The Constitution and the Republic
India adopts a long, liberal constitution, drafted under B. R. Ambedkar, that makes it a sovereign democratic republic with universal adult suffrage.
- The Indian Constitution: Cornerstone of a Nation — Granville Austin, Oxford University Press (1966)
- India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy — Ramachandra Guha, Macmillan / Picador (2007)
- Speech to the Constituent Assembly, 25 November 1949 (Constituent Assembly Debates, vol. XI) — B. R. Ambedkar (1949)
A Constituent Assembly, elected indirectly in 1946, worked for nearly three years to write India’s constitution. Its drafting committee was chaired by B. R. Ambedkar, a Dalit lawyer and fierce critic of caste. The constitution was adopted on 26 November 1949 and came into force on 26 January 1950, when India became a republic.
- The Indian Constitution: Cornerstone of a Nation — Granville Austin, Oxford University Press (1966)
- India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy — Ramachandra Guha, Macmillan / Picador (2007)
It is one of the longest constitutions in the world. It guarantees fundamental rights to all citizens, abolishes untouchability (Article 17), allows reserved seats and jobs for Scheduled Castes and Tribes, and creates a federal parliamentary system. Every adult, rich or poor, literate or not, man or woman, got the vote at once, an extraordinary gamble in a country where most people could not read. The first general election, in 1951–52, was the largest the world had ever seen.
- The Indian Constitution: Cornerstone of a Nation — Granville Austin, Oxford University Press (1966)
- India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy — Ramachandra Guha, Macmillan / Picador (2007)
Ambedkar warned that political equality would sit uneasily alongside social and economic inequality. In 1956 states were redrawn largely along language lines, after protests such as the fast to death of Potti Sriramulu for a Telugu state, a move that many feared would split the country but that instead helped hold it together.
- Speech to the Constituent Assembly, 25 November 1949 (Constituent Assembly Debates, vol. XI) — B. R. Ambedkar (1949)
- India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy — Ramachandra Guha, Macmillan / Picador (2007)
Why it matters today
Republic Day, 26 January, is celebrated with a great parade in Delhi. The constitution, with its guarantees of equality, secularism, free speech and affirmative action, is the rulebook that Indians of every view appeal to, and holding up a copy of it has become a common protest gesture.