Page 58 - Constitution

70 Years of Indian
Constitution
t is true that the provisions of the Constitution were drafted
and fine-tuned by the members of the Constituent Assembly
within a period that lasted almost three years between 1946
Iand 1949. A mere surface reading of the Constitutional
provisions reveals that it was a borrowed doctrine since it
contains almost two-thirds of the provisions that the 1935
Government of India Act. What needs to be emphasized here
is the fact that these provisions were subject to a thorough
scrutiny in the Constituent Assembly and they were finally
accepted since they conformed to the ideological belief that
the majority of the members had held. This means that these
provisions received their approval since they were considered
appropriate to realize the socio-economic goals that the framers
of the Constitution had so dearly nurtured during their struggle
for freedom. It is thus conceptually persuasive to suggest
that Indian Constitution was an offshoot of a closely-fought
ideational battle both during colonialism and its immediate
aftermath.
For several reasons, the framing of an acceptable-to-all
Constitution for free India was an extremely arduous task which
the Constituent Assembly shouldered efficiently to produce the
longest democratic constitution in the world. First, the partition
of the country and the subsequent mayhem in Punjab and
Bengal led to a shocking state of nervousness amongst the
leaders who immediately set on to devise ways and means
to instill in the people the confidence in the governability of
the country. Moreover, the onerous task of ensuring the
integration of five-hundred plus princely states in the Indian
Union appeared quite challenging in view of the ambivalent,
if not totally defiant, positions taken by the rulers of the states
like Junagadh, Hyderabad and Jammu and Kashmir.
58 70 Years of Indian Constitution
Years of Indian
Constitution
The inclusion of a detailed scheme of
fundamental rights in the Constitution marks
the culmination of a long and sustained
desire of the Indians to be bestowed with the
basic liberties of free and happy life.
Fundamental Rights
The inclusion of a detailed scheme of fundamental rights
in the Constitution marks the culmination of a long and
sustained desire of the Indians to be bestowed with the basic
liberties of free and happy life. Indeed, the formation of the
Indian National Congress in 1885 was, among other things,
aimed at ensuring the same rights and privileges for Indians
that the British enjoyed in their own country though the first
systematic demand for fundamental rights came in the form
of The Constitution of India Bill, 1895. The Bill stipulated to
secure to all the citizens freedom of speech and expression,
right to personal liberty, inviolability of one’s house, right to
property, equality before law, equality to admission to public
offices and right to petition for redress of grievances. However,
the idea of Indians being called as the citizens of India was
still absent, even in the minds of the prominent Indian leaders,
including the leaders of the Congress, who in the wake of the
publication of the Montague-Chelmsford Report, impressed
upon the British Government for ‘declaration of the rights of
the people of India as British citizens.’ The echo of demands
of the Indians for certain fundamental rights was also heard in
the draft of the Commonwealth of India Bill, formulated by the
National Convention under the inspiration of Annie Besant in
1925.
Originally, the Constitution contained seven fundamental