Constitution of India

How Good was Defence of Constitution as a Campaign Issue?

Reservations and voting rights are crucial gains that need to be protected and used to fight social inequality in India. While people are aware of their constitutional rights, the challenge is to…
▶05-Aug-2024
Kesava Menon
Book
Q&A

‘Governors Have at Times Taken Unconstitutional Actions’

The unique nature of India's federalism needs to be safeguarded. But constitutional authorities have in recent times taken decisions violating the principles of federalism and the courts have…
▶24-Jan-2024
Aakritee Raj

The Sophistry of Calls to Replace the Constitution

India’s Constitution is more robust than the politics of those who call for its replacement.
▶23-Aug-2023
Rohin Bhatt

Improving Preventive Detention Laws

The 44th Amendment to the Constitution was enacted 44 years ago, but the clause that deals with improving the preventive detention framework has still not been brought into force. This goes against…
▶15-May-2023
John Sebastian, Faiza Rahman
Explainer
Book
Explainer

‘Basic Structure’: Defence against Parliamentary Hegemony

The 'basic structure' ensures that some constitutional features remain unamendable by Parliament, a defence against parliamentary hegemony and Constitution rewriting.
▶12-Apr-2023
Sriram Panchu, Aprameya Manthena, Vikas Muralidharan

The Curious Case of ‘Due Process’ in the Indian Constitution

The Constituent Assembly considered an American-style 'due process' clause for the Constitution but adopted a formula to limit judicial review. Unwilling to heed that limitation, judges…
▶13-Feb-2023
Vikram Raghavan
Review Article
Book
Book Review

Examining the Making of the Constitution

At the dawn of independence, the liberal traditions that underpin a constitutional democracy were absent in India. How did the framers of the Constitution deal with this challenge?
▶23-Jun-2020
Christophe Jaffrelot

Margins and Marginality

The Pathalgadi movement of Jharkhand drew on Munda traditions to fashion the 2019 electoral defeat of the incumbent party. A unique interplay of an assertion of constitutional rights, local…
▶04-Jun-2020
Mukulika Banerjee, Manisha Priyam

'We are the True Inheritors of the Nationalist Legacy!'

Shaheen Bagh, like other sites of protest against the CAA and NRC, was more a consciousness than a mere physical space. The protesters' ways of imagining religion and nationalism to meet…
▶16-Apr-2020
Asim Ali

Our Brother’s Keepers

The protesters at Shaheen Bagh have built a solidarity that has not been derived from some legal or religious text but is drawn from their own direct experience. They say in their own plain fashion:…
▶26-Feb-2020
CM Naim