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India's Founding Moment
Author: Madhav Khosla
Publisher:
Published: 2020
Total Pages: 241
ISBN-13: 0674980875
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →"How did the founders of the most populous democratic nation in the world meet the problem of establishing a democracy after the departure of foreign rule? The justification for British imperial rule had stressed the impossibility of Indian self-government. At the heart of India's founding moment, in which constitution-making and democratization occurred simultaneously, lay the question of how to implement democracy in an environment regarded as unqualified for its existence. India's founders met this challenge in direct terms-the people, they acknowledged, had to be educated to create democratic citizens. But the path to education lay not in being ruled by a superior class of men but rather in the very creation of a self-sustaining politics. Universal suffrage was instituted amidst poverty, illiteracy, social heterogeneity, and centuries of tradition. Under the guidance of B. R. Ambedkar, Indian lawmakers crafted a constitutional system that could respond to the problem of democratization under the most inhospitable of conditions. On January 26, 1950, the Indian constitution-the longest in the world-came into effect. More than half of the world's constitutions have been written in the past three decades. Unlike the constitutional revolutions of the late-eighteenth century, these contemporary revolutions have occurred in countries that are characterized by low levels of economic growth and education; are divided by race, religion, and ethnicity; and have democratized at once, rather than gradually. The Indian founding is a natural reference point for such constitutional moments-when democracy, constitutionalism, and modernity occur simultaneously"--
A People's Constitution
Author: Rohit De
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2020-08-04
Total Pages: 308
ISBN-13: 0691210381
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →It has long been contended that the Indian Constitution of 1950, a document in English created by elite consensus, has had little influence on India’s greater population. Drawing upon the previously unexplored records of the Supreme Court of India, A People’s Constitution upends this narrative and shows how the Constitution actually transformed the daily lives of citizens in profound and lasting ways. This remarkable legal process was led by individuals on the margins of society, and Rohit De looks at how drinkers, smugglers, petty vendors, butchers, and prostitutes—all despised minorities—shaped the constitutional culture. The Constitution came alive in the popular imagination so much that ordinary people attributed meaning to its existence, took recourse to it, and argued with it. Focusing on the use of constitutional remedies by citizens against new state regulations seeking to reshape the society and economy, De illustrates how laws and policies were frequently undone or renegotiated from below using the state’s own procedures. De examines four important cases that set legal precedents: a Parsi journalist’s contestation of new alcohol prohibition laws, Marwari petty traders’ challenge to the system of commodity control, Muslim butchers’ petition against cow protection laws, and sex workers’ battle to protect their right to practice prostitution. Exploring how the Indian Constitution of 1950 enfranchised the largest population in the world, A People’s Constitution considers the ways that ordinary citizens produced, through litigation, alternative ethical models of citizenship.
India's Living Constitution
Author: Zoya Hasan
Publisher: Anthem Press
Published: 2005
Total Pages: 242
ISBN-13: 1843311372
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →India became independent in 1947 and, after nearly three years of debate in the Constituent Assembly, adopted a Constitution that came into effect on 26 January 1950. This Constitution has lasted until the present, with its basic structure unaltered, a remarkable achievement given that the generally accepted prerequisites for democratic stability did not exist, and do not exist even today. Half a century of constitutional democracy is something that political scientists and legal scholars need to analyze and explain. This volume examines the career of constitutional-political ideas (implicitly of Western origin) in the text of the Indian Constitution or implicit within it, as well as in actual political practice in the country over the past half-century.
India’s Founding Moment
Author: Madhav Khosla
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: 2020-02-04
Total Pages: 241
ISBN-13: 0674245687
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →An Economist Best Book of the Year How India’s Constitution came into being and instituted democracy after independence from British rule. Britain’s justification for colonial rule in India stressed the impossibility of Indian self-government. And the empire did its best to ensure this was the case, impoverishing Indian subjects and doing little to improve their socioeconomic reality. So when independence came, the cultivation of democratic citizenship was a foremost challenge. Madhav Khosla explores the means India’s founders used to foster a democratic ethos. They knew the people would need to learn ways of citizenship, but the path to education did not lie in rule by a superior class of men, as the British insisted. Rather, it rested on the creation of a self-sustaining politics. The makers of the Indian Constitution instituted universal suffrage amid poverty, illiteracy, social heterogeneity, and centuries of tradition. They crafted a constitutional system that could respond to the problem of democratization under the most inhospitable conditions. On January 26, 1950, the Indian Constitution—the longest in the world—came into effect. More than half of the world’s constitutions have been written in the past three decades. Unlike the constitutional revolutions of the late eighteenth century, these contemporary revolutions have occurred in countries characterized by low levels of economic growth and education, where voting populations are deeply divided by race, religion, and ethnicity. And these countries have democratized at once, not gradually. The events and ideas of India’s Founding Moment offer a natural reference point for these nations where democracy and constitutionalism have arrived simultaneously, and they remind us of the promise and challenge of self-rule today.
Perspectives on the Constitution
Author: India International Centre
Publisher:
Published: 1993
Total Pages: 320
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →At A Time When The Nation Is Passing Through Difficulties And Our Polity Is Under Tremendous Strain, The India International Centre Has Taken The Initiative To Analyse And Examine A Theme Of Great Relevance To The Current Crisis. Eminent Political Scientists, Educationists And Public Men Have Come Together In This Prestigious Work To Present Their Perspectives On The Constitution Of India.
The Idea of Being Indians and the Making of India
Author: George Varuggheese
Publisher: PartridgeIndia
Published: 2013-06
Total Pages: 0
ISBN-13: 9781482801170
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →The book The Idea of Being Indians and the Making of India is a must read for all Indians. It informs them why India is a colony of its middle class who keeps the 80 percent of the population out of the benefits of all economic planning and development. The answer is that the struggle for India’s freedom was waged by its middle-class leaders only to drive the British out of power and not to get rid of the feudal-fascist governance structures of administration, judiciary, and police, which were “crushing” us, according to Nehru’s admission in his book The Discovery of India. These “crushing” structures, our leaders themselves took over and had the taste of the power and pelf that flowed, and their feast still continues while the nation gets the human development ranking at 136 among 187 nations, according the latest Human Development Report released by the UNDP in March 2013. The book narrates in lucid language that the noble and highly egalitarian missions of the Indian Republic, contained in the Preamble to the Constitution of India, could not be translated into experiential comforts for people of this country only because they were not compatible with the feudal-fascist revenue-collection-oriented structures inherited from the British. The book argues that when leaders who, after making a set of highly republican and democratically oriented development objectives for their country, adopt them as the Preamble to the Constitution of India instead of creating relevant democratic republican governance structures to implement, they deliberately pick up the regressive feudal-fascist governance structures used by the colonial government for their selfish ends. It is tantamount not only to a political scam but to a spiritual one. The author gives a twelve-point sarvodaya good governance model' as remedy to these strategic errors of our founding fathers and for making a resurgent India with the help of the mission statements of the Indian Republic enshrined in the Preamble to the Constitution of India. The author argues that the mission statements in the Preamble to the Constitution of India contain the idea of being Indians of a healthy, prosperous, and peaceful society at total or 100 percent population level. The making of India of such a society is in the hands of the people of India, especially the youth.
Original Meanings
Author: Jack N. Rakove
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 2010-04-21
Total Pages: 464
ISBN-13: 0307434516
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →From abortion to same-sex marriage, today's most urgent political debates will hinge on this two-part question: What did the United States Constitution originally mean and who now understands its meaning best? Rakove chronicles the Constitution from inception to ratification and, in doing so, traces its complex weave of ideology and interest, showing how this document has meant different things at different times to different groups of Americans.
We, The Children of India
Author: Leila Seth
Publisher: Penguin UK
Published: 2011-01-05
Total Pages: 61
ISBN-13: 8184752539
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →We, the children of India— Former Chief Justice Leila Seth makes the words of the Preamble to the Constitution understandable to even the youngest reader. What is a democratic republic, why are we secular, what is sovereignty? Believing that it is never too early for young people to learn about the Constitution, she tackles these concepts and explains them in a manner everyone can grasp and enjoy. Accompanied by numerous photographs, captivating and inspiring illustrations by acclaimed illustrator Bindia Thapar, and delightful bits of trivia, We, the Children of India is essential reading for every young citizen.
The Words That Made Us
Author: Akhil Reed Amar
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2021-05-04
Total Pages: 816
ISBN-13: 0465096360
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →A history of the American Constitution's formative decades from a preeminent legal scholar When the US Constitution won popular approval in 1788, it was the culmination of thirty years of passionate argument over the nature of government. But ratification hardly ended the conversation. For the next half century, ordinary Americans and statesmen alike continued to wrestle with weighty questions in the halls of government and in the pages of newspapers. Should the nation's borders be expanded? Should America allow slavery to spread westward? What rights should Indian nations hold? What was the proper role of the judicial branch? In The Words that Made Us, Akhil Reed Amar unites history and law in a vivid narrative of the biggest constitutional questions early Americans confronted, and he expertly assesses the answers they offered. His account of the document's origins and consolidation is a guide for anyone seeking to properly understand America's Constitution today.
