How ordinary Indians shaped the making of the Constitution

The book under review is a most refreshing departure from this pattern. It discusses how people at large participated in what it correctly calls the assembling of the Constitution

Assembling India’s Constitution: A New Democratic History

by Rohit De and Ornit Shani

Published by Penguin Random House

xx+370  pages ₹799

  The 75th anniversary of the Indian Republic has spawned a cottage industry of books, lecture fests and television specials on various aspects of its Constitution.  Most of what has emerged from these efforts is well known and the analysis is often shallow and partisan, with, of course, genuflections of utmost reverence to the Basic Law of the country.  Most books parse debates in the Constituent Assembly in analysing how the document came to be drafted.  Some of the more perceptive