"Reimagining Constitution-Making: The Role of Public Engagement Beyond the Constituent Assembly in India's Founding Document" , we, the people of India, completion of 75 years of Indian Constitution

         

completion of 75 years of Indian Constitution

 

 In the history of constitution-making and democracy worldwide, the drafting of India's constitution was a pivotal moment. It has traditionally been examined as a founding moment. The elite's vision and agreement on what would become a teaching text for a "ignorant" and undemocratic population has been cited as the reason for its success in spite of numerous obstacles. The scope of research was mainly restricted to the debates in the Constituent Assembly due to the academics' emphasis on political elites and the underlying presumption that constitutional minutiae were beyond the public's comprehension.This article provides a paradigm change in the way that study and understanding of India's constitution-making are conducted by shifting the focus from these discussions to previously unexplored materials. Through participation in its creation by a variety of publics, it examines the constitution as it developed outside of the Constituent Assembly. By doing this, it demonstrates that the Indian constitution was not merely established and bestowed from above but rather resulted from numerous smaller gatherings outside of Constitution Hall. The public's efforts to educate the Constituent Assembly members and establish normative expectations were crucial to the constitution's acceptance and longevity in the future.Adopted on January 26, 1950, the Constitution of India is the ultimate law regulating the greatest democracy in the world. The ideas of justice, liberty, equality, and brotherhood are embodied in the Constitution, which was prepared by Dr. B R Ambedkar and framed by a constituent assembly. It gives its citizens essential rights, outlines the roles and responsibilities of different institutions, and offers a thorough framework for how the government should operate. Its continued use to direct national governance and maintain a balance between individual rights and group interests makes it indisputable that it is still relevant today.The Constitution serves as a dynamic framework that protects human rights, promotes democracy, and creates an inclusive and pluralistic society.The Constituent Assembly initially met in Constitution Hall in New Delhi on December 9, 1946, at eleven o'clock, to start the enormous task of drafting a constitution for the soon-to-be independent India. It was by no means a given that the 205 members of the Assembly, including ten women, who convened that morning in what was called "an atmosphere charged on the one hand, with enthusiasm and on the other, with uncertainty," would eventually be successful in creating an Indian constitution. Discover how we might incorporate the Preamble, Fundamental Rights, Directive Principles of State Policy, and Fundamental Duties into our daily lives and work.The fundamental plan for the Constituent Assembly's formation and its mandate, which had been established by the British Cabinet Mission a few months prior, were also questioned at that time, as was the legality of the assembly itself. The members of the Indian Constituent Assembly were chosen by the provincial legislatures of British India. In accordance with the Government of India Act 1935, the final colonial constitutional framework for India, these were elected to office in the 1946 elections on a very narrow franchise that was organized along religious, community, and professional lines. Indian leaders and political parties vehemently opposed this.The political destiny of India, its people, and its land remained uncertain despite the impending transfer of power. Just six months later, when severe bloodshed between Muslims and Hindus was already increasing throughout the nation and even outside the Constitution Hall, the subcontinent would be divided. Deep socioeconomic divisions, widespread poverty, and illiteracy made it even more difficult to draft a constitution for a democratic state in India where the people would hold the power.In the history of constitution-making and democracy worldwide, the creation of the Indian constitution was a pivotal moment and a singular experience. Indians drafted their own constitution, in contrast to many other Asian and African nations where, at the time of decolonization, the constitutions were mostly a "parting gift" from the colonial rulers. While the majority of postcolonial democracies and their constitutions were short-lived, the Indian constitution has been crucial in maintaining the largest democracy in the world for seven decades, despite many of its promises being broken.In addition, India distinguished itself from Western democracies by drafting a constitution that was unprecedented in terms of its territory, population, demographic complexity, and the number of independent political entities it aimed to combine into a single federal framework. Not only that, but it also immediately granted all of its adults constitutional rights. The goal of creating India's constitution was to change the social and economic landscape of the country, not just to establish a new political order.It has been widely accepted that the Indian constitution was the result of elite consensus-building and that its framers received it from above; it has been called "a gift of a small set of India's elites." According to this perspective, both older and more contemporary research on the creation of the Indian constitution has concentrated on the three years of deliberations held in Constitution Hall by the Constituent Assembly, from December 1946 to November 1949. These extensive discussions, which span 5,546 pages across five books, have served as their main resource for learning about the constitution-making process and how it affects India's democracy.These studies have mostly focused on the politics of forming an elite consensus around the constitution as well as the revolutionary potential of the concepts being promoted. They have interpreted the paper as a teaching tool meant to enlighten a populace that is "ignorant" and undemocratic. In fact, researchers have generally thought that the Indian people's imagination, interest, or capacity do not extend to constitutional politics and its specifics, and that the constitution-making process is not a matter of concern for them. "Most people in India had no idea of what exactly they had been given," according to a seminal text on Indian democracy.Therefore, the majority of academics have persisted in their work, however subtly, under the presumption that the Indian public's involvement in the constitution-making process was minimal. Therefore, it is not unexpected that the Indian experience is viewed as having little bearing on current discussions regarding the importance of popular involvement in the creation of constitutions. "There does not appear to have been any systematic attempt to engage the public directly with the process, which might, in any event, have been both difficult and tokenistic in the conditions of the time," says Cheryl Saunders, who reviews contemporary scholarship on India's constitution.With its primary focus on the debates held in the Constituent Assembly, scholarship on the Indian constitution has heavily depended on the resources and debate guidelines established by Granville Austin's landmark work The Indian Constitution: Cornerstone of a Nation (1966). Based on this idea of a cornerstone, academics have conceptualized the constitution's drafting as a foundational event. Examining this idea of a foundation moment has led to researchers looking at what they perceived as an origin point with the goal of creating something new from a shared goal. The outcome is frequently seen as monumental and was fixed, or connected to a specific location and time, just like monuments.This has also helped to focus attention on the debates held in the Constituent Assembly, focusing on the Constitution Hall in New Delhi. This is frequently done under the premise that information about India's constitution-making process can be found in the ideas and actions of a small group of people who wrote the final draft.Notably, Austin also interviewed surviving members of the Constituent Assembly in great detail and reviewed their private documents. However, he noted—possibly based on a statement by the Assembly's secretary, H. V. R. Iyengar—that a large portion of the work involved in creating the constitution took place outside of the Assembly, in casual discussions and private exchanges.However, despite this realization, Austin's text "is a lot more dependent on [the Assembly debates] rather than his piercing into so-called informal spaces of Indian Constitution making," as Vikram Raghavan has noted.Additionally, analysts' attention to the Constituent Assembly debates and the idea of founding overshadowed other formal and crucial areas of constitution-making at the time.The Assembly had no legal authority over two-thirds of India's future territory when it started the constitution-making process. At that time, the subcontinent was home to approximately ninety-three million people living in more than 550 princely states that accounted for roughly 45% of its total area. The Assembly lacked the authority to draft a constitution for this region because many of the states were still working on their own. In order to create a future constitutional system, the constitutions of the princely states had to be combined to create the Indian constitution. In actuality, a variety of publics nationwide read and discussed the proposed constitution in a variety of settings, such as durbars (princely courts),in tribal settlements in dense woodlands and in the rooms of judges. These aspects of the constitution-making process in India have been overlooked. This article presents a paradigm shift in the approach to research and comprehension of the creation of India's constitution by shifting the focus of investigation away from the arguments of the Constituent Assembly. The article provides the first historical investigation into the creation of the Indian constitution as it developed outside of Constitution Hall, through constant discussions and a variety of interactions between princes and subjects, significant state representatives and members of the public, many of whom came from the periphery of society, and the Constituent Assembly. The Assembly's multistory rooms were just one of several locations where the Indian constitution was discussed, argued, and created. It demonstrates that there were other players in the constitution-making process than the Assembly members. Outside of official legal chambers, the nascent constitution was thriving, which was essential to its legitimacy and future reception. Compared to the hundreds of pages of extensive discussions surrounding the creation of the constitution that took place outside of the Assembly, the 5,546 pages of debates in the Assembly are a very small sample.Although the public's early involvement with the Constituent Assembly helped shape the text in certain ways prior to its enactment in January 1950, concentrating on these early impacts overshadows the importance of their work. The public discussions surrounding the constitution gave it legitimacy and a sense of ownership. As a result, the process of creating a constitution continued after it was established, continuing to be a place of public gatherings to pursue their goals and claims. Putting these public engagement processes ahead of the constitutional text's creation, this essay examines the ways in which three groups of players outside the Constituent Assembly, among many others, interacted with the document during its creation.For this piece, regaining this comprehension of India's constitution-making process required an assembly effort. A more thorough account of India's constitution-making process was revealed when fragments of the process were discovered and assembled to form a new design out of the many components, much like when a mosaic is excavated. The new picture no longer appears to be a top-down effort that was created for India's "soil" by elite consensus decision-making, which is fundamentally undemocratic.Many acts of assembly among individuals from various places and positions of power throughout India gave rise to the new constitution and gave it legitimacy. By participating in the constitution-making process, these individuals reimagined themselves as constitutional actors and took ownership of the document.