Regional & Federal Studies

ISSN: 1359-7566 (Print) 1743-9434 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/frfs20

The Oxford handbook of the Indian Constitution

Meenakshi Sinha

To cite this article: Meenakshi Sinha (2019) The Oxford handbook of the Indian Constitution,
Regional & Federal Studies, 29:2, 295-296, DOI: 10.1080/13597566.2019.1577240

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/13597566.2019.1577240

Published online: 10 Feb 2019.

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REGIONAL AND FEDERAL STUDIES
2019, VOL. 29, NO. 2, 295–296

BOOK REVIEW

The Oxford handbook of the Indian Constitution, edited by Sujit

Choudhary, Madhav Khosla, and Pratap Bhanu Mehta, New York, Oxford
University Press, 2016, xv + 1048 pp., ISBN 978–0–19–870489–8

This hefty volume edited by Sujit Choudhary, Madhav Khosla and Pratap Bhanu
Mehta accounts for the length and breadth journey of the Indian Constitution.
While there are already some existing substantial pieces of work on the Indian
Constitution,1 the volume by Khosla et al. is exhilarating for two reasons. Firstly,
the book is comprehensive for its encyclopedic coverage of the various dimen-
sions related to the Indian Constitution – its genesis, its evolution, and its political
and social relevance to the Indian society. Secondly, the book enterprisingly
brings together a multifaceted set of perspectives emanating from both varied
disciplinary standpoints and intellectual concerns.
The book consists of fifty-six chapters by a diverse range of scholars, which
includes political scientists, legal scholars, practioners and historians. The intro-
ductory chapter sets out to describe how the Indian constitutional project must
be understood, the ideas that underlie at the heart of this constitution, the histori-
cal events that shaped the constitution and the principles that are enshrined
within the constitutional framework. The authors challenge the viewpoint that
the Indian constitution is distanced from Indian society and cannot be not a refer-
ence point for Indian political culture, a premise earlier promulgated within the
political studies of the Indian constitution (p. 6). They rather suggest that issues
related to political, administrative and judicial matters have been brought as con-
stitutional questions to the Indian courts (p. 6). The chapters are organized under
broad themes under different subsets.
The first set of chapters employ a historical perspective to provide an insight
into the process of formulation of the constitution and as it evolved through a
series of conflicts. The chapters review the critical historical junctures and
events that informed the Indian Constituent Assembly; the views of the founding
fathers that shaped the constitutional vision, the political conundrums and the
social upheavals that bore their imprint on the drafting of the constitution; and
the clashes of social and political interests that initiated various amendments to
the constitution, demanded changes to the implementation of many of the
legal rules and constitutional procedures, and led to newer interpretations of
rights enshrined within the constitutional text. The chapters are descriptive, rich
in detail and notable for anecdotes and narratives drawn from archival and
other sources.
The second set of chapters debate the various provisions of the constitution
and through analysis of case instances attempt to decipher how contestations
to citizenship and language have been settled, and how other issues such as
those related to electoral processes and invocation and exercise of emergency
powers have been dealt with. The many challenges and issues that arose
296 BOOK REVIEW

during the course of constitutional amendments and through the imposition of

emergency have also been discussed. The powers and functioning of the three
branches of the government, the legislature, the executive and judiciary are
subject of examination of the next few chapters in the sequence. Nick Robinson’s
chapter is insightful for its description of the operational hierarchies between
different judicial wings, and minute but significant detailing of the administrative
and the procedural mechanisms of the internal workings of the judiciary. The
implications of the hierarchical structure of the judiciary and its administrative
landscape on judicial powers and the adjudicatory process has also been well
deliberated upon. The following chapter by Justice (retd.) B. N. Srikrishna delves
into questions of judicial independence and accountability.
The second half of the book begins with the analysis of the federal structure as
imbibed within the constitutional text. Louise Tillin in her contribution on asym-
metric federalism observes that the Supreme Court of India has a significant
role to play in protecting the governance institutions that seek to balance the
power arrangements within the federal setup of India. The references to court
cases and even the information provided in the footnotes can be a useful resource
for research scholars as well as students working on political issues and compara-
tive case studies related to federalism. The following set of remainder chapters tra-
verse the analytical terrain to carefully consider some of the legal mechanisms of
writs petitions, public interest litigation etc., and debate some of the politically
salient and socially vexed issues such as rights of minorities, gender equality,
reservations, and realms of personal laws etc. through the lens of the consti-
tutional framework; even a pithy discussion on each of these will be beyond
the scope of this review.
On the whole, the book is a welcome contribution to the study of the Indian
Constitution. The arguments presented in the chapters are well substantiated
through rigourous analysis of legal case studies and constitutional provisions.
The themes and lines of debates developed in each of the chapters are not just
limited to the understanding of the working of the constitution, but expand to
reflect on questions of democracy and political and social structures in India.
The book is useful to any scholar interested in issues surrounding the Indian Con-
stitution, and will equally prove to be a good reference text for students of Indian
constitution and legal history of India.

Note
1. A classic example is ‘The Indian Constitution: Cornerstone of a Nation’, by Gran-
ville Austin, Clarendon Press, Oxford University Press. 1966, 390 pp.

Meenakshi Sinha
Bharti Institute of Public Policy, Indian School of Business, Hyderabad, India
meenakshi_sinha@isb.edu
© 2019 Meenakshi Sinha
https://doi.org/10.1080/13597566.2019.1577240