The Colonial Constitution

As the book jacket describes it, this book is neither a critique of the constitution nor a celebration. It is just the story of how the Indian constitution was made.

The book is written by Arghya Sengupta who is currently the Research Director at Vidhi Centre for Policy Research.

The book confronts the readers with uncomfortable truths and provokes serious dilemmas such as how did our constitution makers decide to draw maximum provisions from Government of India Act 1935 which Jawaharlal Nehru himself had denounced as a charter of slavery?!

The book argues that the lengthy prescriptive nature of the Constitution itself shows how our constitution makers saw Indians as those who couldn’t be trusted to do the right things given their lack of experience with modern democracy.

Thus, one wonders how did those who suffer under a heavily centralised authoritarian British regime end up making constitutional provisions for a centralised state which towers over the citizens, and arming the police with wide powers for arrest and seizure.

The book further gives insightful details and analysis of several other aspects of the Indian Constitution, such as Gandhi and Ambedkar’s influence on the making of the Constitution, the team-work behind drafting the Constitution, the dynamics of Fundamental rights and DPSPs, and were there any other domestic alternatives which the Constitution makers could consider? and much more!

Overall the book, written in lucid language shorn of any legal jargon is a riveting read for any person interested in the history and the present of the Indian Constitution.

You might not see the Constitution the same way again.