Introduction

So far this book has treated the Constitution mainly as a set of provisions and institutions — what the different Articles say and how they function in practice. This chapter steps back and asks a more basic question: why did the leaders of India's freedom movement, having just won independence from British rule, choose to adopt a constitution and deliberately bind themselves and future generations to it? Answering this properly requires more than reading the final text — it requires a deep examination of the debates that took place in the Constituent Assembly, since those debates record the reasoning behind the choices that were made. This is the first task of the chapter. The second task is to ask what kind of constitution India actually ended up with: what objectives did its framers hope to achieve through it, do those objectives carry a moral or ethical content beyond mere legal machinery, and if they do, what exactly is that content? Understanding the answers also means being honest about the Constitution's strengths and its limits — its real achievements as well as the ways it falls short. Taken together, these questions are what this chapter calls "the philosophy of the Constitution." After working through the chapter, you should be able to expl …