R&D Lecture Series: 13th January 2017
The Department’s R&D Lecture Series began with Professor Mathangi Krishnamurthy welcoming the audience and introducing Mr. Vikram Raghavan. Mr. Raghavan is lead counsel at an organization in Washington D.C. and is interested in India’s constitutional history. He is the founder of a blog titled Law and Other Things. He is also editing a book on the Indian Supreme Court.
Mr. Raghavan talked of the formation of the Constituent Assembly. Lawyers, leaders of the freedom movement, activists—they all came together to draft the Constitution. This Constituent Assembly spent long and tedious months in this process, which resulted in the rather voluminous Constitution of India and twelve volumes of the transcribed debates known as the ‘Constituent Assembly Debates’ or ‘Constitutional Debates’. The American Constitution, by comparison, is much shorter with fewer amendments.
Multiple cases were mentioned in which judges who referred to the Constitutional Debates were unable to cite them. That such a principle was detrimental to the functioning of the law system was first opined by Charles Alexandrowicz and agreed to by Mr. Raghavan himself. He stated that this was due to the ease with which the text could be misquoted. Being a record of all deliberations upon the articles and acts in the Constitution, the fear of unconstitutional values being justified in court led to the exclusionary principle being applicable to the Debates. The Debates are vital to understanding the principles upon which Indian laws were formed. Their employment in solving current-day problems in the country was also stressed upon.
Mr. Raghavan concluded by summarizing the importance the Constitutional Debates hold today, even for the non-academic. Apart from instilling a sense of pride, the debates reveal the enormous amounts of thought and discussion that went into forming the Constitution. They also offer a glimpse of our then leaders’ ideals, ambitions and aspirations for our nation. Understanding the intentions of the founders is, after all, invaluable in understanding the state of affairs today.
– By Shweta Venkatesh and Naomi Karyamsetty
Article 19 