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"This book speaks to debates on law, constitutionalism and the contested terrain of political identity in modern India. Set against the overwhelmingly liberal design of the Indian Constitution, the book demonstrates a tendency in the Constitution and its practice to identify the Indian people in parochial and communal terms. This tendency is identified as India's Communal Constitution and its imprint on contemporary constitutional practice is illustrated by drawing on the constitutional practice as it addresses religious freedom, personal law, minority rights and the identification of caste groups. Thus, casting the Constitution and its practice as a field of contest, the aspiration to define the Indian people as a community of individual citizens is brought face to face with its antagonists. The most significant of these antagonists is the tendency to cast the Indian people as a collection of communities which this book examines and details as India's Communal Constitution"--
List of contents
1. Introduction; 2. The Communalisation of Religion in Indian Constitutional Law; 3. The Communal Image of the People in India's Personal Laws; 4. A Lurking Majoritarianism: A Communal Prism of Minority Rights; 5. Sacralising Caste: The Hindu Resolution of Equal Citizenship; 6. Conclusion: Appraising the Communal Constitution.
About the author
Mathew John is Professor and Executive Director, Centre on Public Law and Jurisprudence at the Jindal Global Law School. He completed his doctoral work at the London School of Economics on the impact of secularism on Indian constitutional practice. His research interests are Public Law, Constitutionalism, Governance, Pluralism and Human Rights.
Summary
This book speaks to debates in law, constitutionalism, and the making of political identity in modern India. It demonstrates the way the Constitution of independent India draws on and entrenches colonial and communal forms of identifying the Indian people. In turn this undermines the liberal aspirations of the Indian Constitution.
