Texts and the Parade
This Republic Day is perhaps a better time than most others to take stock of the craft of writing a Constitution. South Asia is currently in the throes of Constitution-writing, with Nepal having written itself one, howsoever controversially, and Sri Lanka getting into the act too. Four popular books to read to appreciate that day 66 years ago when India’s Constitution came into force:
-->The Indian Constitution: Cornerstone of A Nation by Granville Austin
Without doubt, the go-to text for understanding the Indian document, this book was first published in the mid-sixties, and Austin supplemented it three decades later with Working a Democratic Constitution: The Indian Experience . It is still the best book to get a sense of the intellectual drama and modernising impulses in the writing of the Constitution.
-->America’s Unwritten Constitution by Akhil Reed Amar
A leading scholar and “biographer” of the U.S. Constitution, Amar argues in this book that the document cannot be seen in isolation and one must imagine the guiding “unwritten” one. Expectedly, upon publication, the book sparked off much debate, especially about what such an idea implied, but it is interesting too for a comparative study. Incidentally, Amar and his brother Vikram Amar were among the pioneers of the National Popular Vote project in the U.S. to get enough states to commit to amending how the president is elected, so that the candidate with more votes countrywide wins.
-->From the Ruins of Empire by Pankaj Mishra
This is a larger inquiry into the modernisation project in different parts of Asia, and the “thinkers and doers in [the] long remaking of modern Asia”. It is not specifically about India or specifically about Constitution-writing, but the book provides the backdrop to the special republican moment of 1950.
-->The Indian Constitution by Madhav Khosla
Packaged as a short introduction, this is not exactly a beginner’s guide, but in fact a tight account of the core principles of the Constitution and its working. The big takeaway from the book is a reckoning of the balance among the institutions of India’s democracy, as too the shifting federal equation between the Centre and the States.
