Emergence of the Indian Constitution/It attempts to comprehend the specificity of the constitutional design and the history of the idea of the text

Emergence of the Indian Constitution

By: Vivek Prahladan
PDF Print

Vol XLVII No.7 February 18, 2012

The Indian Constitution has, as part of the history of nation making and the process of nation building, become the site of contestations of power. This article seeks to frame this discourse through a history of negotiations between communities seeking to create for themselves a “shared” constitution and resolve cultural fault lines through a vision of a cultural document that was to be the “Indian” Constitution. It attempts to comprehend the specificity of the constitutional design and the history of the idea of the text that is the Indian Constitution as an ideological contest between two visions, “constitution through nation” and “nation through constitution”.