How India Wrote Its Constitution: The Constituent Assembly, 1946 to 1950

The Constitution of India was not handed down. It was argued over, line by line, in public, by people who had spent years in British prisons and who knew exactly what unaccountable power looks like.

The Assembly

The Constituent Assembly was created under the Cabinet Mission Plan of 1946. Its members were elected indirectly by the provincial legislative assemblies, with seats also allotted to the princely states. After Partition, the Assembly for India had 299 members.

It first met on 9 December 1946 in the Central Hall of what is now Parliament House. Dr Sachchidananda Sinha, the oldest member, presided as temporary chairman. On 11 December the Assembly elected Dr Rajendra Prasad as its permanent President.

The Objectives Resolution

On 13 December 1946 Jawaharlal Nehru moved the Objectives Resolution. It declared India an independent sovereign republic, drawing all its authority from the people, and promised justice, equality, freedom of thought and worship, and safeguards for minorities, backward and tribal areas, and depressed classes. The Assembly adopted it on 22 January 1947. Its language became the Preamble.

The Drafting Committee

On 29 August 1947, a fortnight after independence, the Assembly appointed a Drafting Committee of seven members with Dr B. R. Ambedkar as its chairman. The constitutional adviser, Sir B. N. Rau, had already prepared a first draft based on the reports of the Assembly's committees on fundamental rights, minorities, the Union, the provinces and the princely states.

The Draft Constitution was published in February 1948, and the public was invited to comment. Thousands of amendments were proposed. T. T. Krishnamachari later told the Assembly that, as other members of the committee died, resigned or were away, the burden of drafting fell largely on Ambedkar. He piloted the draft through all three readings.

Borrowed, then made Indian

The framers studied constitutions from across the world and took what worked:

• the parliamentary system and the rule of law from Britain;
• fundamental rights and judicial review from the United States;
• the Directive Principles of State Policy from Ireland;
• the federal structure with a strong centre from Canada;
• the concurrent list from Australia;
• the procedure for emergency powers, in part, from the Weimar constitution;
• and, most directly, the administrative framework of the Government of India Act 1935.

What they produced was their own. Universal adult suffrage was granted from the first day, to every citizen of twenty-one and over, regardless of property, education, caste or sex. Few democracies had done that at birth. Untouchability was abolished by Article 17.

Adoption and signing

The Assembly met in eleven sessions over 2 years, 11 months and 18 days. On 26 November 1949 it adopted the Constitution. That date is now observed as Constitution Day (Samvidhan Divas), declared in 2015.

On 24 January 1950 members signed two handwritten copies, one in English and one in Hindi. The English text was written in flowing italic by the calligrapher Prem Behari Narain Raizada. Artists from Santiniketan working with Nandalal Bose illuminated the pages. The same day the Assembly elected Rajendra Prasad the first President of India.

The Constitution came fully into force on 26 January 1950, twenty years to the day after the Purna Swaraj pledge of 1930. India became a republic. As adopted, it contained a Preamble, 395 articles in 22 parts, and 8 schedules.

The women of the Assembly

Fifteen women sat in the Assembly. Among them were Sarojini Naidu, Hansa Mehta, who pressed for gender-neutral language in the rights chapter, Durgabai Deshmukh, Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, Ammu Swaminathan, Sucheta Kripalani and Dakshayani Velayudhan, the only Dalit woman member.

Ambedkar's warning

On 25 November 1949, the day before adoption, Ambedkar made a speech that is still quoted in Parliament and the courts. He asked Indians to give up "the bloody methods of revolution" now that constitutional methods were open to them; those methods, he said, were "the grammar of anarchy". He warned against hero-worship in politics. And he warned that political democracy could not last unless it rested on social democracy:

On the 26th of January 1950, we are going to enter into a life of contradictions. In politics we will be recognising the principle of one man one vote and one vote one value. In our social and economic life, we shall, by reason of our social and economic structure, continue to deny the principle of one man one value.

Read it yourself

The Constitution is the most important document most Indians have never read. Our Constitution browser sets out every part and article, in English and Hindi and, on request, in the other scheduled languages.