Criticisms and limitations

Three criticisms, and how the book answers them:

• Unwieldy (too long). This assumes a constitution must be one short document. Even countries with compact constitutions, like the US, have other documents with constitutional status. India simply put many such matters, like the Election Commission and the public service commissions, into the one document, which made it long.
• Unrepresentative. The Assembly was not elected by adult franchise, and most members came from advanced sections of society. The book separates two parts of representation: voice (being heard in your own language, through your own chosen members), where the Assembly was indeed limited because of the restricted franchise; and opinion, where the debates show a wide range of views and concerns of many social groups. Statues of Dr Ambedkar holding the Constitution, found across the country, show how far many Dalits see their hopes in it.
• Alien (borrowed from the West). It is modern and partly western, but this was innovative borrowing, not blind copying. Many Indians made modern ideas their own, using them to challenge injustice in their own society: as early as 1841, Dalit people in northern India used the new courts to sue their landlords. A hybrid, alternative modernity grew out of western and Indian traditions, and the Constitution blended both by selective adaptation.
• (In the Assembly, K. Hanumanthaiya complained that he wanted 'the music of Veena or Sitar' but got 'the music of an English band'.)

Limitations. The Constitution is not perfect. The book names three:

• a centralised idea of national unity;
• too little attention to gender justice, especially within the family;
• some basic socio-economic rights placed in the Directive Principles rather than among the Fundamental Rights, in a poor developing country.
• These limitations can be explained or overcome, and they are not serious enough to damage the Constitution's philosophy.

Conclusion. The core features make the Constitution a living document. Its vision grew out of the freedom struggle and was stated in legal form in the Constituent Assembly. The Preamble sums it up, and makes a humble claim: the Constitution was not handed down by great men but adopted by 'We, the people of India'. Despite disputes between courts and governments, the Centre and the states, and among parties, citizens still share the vision of living and prospering together through equality, liberty and fraternity. Making the Constitution was the achievement of 1950; keeping its vision alive is ours.

Example (new): a pupil who says a school's anti-bullying rule is 'foreign' because a similar rule exists abroad misses the point; what matters is whether the rule protects pupils here, and the school can shape it to fit its own needs.