(Ebook) Constitutional Democracy In India by Bidyut Chakrabarty ISBN 9781315147833, 9781351375290, 9781351375313, 1315147831, 1351375296, 1351375318

(Ebook) Constitutional Democracy In India by Bidyut Chakrabarty ISBN 9781315147833, 9781351375290, 9781351375313, 1315147831, 1351375296, 1351375318

This book examines the processes leading to constitutionalizing India. It challenges the conventional idea that the Constitution of India is a borrowed doctrine. A careful study of the processes reveals that the 1950 Constitution was the culmination of an ideational battle that had begun with the consolidation of the British Enlightenment philosophy in the early days of British paramountcy in India. The book therefore argues that constitutionalizing endeavour in India had a clear imprint of ideas which had its root in the British Enlightenment philosophy. This is true to all the legal stipulations that the British government in India made while executing the colonial diktat. The study reveals a striking continuity of the same kind of ideological sentiments when the nationalists devised their own constitutionalizing design, visible in the 1928 Motilal Nehru report reappeared in the 1945 Sapru Committee report. The Constituent Assembly (1946-9) was not completely free from the predominant liberal ideas which the founding fathers accepted readily presumably because of them being nurtured in an environment propitious to liberalism. Except Gandhians who remained committed to make village the basic unit of governance as opposed to individual, liberalism seemed to have gained an easy acceptance during the deliberations in the Constituent Assembly. Notwithstanding serious differences among the members due to their contrasting ideological perspectives, the debates and counter debates over major constitutional issues finally culminated in the making of the Constitution of India in 1950. This confirms the argument that it was an offshoot of a long-drawn ideational battle in which several strands of thought also remained critical. A detailed analysis of the roots of constitutional and political liberalism in India, this book sheds light on the material surrounding India's constitutional development. It will be of interested to scholars in the field of Indian Political Theory, South Asian Politics and History.