India’s Unfolding Constitutional Moment

Event Description

This presentation seeks to answer the question: has India experienced a ‘constitutional moment’ in the first quarter of the 21st century? The concept of a ‘constitutional moment’ is most closely associated with the US constitutional scholar, Bruce Ackerman, who outlined how constitutional orders undergo fundamental change not only through formal, textual amendments but also through episodic “constitutional moments.” I will argue that starting from the early 1990s, India began experiencing a ‘constitutional moment’ which is still underway but is not yet complete. The talk will focus, in particular, on a contest between two broadly competing visions of India. The first is that of the post-independence 1950 Constitution which sought to build a secular, liberal constitutional democracy that would tackle India’s problems of poverty and deep-seated patterns of discrimination (among others). While the 1950 Constitution sought primarily to address the problems engendered by two centuries of British colonial rule, it equally aimed to tackle problems that were a legacy of patterns of political and social practice across centuries of governance in pre-colonial India. The second and competing vision is of the Hindu Right which seeks to build a civilizational nation where Hindus are acknowledged as both the original people and the most important group in society, with preferential rights over others. I will argue that these competing visions have been at play in Indian society and politics across a century and a half. Starting from the second half of the 20th century, and for nearly the first six and a half decades (from 1950-2015), the post-colonial Constitution was dominant, though it never became hegemonic. The Hindu Right vision was always present, but across the last decade, especially after Narendra Modi’s appointment as India’s 14th Prime Minister in May 2014, its vision has been on the ascendance. In 2026, the vision of the Hindu Right is now dominant, even as it continues to face resistance from multiple groups including those committed to the post-independence 1950 Constitution. This recent contestation helps expose underlying stresses and tensions which have been understudied and underemphasized by constitutional scholars and citizens alike. 

This lecture is presented by the Canada Research Chair in Labour Law & Social Justice and Centre for Asian Legal Studies.

Speaker

Arun Thiruvengadam is a Professor of Law at the National Law School (“NLS”), Bangalore, and holds degrees from NLS and the New York University School of Law. His teaching and research span Indian constitutional and regulatory law, comparative constitutional law, South Asian law and politics, Law and Development, and welfare rights. He is the author of The Constitution of India: A Contextual Analysis (Hart Publishing/Bloomsbury UK/India, 2017) and has co-edited five other books. He has previously held academic positions at the Faculty of Law, National University of Singapore, and Azim Premji University, Bengaluru. He has taught as visiting faculty at several institutions including the University of Zurich, the Central European University, the City University of Hong Kong, the University of New South Wales and the University of Toronto.