Page 60 - Constitution

70 Years of Indian Years of Indian

Constitution
Constitution

The constitution is not merely an
designs of constitutionalizing India.
instrument of authority but also a
It may be argued that the Constitution is not merely an
instrument of authority but also a repository of ideas which are repository of ideas which are tuned
tuned to the contemporary socio-economic and political needs.
Given its historical roots in colonialism, Indian Constitution was to the contemporary socio-economic
often criticized for being largely a borrowed doctrine which is and political needs.
not entirely unfounded, and it is perfectly understandable why a
powerful section in the Constituent Assembly was not persuaded
arguments that went on close to three years in the Constituent
to endorse the text that had emerged after three years of hard
Assembly, the 1950 Constitution of India cannot thus be said
work. Strictly by emotional yardstick, the charge was plausible
to be entirely a borrowed doctrine because not only was it an
though logically this appears to be clearly over-stretched since
outcome of the efforts that the framers had undertaken while
the 1950 Constitution epitomizes those values which informed
defending their respective ideological choices, it also drew on
the nationalist struggle against foreign domination. It is true
the constitutional practices that colonial state had nurtured
that the framers were nurtured in a context in which the British
to consolidate its rule. What is thus distinctive here is the
liberal ethos reigned supreme. As a result, not only did they
importance of the processes in which some of the constitutional
imbibe liberal ideas and values, they were also persuaded
ideas and practices are privileged as they are complementary
to believe in liberal democracy as perhaps the only effective
to what the founding fathers recognized as useful and self-
device to create a polity of their desire. The Constitution that
fulfilling. Fundamental here is the argument that constitution,
came out of deliberations in the Constituent Assembly was thus
being a living organism, can neither be entirely derivative nor
not drafted in a vacuum but in circumstances when different
exclusively indigenous for it is an outcome of processes drawing
ideological strands and preferences jostled with one another for
on the structure of governance and also the ideas contributing
supremacy. That liberalism remained the principal ideological
to its articulation and functioning. The 1950 Constitution is not
plank on which the Constitution was built notwithstanding
only illustrative here, but also makes a fundamental conceptual
the well-argued opposition by the Gandhians is a testimony
point challenging the effort towards dismissing the text for being
to the processes whereby it prevailed over other ideological
borrowed from the Western intellectual legacies.
alternatives. Being an offshoot of relentless debates and

Prof Bidyut Chakrabarty is Vice Chancellor Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan. He
obtained his PhD from the London School of Economics and Political Science

(UK) and he is an authority in Public Administration;

60 70 Years of Indian Constitution