Sandipto Dasgupta, Assistant Professor of Politics at the New School for Social Research and author of "Legalizing the Revolution," dives into India's unique constitutional journey post-decolonization. He discusses how anticolonial movements shaped radical ideas of freedom and how those translated into institutional frameworks. The conversation tackles the disconnect between the Congress Party and the masses, the belief in a planned economy to avert social upheaval, and the troubling rise of majoritarianism amid diminishing parliamentary power.
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insights INSIGHT
Decolonization Shapes Constitutions
Postcolonial constitutions are innovative efforts to institutionalize anticolonial aspirations, not just borrowed templates.
Understanding constitutions requires integrating decolonization's history and politics, not only legal theory.
insights INSIGHT
A Revolution to Prevent
Indian constitutional framers feared a future social revolution driven by unaddressed mass economic and social demands.
To prevent chaos, they aimed for a managed, gradual social transformation through controlled revolution.
insights INSIGHT
Transformational Constitutionalism Explained
India's constitution was designed to enable transformation, not just preserve order as conventional constitutions do.
This 'transformational constitutionalism' prioritizes facilitating controlled social change over mere stability.
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Sandipto Dasgupta's "Legalizing the Revolution" offers a unique perspective on India's constitution-making process. It connects the constitution to the preceding anti-colonial movement, exploring the translation of audacious ideas of freedom into institutional forms. The book analyzes the promises, challenges, and contradictions of this task, examining major institutions like parliament and the judiciary. Dasgupta's work challenges conventional understandings of constitutionalism, highlighting the distinctively post-colonial aspects of India's constitution. It provides valuable insights into the ongoing crisis of post-colonial constitutional orders.
Anticolonial movements of the 20th century generated audacious ideas of freedom. After decolonization, however, the challenge was to give an institutional form to those radical ideas.Legalizing the Revolution: India and the Constitution of the Postcolonyis a new book by the scholar Sandipto Dasgupta which provides an innovative account of how India ultimately addressed this daunting challenge.It's a fresh, somewhat revisionist look at the making of the postcolonial constitutional order and tries to place the current crisis of liberal democracy in proper historical and conceptual context.Sandipto is an assistant professor of politics at the New School for Social Research, where he works on the history of modern political and social thought, especially the political theory of empire, decolonization, and postcolonial order.To talk more about his book, Sandipto joins Milan on the podcast this week. They discuss the two-way relationship between decolonization and constitution-making, the absence of representation unity between the Congress Party and the masses, and why India’s leaders believed a planned economy would forestall a social revolution. Plus, the two discuss how the absence—rather than the excesses—of democracy have led to rising majoritarianism.
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