A rich tapestry of ideas
A new book points out that the founding of India’s constitutional democracy represented a political revolution
The resilience of India’s democratic regime, despite its deeply unpropitious conditions in 1947 and serial challenges in subsequent decades, has inspired political theorists, social scientists and foreign observers for a long time. Indeed, given the severe human deprivations and manifold social inequalities that marked its diverse citizenry, the odds against its survival were high. Many scholars have also investigated the quality, scope and depth of democracy in India since independence. Why the nationalist movement decided to establish a modern representative democracy and the reasons for its specific constitutional architecture, however, has received considerably less attention. In recent years, a number of scholars have trespassed the boundaries of law, history and the social sciences to pursue these questions. These range from Steven Wilkinson’s systematic examination of how India’s civilian leaders made its military safe for democracy in Army and Nation, and Ornit Shani’s rich archival study of how its bureaucratic mandarins created the electorate in How India Became Democratic, to pioneering explorations of the ways ordinary citizens, progressive lawyers and apex judges have used, interpreted and radicalized the Constitution, such as The People’s Constitution by Rohit De and The Transformative Constitution by Gautam Bhatia.
India’s Founding Moment: The Constitution of a Most Surprising Democracy, a much anticipated book by Madhav Khosla, is an outstanding contribution to these debates.
Three key elements, according to Khosla, defined Indian democracy at its founding: “the explication of rules through codification; the existence of an overarching state; and representation centered on individuals”. Codification was necessary to explicate the rule of law. Yet it was also a “pedagogical tool” to fashion common norms and share practices of democratic citizenship and popular self-rule among a citizenry that had been colonial subjects as well as a political instrument to direct legislators and judges. A centralized state apparatus was essential to establish clear external boundaries necessary to ensure political sovereignty and enable planned development. But it was also required to reorder the deeply unequal relations that marked everyday social life in the princely states and myriad villages of the nation. Finally, a liberal conception of political representation was necessary to overcome the predefined collective identities of caste and religion, which severely restricted individual freedom. Crucially for Khosla, all three elements were of a piece, mutually supportive elements that cohered.
Three features distinguish India’s Founding Moment. First, it situates the constitution of democracy in India in a longer historical narrative, equal in significance to the revolutions of America in 1776 and France in 1789, whose momentous events continue to dominate our modern political imaginary. Indeed, the establishment of democracy in India comprises a more relevant paradigm for Latin America, Africa and Asia, contending against the legacies of colonialism. Many political scientists, especially of a conservative and neocolonial bent, have argued similarly. But their accounts of democracy in the postcolonial world are often negative: flailing derivative copies of the real thing. The durability of modern Indian democracy against unprecedented odds presents a significant historical rejoinder.
Second, the book comprises a remarkably elegant synthesis of constitutional theory, Indian intellectual history and western political thought. Despite its brevity, Khosla weaves a rich tapestry of ideas and thinkers. These include wellknown figures in the western canon– from Hegel and John Stuart Mill to Carl Schmitt — as well as the Indian nationalist movement — principally Jawaharlal Nehru, Mohandas Gandhi, Bhim Rao Ambedkar, Abul Kalam Azad and Vallabhbhai Patel. Yet readers also encounter relatively less recognized individuals, such as Alladi Krishnaswami Ayyar, KM Munshi and BN Rau, whose ideas played a pivotal role in drafting the Constitution. In doing so, Khosla demonstrates how seriously its architects engaged fundamental questions, rival views in the nationalist movement and leading western thinkers in order to devise a political regime most capable to addressing historically unique dilemmas. The intellectual confidence and political self-understanding they displayed in confronting vital questions is striking.
Third, Khosla demonstrates the importance of the Constituent Assembly debates in the making of the constitution, disposing of two rival accounts. On the one hand, through close reading of legal documents and assembly debates, he shows that India’s constitutional settlement was not simply a logical evolutionary outcome of the ideas of the nationalist movement. Serious differences existed within the latter over questions of codification, statehood and representation in particular. On the other hand, he demonstrates how the Constitution represented a significant break with the various colonial acts introduced by the Raj, even if the final document included many earlier provisions. Simply put, the latter failed to offer genuine rights, legislative powers or judicial review to its subjects. The granting of universal adult suffrage to all citizens, regardless of their education, status or wealth, was a revolutionary political act. It demonstrated the constitutional founders’ quintessentially modern belief that politics was a relatively autonomous realm of imagination, deliberation and judgment. Their decision to enable subsequent generations to amend the Constitution with relative ease underscored their outlook.
As intellectual history, India’s Founding Moment seeks to recover the intentions, motivations and strategies of the main protagonists, situating these in their precise historical context. As constitutional theory, it provides careful legal analysis of many provisions, cases and debates. In assessing how the founders tackled several constitutional dilemmas, the book endorses their resolution of these predicaments. Indeed, Khosla offers them a remarkably sympathetic reading.
Not every reader will agree. Some will question their ideological commitments and political motivations of the founding constitutional architects to protect individual liberties and emancipate the poorest citizens. The failure in the early post-independence decades to invest sufficiently in basic education, primary health care and essential public services, and pursue adequate land reform, betrayed their vow to eradicate structural barriers to absolute deprivation. Moreover, India’s constitutional architects may have genuinely feared the ‘grammar of anarchy’, in Ambedkar’s words. But the restriction of civil liberties and political rights in the name of public order and national security, especially in contested peripheral regions, often reflected the misuse and abuse of power. And it is precisely the centralization of powers in New Delhi by rulers who claim they embody the nation, rather than demands by opposition parties for greater regional autonomy, that has often endangered the integrity of the Union. Modern Indian democracy faces grave, arguably unprecedented, threats on the seventieth anniversary of its Constitution. Saving the former requires a dramatic revitalization of the latter. It is precisely when basic democratic rights are being openly subverted that constitutional morality faces its greatest test. The publication of India’s Founding Moment, by illuminating how and why its constitutional democracy came into being, could not have been timelier.