In a few weeks’ time, on 2 October, the world will mark the 156^th anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi’s birth. Gandhi, whose political baptism in South Africa was followed by his remarkable stewardship of the freedom movement in India, imagined a decolonized polity that was indigenous in its values, practices, and governing systems. Yet, in the document that underpins the modern Indian state and its polity—the Constitution—that Indianness is missing. With some exceptions, this absence of indigeneity is the story of constitution-making in much of the Global South. What we have in these countries, in Gandhi’s words, is “English rule without the Englishman.” (replace “English” with appropriate colonial ruler).

In this lecture, Dr. Arghya Sengupta will explore Gandhi’s core constitutional ideals of the duties of citizens and community-based governance, and the making of the Indian Constitution between 1946 and 1950. In interrogating the frameworks that underpin constitution-making in India, he aims to unravel common lessons for Global South constitution-making more generally.