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Constitutional Democracy in India Constitutional democracy is both a structure of governance and a way of providing an ideological perspective on governance. The 1950 Constitution of India established constitutional democracy in India and the narrative of the rise and consolidation of constitutional democracy in India cannot be understood without comprehending the politico-ideological processes that consolidated simultaneously both colonialism and constitutional liberalism. This book examines the processes leading to constitutionalizing India and 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 the constitutionalizing endeavour in India had a clear imprint of ideas which had its root in this philosophy. 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 and which reappeared in the 1945 Sapru Committee report. Deviating from the conventional study of constitutional evolution of a polity, which is generally legalistic, this book explores the processes since the beginning of colonial rule in India which led to the conceptualization of constitutional democracy in a milieu engaging with arguments formulated by James and JS Mill. 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 interest to scholars in the field of Indian political theory, South Asian politics and history. Bidyut Chakrabarty is Professor in Political Science at the University of Delhi, India. He is the author of numerous books on Indian politics and Gandhi. His most recent monograph is Localizing Governance in India, also published by Routledge (2017). Routledge Studies in South Asian Politics 5 Poverty and Governance in South Asia Syeda Parnini 6 US-Pakistan Relations Pakistan’s Strategic Choices in the 1990s Nasra Talat Farooq 7 Public Policy and Governance in Bangladesh Forty Years of Experience Nizam Ahmed 8 Separatist Violence in South Asia A Comparative Study Matthew J. Webb 9 Pakistan’s Democratic Transition Change and Persistence Edited by Ishtiaq Ahmad and Adnan Rafiq 10 Localizing Governance in India Bidyut Chakrabarty 11 Government and Politics in Sri Lanka Biopolitics and Security A.R. Sriskanda Rajah 12 Politics and Governance in Bangladesh Uncertain Landscapes Edited by Ipshita Basu, Joe Devine and Geoffrey Wood 13 Constitutional Democracy in India Bidyut Chakrabarty Constitutional Democracy in India Bidyut Chakrabarty First published 2018 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2018 Bidyut Chakrabarty The right of Bidyut Chakrabarty to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-1-138-55188-6 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-14783-3 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC Dedicated to the foot-soldiers of academia Contents List of tables viii Preface ix Introduction 1 1 Constitutional democracy in India: an ideational battle 24 2 The British initiatives in constitutionalizing India 50 3 Designing constitutional democracy in India: the Constituent Assembly’s inputs 75 4 Indian democracy: reconceptualizing liberalism in a non- Western context 100 5 Changing texture of the Indian polity: the 2014 national poll 126 6 Judiciary and constitutional democracy in India 158 Conclusion 193 Bibliography 204 Index 211 Tables 2.1 The division of administrative subjects under the Government of India Act, 1919 63 4.1 The poll outcome of the UP assembly elections in 2007 and 2002 123 5.1 Distribution of popular votes, 2014 128 5.2 Expanse of the BJP, 2014 129 5.3 Electoral performance of the Congress in different regions, 2014 129 5.4 Electoral performance of BJP and other contenders 143 5.5 Vote share in 59 Muslim concentration constituencies 147 5.6 Vote share in 85 reserved constituencies 148 Preface Why does one write books, or, for that matter, scribble texts in the form of books? There are many reasons, though prominent among them are two: first, an author is instinctively inspired to deal with a theme of his/her choice or preferences. Usually, an author is drawn to pen and paper (nowadays, to his/her laptop or desktop) to articulate, in black and white, those ideas which s/he deems appro- priate. This is fairly a common explanation of why an author writes. There is a second, equally important, reason. Being dissatisfied with the level of scholarship or quality of writing, an author takes up a book-project to show, in his/her own way, what should have been done. The concern here is to put ideas in a meaningful conceptual format. A challenging task indeed, this is an effort which is both exploratory and explanatory. Here the author appears to have been driven by his/ her search for a persuasive mode of explanation in a way which is analytically defensible and conceptually innovative. I was drawn to the history of constitution- alism in India after having gone through a book, published by a globally reputed publisher which was full of junk and also ‘misinformation’. What caused severe mental consternation was the fact that the book was meant for the beginners who just had begun studying the Indian constitution at the undergraduate level. So, I plunged into action to write a book on the evolution, nature and texture of the 1950 Constitution of India. I was also careful not to repeat the conventional ways of the study of constitutions by following the legalistic approach because that does not help us understand the ‘politics’ of how a constitution unfolds in con- junction with the constantly transforming social, economic and political milieu. In other words, my objective was to substantiate the argument that since a constitution is a living organism it needs to regularly reinvent itself to remain viable and meaningful also to the generations who hardly had a role to play in its making. I wanted to project India’s constitution as a two-dimensional entity: on the one hand, it is about a set of rules and regulations, governed by processes which are not static but transitional as they unfold in continually changing social, economic and political circumstances. There are also, on the other hand, institutions which are constitution-driven though they undergo changes in response to the metamor- phosis in the milieu in which they are rooted. What it therefore entails is the fact that a constitution is a legally justified, ideologically persuasive and conceptually