The Making Of Free India's Constitution By The Constituent Assembly

The commitment to liberal democratic values, as the Constituent Assembly proceedings suggest, remained paramount in the making of the Constitution. For instance, though the constitution-makers valorized the idea of popular sovereignty, they redefined it and adopted the liberal representative principle to create "a Nehruvian statist political order". Popular sovereignty was thus defined in the Habermasian proceduralized sense, in which ‘popular opinion and will formation in informal and voluntary public spheres could seek to influence the channels of legitimate law-making.

Set up as a result of negotiations between the nationalist leaders and the members of the Cabinet Mission over the possible constitutional arrangement in post-war India, the Constituent Assembly began its deliberations on 9 December 1946 and concluded with the passage of the Constitution on 24 January 1950. This period, slightly over three years, was one in which the joy of freedom was severely marred by national trauma, associated with the partition and violence, that resulted in the killing of Mahatma, besides the butchering of innocent people in the wake of the transfer of population in the immediate aftermath of the declaration of freedom. The Indian Constitution was born, argues Paul Brass, "more in fear and trepidation than in hope and inspiration."