India's founding moment : the constitution of a most surprising democracy / Madhav Khosla.
Khosla, Madhav author.
2020
KNS1760 .K56 2020 (Map It)
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Author Khosla, Madhav author.
Title India's founding moment : the constitution of a most surprising democracy / Madhav Khosla.
Published Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press, 2020.
Copyright ©2020
Call Number KNS1760 .K56 2020
ISBN 9780674980877 hardcover
0674980875 hardcover
Description 219 pages ; 25 cm
System Control No. (OCoLC)1111391008
Summary "How did the founders of the most populous democratic nation in the world meet the problem of establishing a democracy after the departure of foreign rule? The justification for British imperial rule had stressed the impossibility of Indian self-government. At the heart of India's founding moment, in which constitution-making and democratization occurred simultaneously, lay the question of how to implement democracy in an environment regarded as unqualified for its existence. India's founders met this challenge in direct terms-the people, they acknowledged, had to be educated to create democratic citizens. But the path to education lay not in being ruled by a superior class of men but rather in the very creation of a self-sustaining politics. Universal suffrage was instituted amidst poverty, illiteracy, social heterogeneity, and centuries of tradition. Under the guidance of B. R. Ambedkar, Indian lawmakers crafted a constitutional system that could respond to the problem of democratization under the most inhospitable of conditions. On January 26, 1950, the Indian constitution-the longest in the world-came into effect. More than half of the world's constitutions have been written in the past three decades. Unlike the constitutional revolutions of the late-eighteenth century, these contemporary revolutions have occurred in countries that are characterized by low levels of economic growth and education; are divided by race, religion, and ethnicity; and have democratized at once, rather than gradually. The Indian founding is a natural reference point for such constitutional moments-when democracy, constitutionalism, and modernity occur simultaneously"-- Provided by publisher.
Bibliography, etc. Note Includes bibliographical references and index.
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Introduction: The Indian Problem
The grammar of constitutionalism
The location of power
Identity and representation
Conclusion: Constitutional democracy today.

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