The Constitution of India is one of the oldest documents of governance in the world. When the Constitution was adopted by the Constituent A...
The Constitution of India is one of the oldest documents of governance in the world. When the Constitution was adopted by the Constituent Assembly of India on 26 November, 1949, after intense debates and consultations that had lasted almost three years, the president of the Assembly, Rajendra Prasad spoke at length about the tremendous achievement.
In spite of the huge population, Prasad said, “we have succeeded in framing a Constitution which covers the whole of it.” Before explaining the features and the methodology the Assembly had adopted, he said that his purpose was not to appraise the value of the work done or the merits and demerits of the Constitution. He said: “I am content to leave that to others and to posterity.”
Madhav Khosla’s recent book, India’s Founding Moment: The Constitution of a Most Surprising Democracy, examines the commitment and the vision behind the making of the Constitution of the world’s largest democracy. India’s revolution was big because the problem it had to solve was big. However, as Khosla writes, quoting Jawaharlal Nehru, “Indians were yet to grasp the import of their revolution.”
Opting for a democracy was a risk, according to the “warnings” from political theorists and constitutional experts in the West, who considered...
