Shashi Tharoor and Ram Madhav on the Constitution is about depth versus dispassion

Both Tharoor and Madhav attempt to engage with the Constitution's framing, content, and functioning within the limitations of relatively brief volumes.

The year 2024 marked the completion of 75 years of the enactment of the Indian Constitution, which took place on 26th November 1949. The occasion called for looking back at the working of the Indian Constitution in the last seven-and-a-half decades, which led to an engaging debate in Parliament. The Constitution returned to the centre of national discourse, not just as a legal document, but as a living symbol of India’s democratic soul.

Adding important perspectives to this renewed engagement were several important literary contributions. Legal scholar Gautam Bhatia’s ‘The Indian Constitution: Conversations with Power’ came across as a “critical interrogation of the Constitution through the lens of power”.  Also, a commemorative volume titled ‘Making of the Constitution of India & Its Glorious Journey’ offered a reflective and accessible chronicle of India's constitutional evolution.

The Constitution through political lens

Two other books released this year approach the functioning of the Indian Constitution from a distinctly political perspective. The books are authored by two scholar-politicians from opposing ends of the political spectrum. Ram Madhav and Shashi Tharoor with their respective titles—' Our Constitution, Our Pride' and 'Our Living Constitution: A Concise Introduction & Commentary', have brought ideological flavour and contrasting worldviews into the constitutional conversation.

While the tone and scope of the two books differ, their juxtaposition offers a compelling insight into how India’s Constitution continues to inspire and challenge political imaginations.

Ram Madhav’s trajectory

Ram Madhav’s book focuses on four aspects of India’s constitutional journey: first, the struggle that preceded its making, second, the making itself, third, the relevant content, and finally, the journey in the last seven decades.

It traces the development of self-government in India and, in the course, touches upon some important aspects of the Indian freedom struggle and constitution making. For example, it talks about Mahatma Gandhi’s favouring of ‘decentralised government’, an idea that was implemented in the princely state of Aundh in 1939.

Madhav also enunciates the basic principles and ideas that shaped the contours of the document that the Constituent Assembly was deliberating upon and trying to shape.

Reading the book, it becomes evident that achieving poorna swaraj, establishing a democratic polity and an independent judiciary, and granting a set of inalienable fundamental rights to its citizens were the main concerns of the framers. And, the book highlights how the divergent viewpoints and ideologies converged to ensure this was amicably achieved.

Madhav writes, “The architects of India's Constitution, from Nehru and Patel to Ambedkar and Rajendra Prasad, were all committed democrats; so were other leaders, like Gandhi and Upadhyaya. While those in the Constituent Assembly, like Nehru and Ambedkar, were influenced largely by Western models of democracy, Gandhi and Upadhyaya drew their inspiration from Indian experience. Together, they built strong foundations for India's democracy by embellishing the Western democratic edifice with quintessential Indian wisdom and strong moralism.”

Emergency, variations in approach

Any account of the Indian Constitution’s journey is incomplete without mentioning the gravest challenge it faced 50 years ago in the form of the Emergency imposed by the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Madhav addresses this dark chapter of Indian democracy with remarkable restraint, avoiding sensationalism or political targeting. Instead, he examines it through a neutral lens in light of the framers’ original apprehensions.

In contrast, Tharoor’s book, which is undeniably broader in scope and richer in depth, carries a distinct political and polemical undertone. The book begins with a powerful prologue that sets the tone for the rest of the text. While recalling Dr BR Ambedkar's apprehensions over the possibility of India losing its democratic character, as it had in the past, Tharoor accuses the current political dispensation of weakening the democratic and republican rubric of the country.

It is against this backdrop that the book examines how the Constitution has served its citizens. The book, at different points, delves in great detail into many important aspects of the Constitution, which is both informative and insightful. Like, while discussing the Directive Principles of State Policy (DPSPs) Tharoor shows how, despite not being enforceable in a court of law and being purely prescriptive, DPSP has “significantly influenced Indian policies and legislation, guiding successive governments in their efforts to bring about social change and create a more progressive state”.

Eclectic in origin, but with unique features

Tharoor also highlights an important point that, despite being inspired by various sources, including the British Constitution and the constitutions of other countries like the United States, Canada, Ireland, Australia, and the former USSR, Indian Constitution had “features to the Constitution not found in these models but dictated by the tumultuous circumstances of the country's birth as a constitutional republic.”

One can also find a subtle justification for the First Amendment that, among other things, was aimed at curbing free speech and is often criticised. Tharoor admits that the First Amendment “arguably created a wholly new relationship between the citizen and the state” but goes on to argue that “it was passed by the very makers of the Constitution themselves, who had served in the Constituent Assembly before its conversion the previous year into a Parliament, and so cannot be deemed to have departed from the 'original intent' of the founders”.

Given Tharoor’s political affiliations, it’s understandable that he would refrain from critiquing the Emergency—the gravest assault on the Constitution’s spirit. Though he mentions it in the limited context of the Forty-Second Amendment, which added ’secular’ and ‘socialist to the Preamble, this omission looks odd, especially as he criticises the present government for unleashing ‘undeclared emergency’—while barely engaging with the actual Emergency of 1975–77.

Ethnic nationalism versus civic nationalism

Tharoor critiques the Sangh Parivar for advancing a conception of ethnic nationalism that, in his view, stands in opposition to the civic nationalism envisioned by the framers of the Constitution. However, he appears to overlook a significant historical detail: the Hindu Mahasabha had prepared a draft Constitution whose language and normative values bore a striking resemblance to the final text adopted in 1950. This important counterpoint is examined in depth by Arghya Sengupta in his work ‘Colonial Constitution’.

No single book can claim to exhaustively address every aspect of a Constitution as vast and complex as India’s—the longest in the world. Both Tharoor and Madhav attempt to engage with its framing, content, and functioning within the limitations of relatively brief volumes. While Tharoor’s work stands out for its broader scope and ability to engage with multiple strands of constitution-making and its evolution, Madhav succeeds in offering a dispassionate analysis of its functioning. Despite their respective limitations, both books are valuable contributions, particularly as accessible guides for non-legal readers.