How Ordinary People Shaped India’s Constitution and What It Teaches Us About Democracy
How did ordinary people across the country help shape one of the twentieth century’s most ambitious democratic projects? A new book by Rohit De, associate professor of history at Yale and chair of the MacMillan Center’s South Asian Studies Council, and Ornit Shani, associate professor at the University of Haifa and Henry Hart Rice Visiting Professor at Yale, offers a fresh perspective on India’s Constitution and how it was made.
India’s Constitution, often described as the longest-surviving written national document, is typically studied through debates within the Constituent Assembly and the evolution of its text. In Assembling India’s Constitution: A New Democratic History, De and Shani spotlight the wider public that engaged constitutional ideas in everyday political life.
“Most of the literature on India's constitution-making spoke about the nature of the Constitution and its implications for India's democracy,” Shani said. “We’re doing something different.”
Communities across India used constitutional language to press claims, define rights, and shape representation. Drawing on petitions and public feedback, De and Shani highlight contributions from women’s groups, Dalit organizations, caste associations, and religious communities that all played a role in shaping the Constitution.
Roughly 500 princely states also drafted their own constitutional frameworks and experimented with representative government. “Circumstances like food shortages or the experience of sexual violence during Partition led individuals and organizations to reimagine how the state could step in and protect,” De explained. “They were asking what the state owed its citizens.”
Provincial legislatures, courts, and the civil service also played important roles, alongside demands raised by tribal communities. Together, these accounts show constitution-making as a process shaped through public argument as well as formal deliberation.
What can we learn? The book highlights a broader lesson: democratic legitimacy depends on more than institutions alone. It is strengthened when the lived experiences and voices of ordinary people help shape how societies are governed.
The South Asian Studies Council recently hosted a public talk about the book, drawing more than 50 attendees for a discussion with De and Shani and Yale faculty commentators David Engerman, Karuna Mantena, and Nazmul Sultan.