The Constitution of India: Popular Sovereignty and Democratic Transformations

The Indian Constitution is believed by many to be anomalous and derivative document. In times of political and social crises, the question whether there is a need to restructure its first principles inevitably arises. There is a feeling, across the political spectrum, that the relevance of the constitution needs to be reviewed in today’s social and political context. This intellectually rigorous and elegantly argued book examines fundamental issues about the basic law of the land. Sen contends that it is necessary to go beyond viewing ‘democracy’ merely as the vesting of fundamental authority in institutions of elected representatives. She examines the founding of the Indian Constitution and the emergence of its text in the background of the ideas of leading constitutional law theorists, such as Habermas and Ackerman.  The author suggests that the constitution can be more meaningfully understood by adopting a more complex concept of democracy–one that is able to distinguish between popular sovereign power in the hands of the people themselves, and in those of their agents in government. She establishes that underlying the bedrock doctrine of the ‘basic structure’ of the constitution, are fundamental questions about the relationship between constitutionalism and popular sovereignty. Sen argues that the text of independent India’s Constitution symbolizes a fundamental change in the terms and categories of politics, but within a clearly discernable Indian tradition of political and intellectual history. The text is a conscious effort to institutionalize the country’s ‘revolutionary’ experience during its anti-colonial struggle. As such it should be seen as the standard against which to determine the necessity for future transformation and its direction. This stimulating book is essential reading for students and scholars of Indian constitutional law and history, jurisprudence, political theory, and comparative constitutional studies.