The Constitution and the Idea of India

A constitutional lawyer and scholar holds forth on the Constitution and the idea of India, at a point in time when both are in the throes of being reinvented beyond recognition.

Does the Constitution represent an ethos of the people of India that is equitable, emancipatory and evolving? Is it a sturdy foundation for the socio-political bastion of a nation to imagine itself upon? Has it yielded sufficient returns to justify an absolute faith in constitutionalism as a blueprint for an India of the future? Have courts and lawyers stayed true to its sublime promises? The text of this lecture delivered on invitation of the General K S Thimayya Memorial Trust knits together historical, political and institutional underpinnings of the Constitution to argue that this paramount law of the land ought to guide us in our steps ahead as a nation.

The lecture draws on threads from Sufi poetry and Persian literature on the one hand, to case law and personal experience on from the practice of law on the other, to build a case for an idea of India that is just, secular and fortified by the highest principles of constitutional morality.