Description

INDIA’S CONSTITUTION
ROOTS, VALUES & WRONGS
How much Indian is India’s Constitution? This is one of the questions answered in this book especially in the context of the ideological churning in India today. It attempts to take forward the insights developed by great jurists like N. A. Palkhivala and Justice H.R. Khanna to the effect that our Constitutional values are those human values evolved in India through her crowded history of 5000 years. The author has attempted to trace the roots of constitutional culture from pre-Vedic period.
Constitutional values including those of dignity and fraternity are explained in the background of an Indian theory of values which accords due importance to both universal and relative values. How the umbilical cord of constitutional values is connected to the plurality of life-ways, both religious and non-religious, highlights the evolution of a composite constitutional culture. A useful analysis of the privacy verdict by a nine-judge bench of the Supreme Court of India is included in the chapter on Dignity of the Individual.
The author warns the readers of an imminent wrong as to how our constitutional democracy can suffer gradual but substantial regression unlike sudden reversals like a declaration of emergency or a military coup. Similarly, rule of men instead of rule of values is a constitutional wrong though it is paraded as governance. Other wrongs, like discarding the hierarchical feature of constitutional values and eroding the civic virtue of critical reasoning which is the life-breath of constitutionalism, are also emphasised here.
Dr M. R Raju is a jurist and lawyer practising mainly in the Supreme Court of India. He is an awardee of Indo-Canadian Shastri Fellowship for the comparative study of the Constitutions of Canada and India and a visiting scholar in comparative constitutional law at McGill University, Montreal, Canada. His books include Minority Rights – Myth or reality (2002); Uniform Civil Code, a Mirage? (2003); and Education – a Mission in Jeopardy (2005).

Inside

Preface

Contents

1. Introduction

2. Rule of Values and Not of Men

3. Lifeways, Religions, and Values

4. Constitutional Culture

5. Constitutional Values

6. Dignity of the Individual: The Supreme Constitutional Value

7. Fraternity: A Foundational Value in the Constitution of India

8. Conclusion

Bibliography

Primary Sources

List of Cases

Index