the South Asia countries by taking special effort to include and study the constitutional institutions, phenomena, and actors from countries that are not as frequently studied…
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Our Independence Movement Constitution
CLPR Editorial Team As we celebrate this 75th anniversary of Indian independence, let’s take a step back and ask ourselves: what exactly are we celebrating? When most of us celebrate Independence Day we think about the fact of independence—that we were liberated from British colonial rule and are not under the rule of any foreign…
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Dr B.R. Ambedkar’s Position on Socio-economic Rights in the Indian Constitution
On the occasion of the birth anniversary of Dr B.R. Ambedkar, we would like to turn the spotlight on an intriguing aspect of his involvement in the drafting of the Indian Constitution: his contribution to shaping its socio-economic provisions. In 1947, Dr Ambedkar submitted States and Minorities to the Constituent Assembly’s Sub-Committee of Fundamental Rights, in which he…
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Dakshayani Velayudhan – Sole Dalit Woman Constituent Assembly Member
To commemorate International Women’s Day, we focus on the life and contributions of one extraordinary woman, Dakshayani Velayudhan, the sole female Dalit member of the Constituent Assembly, as well as one of its youngest. Velayudhan was born on 15 July 1912 in Mulavukad, a small island in present-day Ernakulam district. She belonged to the Pulaya…
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Debating Difference – Rochana Bajpai
Debating Difference (2011) was motivated by three larger concerns. First, at a time when Indian political thought barely figured in scholarship in political theory, it provided a normative reconstruction of debates over minority rights and affirmative action in the Constituent Assembly (1946-49). In bringing political thought at India’s founding into into conversation with contemporary political…
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Religious Freedom under the Personal Law System – Farrah Ahmed
My work is focussed on the values and aspirations of the Indian constitution. The Constitution aims for equality, an end to subordination, non-arbitrary government, religious freedom, secularism and fraternity (among other important values). But how should we understand these values and the demands they make of us? How do we bring them life? How do…
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Adivasis and the Indian Constitution – Pooja Parmar
Histories and meanings of Indigeneity in India and elsewhere are important themes in my research and while the text of the Indian Constitution does not include the word Adivasi, the speeches and silences in the Constituent Assembly Debates offer important insights. I have suggested that Jaipal Singh Munda’s speeches and interventions in the Constituent Assembly…
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The Indian Constitution: A Historical and Political Project – Arvind Elangovan
When Granville Austin wrote his magnum opus, The Indian Constitution: Cornerstone of a Nation in 1966, he opened up the possibility for imagining India’s ‘founding document’ in ways that were difficult previously. He demonstrated that the Indian constitution was not only a legal document produced in the elite boardrooms but had a deep connection to…
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Histories of Indian Citizenship in the Age of Decolonisation – Kalyani Ramnath
An important thread of my academic research as a lawyer and a historian has centered the inclusions and exclusions in Indian citizenship. It began with an interest in 2012 closely reading through the Indian Constituent Assembly Debates and in particular, the debates over the Directive Principles of State Policy to find the different expressions of…
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The Transformative Constitution: A Radical Biography in Nine Acts – Gautam Bhatia
We think of the Indian Constitution as a founding document, embodying a moment of profound transformation from being ruled to becoming a nation of free and equal citizenship. Yet the working of the Constitution over the last seven decades has often failed to fulfil that transformative promise. Not only have successive Parliaments failed to repeal…
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Transitions in the vocabulary of political dissent at the commencement of the Republic – Anushka Singh
The anti-colonial movement in India in its quest for political self-rule produced a vocabulary of political rights which gave salience to dissidence as legitimate citizen action. Did the founding moment of the Indian Republic accrete this vocabulary and what is the relationship it shared with the post-foundational legal order? The two questions can be analysed…
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