Rohit De and Ornit
Shani’s new history of constitution-making reminds us that the Constitution was
never merely written in Delhi’s halls of power. It was forged in letters,
petitions, and struggles across the country — a living document authored by the
people themselves.
By Asis Mistry
When India’s Constitution
was adopted in 1950, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar warned that political democracy must
rest on the foundation of social and economic democracy. Yet what Rohit De and
Ornit Shani remind us in their powerful new book, Assembling India’s
Constitution: A New Democratic History (Penguin Random House, 2025), is
that democracy in India had already begun long before 1950 — not in the
Constituent Assembly alone, but in the countless letters, petitions, and
protests through which ordinary Indians claimed their place in the new
republic.
Their intervention
challenges the familiar narrative that the Constitution was the gift of a few
enlightened leaders. Instead, they recover a forgotten history of public
constitutionalism — a history in which peasants, tribals, workers, and
women’s associations wrote to the Assembly, debated draft provisions in local
meetings, and imagined justice, equality, and freedom in their own idioms. The
Constitution, they argue, was not only written for the people but with
them — and often by them.
From Founding Fathers to
Founding Publics
For decades, scholars
like Granville Austin and Madhav Khosla have portrayed constitution-making as a
top-down process, guided by visionary elites. De and Shani turn this on its
head. Drawing on petitions and letters sent between 1946 and 1949, they show
that democracy preceded constitution-making — that India’s people were
already practising citizenship before universal suffrage was granted.
The Moshalchi community’s
1947 petition from Bengal, for instance, pleaded for recognition as citizens —
a small act that captures a larger truth: the people were not passive
recipients but active participants in shaping the republic. De and Shani’s “Ornit–Rohit
Constitutional Archive” uncovers thousands of such moments when the subaltern
spoke the language of constitutional rights.
A Living, Assembled
Constitution
The authors use the term
“assembling” to signal that India’s Constitution was never a finished monument
but an evolving structure built through contestation. Unlike the static
“cornerstone” metaphor of old, the “assembly” metaphor suggests an ongoing democratic
practice — one that continues each time citizens invoke constitutional ideals
to challenge injustice.
That living energy has
been vividly visible in India’s recent history. When protestors across the
country held public readings of the Preamble during the Citizenship (Amendment)
Act protests of 2019–20, they were not merely performing dissent — they were reassembling
the republic. When women in Shaheen Bagh sat through winter nights holding
copies of the Constitution, they echoed those earlier citizens who, in the
1940s, petitioned the Assembly for equality and recognition. The Constitution
became, once again, a shared repertoire of struggle — a living text rather than
a sacred relic.
Becoming Constitutional
Citizens
One of De and Shani’s
most striking insights is that Indians learned to speak the language of the
Constitution before independence. Even before the first general election,
the public engaged in what the authors call “vernacular constitutional
translation.” Letters written in English — the “language of the court” — were
translated into Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, and Urdu newspapers, allowing local
communities to debate the meaning of rights and justice.
This historical process
has striking echoes in the digital age. Today, social media has become a new
arena of constitutional pedagogy. During the 2024 general elections, the
Preamble to the Constitution trended across platforms as young voters invoked
its words — “justice, liberty, equality, fraternity” — to critique political
excesses and call for pluralism. Memes, videos, and digital campaigns
reimagined constitutional ideals in contemporary idioms, from gender equality
to environmental justice. In many ways, this was a continuation of the
participatory constitutionalism De and Shani document — democracy as a practice
of learning, speaking, and claiming.
The Republic as an Open
Archive
This history of
constitutional participation has renewed relevance in a time when democratic
backsliding looms large. The past few years have seen sharp tensions between
constitutional values and executive power — from the dilution of Article 370
and restrictions on free speech to growing anxieties over minority rights. Yet,
even in this moment of strain, the Constitution continues to be publicly
invoked as a countervailing moral force.
The Supreme Court’s
recent verdict striking down the opaque electoral bonds scheme was one
such moment of reclamation. It reaffirmed the citizen’s right to know and
revived faith in constitutional accountability. Similarly, when citizens and
civil society groups protested the curbs on dissent and media freedom, they did
so in the idiom of the Constitution — reading, performing, and reclaiming it as
their own. These acts reaffirm De and Shani’s claim that India’s
constitutionalism is not a frozen inheritance but a living, contested
tradition.
The Risks of Forgetting
At the same time, the
book’s celebration of participatory constitution-making invites reflection on
those who remain unheard even today. De and Shani acknowledge that many
petitions from the 1940s went unanswered, mirroring the exclusions that persist
in the republic. The struggles of manual workers seeking fair wages, of Dalit
and Adivasi communities fighting displacement, or of women demanding safety and
representation — all testify to the unfinished nature of constitutional
democracy.
To remember the
Constitution’s popular origins is not to romanticise the past, but to recognise
that its vitality depends on constant renewal. Every generation must learn, and
sometimes fight, to keep the Constitution alive. As Ambedkar warned, constitutional
morality is not a natural sentiment — it must be cultivated.
Reassembling the Republic
In today’s climate of
polarised politics and majoritarian rhetoric, Assembling India’s
Constitution offers both a historical correction and a civic reminder. It
tells us that India’s republic was not founded in consensus but in contestation
— in the argumentative, plural practices of a people learning to live
democratically.
If the 2024 elections
demonstrated anything, it was that constitutional language still resonates
deeply with the electorate. From debates over reservation and citizenship to
discussions about press freedom and institutional integrity, the Constitution
remains a living framework through which Indians articulate hope and grievance.
The lesson De and Shani
leave us with is clear: reclaiming the republic begins not in Parliament but in
public life — in classrooms and courtrooms, in social movements and village
councils, in every space where citizens demand that the Constitution’s promises
be kept.
If Granville Austin once
gave us the Constitution as the “cornerstone of a nation,” De and Shani give us
the Constitution as the conversation of a people. It is a reminder that
the republic survives not through ritual celebration but through continuous
assembly — through the courage of those who keep showing up to speak its
language, again and again.
The author is Assistant
Professor of Political Science at the University of Calcutta, West Bengal,
India. Email- asismistry.cu@gmail.com
