Core features II

5. Universal franchise. Committing to votes for all adults was a big step when many believed India's hierarchies could never change, and when stable western democracies had only recently given the vote to women and the working class.

• Indian nationalism always imagined a political order based on the will of every member of society.
• The Constitution of India Bill (1895), the first unofficial draft, said every person born in India could take part in the country's affairs and hold public office.
• The Motilal Nehru Report (1928) gave the vote to every person of either sex aged 21 or over.
• In the Assembly, Alladi Krishnaswami Ayyar spoke of adult franchise as resting on 'abundant faith in the common man'.

6. Federalism. Despite a strong Centre, the Constitution builds in asymmetric federalism: different states can have different legal status, unlike the symmetric American model.

• Under Article 371A, Nagaland has special status: it protects existing local laws and local identity, including through limits on settlement from outside. Many other states also have special provisions, and the Constitution sees nothing wrong in such differential treatment.
• Though not originally planned, India became a multilingual federation: each major language group is politically recognised and treated as equal, combining unity with cultural recognition.

7. National identity. The Constitution keeps reinforcing a common national identity that does not clash with religious or linguistic identities. It rejected separate electorates based on religion, not to erase difference, but because they endangered a healthy national life. The goal was true fraternity, dear to Dr Ambedkar; Sardar Patel hoped India would evolve as 'one community', where the idea of majority and minority would fade.

These are the five substantive achievements. There are also two procedural ones:

• Faith in deliberation: many groups were not fully represented in the Assembly, but members tried to be inclusive, were willing to change their views, and justified decisions by reasons, not self-interest. They saw value in disagreement.
• Compromise and accommodation: a compromise is bad when something of value is traded for self-interest; but trading part of one value for another, openly and among equals, is not blameworthy. Deciding the most important matters by consensus rather than a bare majority is also admirable.

Example (new): a school that gives one class Braille books and a reader because some of its pupils cannot see, while other classes get the usual books, treats that class differently without treating it unfairly, the same idea as asymmetric federalism.