THE INDIAN CONSTITUTION; CORNERSTONE OF A NATION

by Granville Austin

For those whose self-imposed task is to bring out the newspaper each day or keep a news website ticking round the clock, the low level of public discourse is of concern but not alarm. In the making of this nation, there have been moments that are best forgotten. This current low should be one such. What about a high, a moment that can be best remembered and reread? Refreshingly, we can go to the very beginning of the Indian republic — the making of the Indian Constitution. A chronicle of those years is best read in the words of Granville Austin in the Working a Democratic Constitution: The Indian Experience.

In an age when the founding fathers of this republic are being used and misused this book comes as a erudite reminder that the concerted effort at running down a Jawaharlal Nehru, or misrepresenting a Sardar Patel and using a BR Ambedkar for political expediency has implications for how this generation will understand what it took to get here. They will not know that for the finest moment in our history one does not have to rely on some quackery that supposedly happened in hoary antiquity, but just a few decades ago. This book is a reminder that the work in progress can be done with the finesse of the men and women in the Constituent Assembly who first undertook the task. Next up is another work by Granville Austin — The Indian Constitution; Cornerstone of a Nation.