Sixteen Stormy Days
- BY TRIPURDAMAN SINGH
- RELEASE YEAR: 2020
- PUBLISHER: PENGUIN BOOKS
The author is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at University of London.
Born in Uttar Pradesh, the author has been a student of politics and international studies at University of Warwick and has earned his MPhil and PhD from the University of Cambridge. He has authored a few other books such as ‘Imperial Sovereignty and Local Politics’ and ‘Nehru: The Debates That Defined India’.
The Indian Constitution has been amended more than 100 times. ‘Sixteen Stormy Days’ takes you to the time when first such amendment took place due to a clash between the government and the constitution.
The first amendment is a peculiar and distinctive one as it was enacted by a provisional parliament that too months before India’s first general elections. It drastically curbed freedom of speech, enabled caste-based reservation by restricting freedom against discrimination, circumscribed the right to property and validated abolition of the zamindari system, and created a special schedule of unconstitutional laws immune to judicial challenge.
The book is packed with strong arguments and reasoning backed by parliamentary debates, press reports, judicial pronouncements and official correspondence and is rich in facts and narration. A must read for law students, especially constitutional law enthusiasts.
