Grand Tamasha Season 15 Episode 23: Whose Constitution Is It Anyway? | Rohit De and Ornit Shani

Whose Constitution Is It Anyway? The making of India’s Constitution is usually told as the story of the few hundred prominent lawyers, politicians, and intellectuals who comprised the Constituent Assembly—the body tasked with drafting this historic document between 1946 and 1949. But a new book by the scholars Rohit De and Ornit Shani, Assembling India’s Constitution: A New Democratic History, argues this familiar account captures only part of the story. Drawing on a remarkable range of archival material, the book shows that constitution-making was not confined to the halls of the Constituent Assembly alone. It also played out in provincial legislatures, princely states, government offices, civic associations, and communities across India. Ordinary citizens debated the constitution, petitioned its authors, organized around it, and creatively sought to shape its provisions. To discuss the book and its relevance for our understanding of India’s democratic evolution, Rohit and Ornit join Milan on the show this week. Rohit is a professor of history at Yale University and the author of A People’s Constitution: The Everyday Life of Law in the Indian Republic. Ornit is an associate professor of Asian Studies at Haifa University. She is the author of How India Became Democratic: Citizenship and the Making of the Universal Franchise. The trio discuss the serendipitous origins of the book, the authors’ unusual writing process, and the gaps in the conventional account of India’s constitution-making. Plus, the three talk about overlooked constitution-making efforts in the princely states and the forgotten story of Manipur’s democratic experiment. Episode notes: 1. “India’s Hidden Treatise on Statecraft (with Rahul Sagar),” Grand Tamasha, November 2, 2022. 2. Rohit De, A People's Constitution: The Everyday Life of Law in the Indian Republic (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018). 3. Ornit Shani, How India Became Democratic: Citizenship and the Making of the Universal Franchise (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017). 4. Rohit De and Ornit Shani, “Assembling India’s Constitution: Towards a New History* Open Access,” Past & Present 263, no. 1 (May 2024): 205-248. 5. Video: “How India Became Democratic (with Ornit Shani),” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, April 25, 2018. Download the Hindustan Times App from Playstore/App Store for all the latest news & updates. google app store : https://play.google.com/store/apps/de... Apple Store : https://play.google.com/store/apps/de... Add Hindustan Times as your preferred source on Google. Click here: https://www.google.com/preferences/so... Hindustan Times Videos brings all the News for the Global Indian under one umbrella. We break down news from across the globe from the unique lens of a Rising India. Tune in for Explainers, Opinions, Analysis and a 360 degree view of big events in India and the World which impact your present and future. Follow the Hindustan Times Channel on WhatsApp for News Alerts, Top Stories and Editor picks. Join Us Today - https://www.bit.ly/3PQ4kSv Subscribe to the Hindustan Times YT channel and press the bell icon to get notified when we go live. Visit our website https://www.hindustantimes.com/ Follow us on Twitter   / httweets   Follow us on Facebook   / hindustantimes