The Constitution Catalogues
As India marks 75 years of adopting its Constitution, it becomes clearer that the Constitution is far more than a legal document. The Constitution reflects, inspires, and interacts with society beyond courts and legislatures—finding powerful expression in art, literature, theatre, cinema, and poetry. These interactions vary across regions and communities, as seen in diverse literary works that interpret, celebrate, critique, or contest the Constitution through lived experiences.
Despite this rich landscape, there is no curated resource that systematically documents this multilingual and multidisciplinary engagement with the Constitution. This project seeks to fill that gap by compiling library catalogues of constitutional literature across Indian languages.
We began this project to trace how people across India interpret, creatively express and find meaning through the Constitution in their everyday lives, both regionally and contextually. Between July and September 2025, we witnessed these interactions firsthand. We engaged with approximately 300 individuals and organisations, gathering and recording diverse material that reflected how the Constitution is interpreted, narrated, performed, and shared in various settings.
To carry out this exercise, we focused on six languages Kannada, Hindi, English, Bangla, Tamil, and Marathi. The fieldwork was accordingly carried out in different cities in Karnataka, Bihar, New Delhi, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, and Maharashtra.
The Constitution Catalogues bring together all literature identified during fieldwork that was produced, published, created, or performed in the period 2015–2025. A few pre-2015 materials were also included because they are foundational to the regional or thematic discourse, significantly influenced works from 2015–2025, or were revised, published, circulated, or performed after 2015.
These catalogue entries are illustrative rather than exhaustive, pointing to a much larger landscape of constitutional thought and creativity. We aim to keep expanding this resource, shaping it into a living, evolving archive for researchers, students, artists, and communities.
English Catalogue
Hindi Catalogue
Kannada Catalogue
Bengali Catalogue
Tamil Catalogue
Marathi Catalogue
Filed Under
About the Authors
Mayuri is a Milon K Banerji Senior Resident Fellow at Charkha, Vidhi’s Constitutional Law Centre. Currently, she is pursuing a Ph.D from Gujarat National Law University. She obtained her LL.M in Constitutional and Administrative law from Gujarat National Law University in 2017 with a R B Mehta Gold Medal. She graduated with a B.A. LL.B. (Hons.) from Amity Law School, Lucknow in 2016. Her area of interest includes constitutional law with current research focus on areas of federalism and local government. She regularly writes research papers for various journals, national & international seminars, conferences, etc. Prior to joining Vidhi, she worked as an Assistant Professor of Law.
Anshul Dalmia is a Research Fellow with the Charkha Team (Centre for Constitutional Law). He recently graduated in 2024 from the University of Oxford with the Bachelor of Civil Law degree as a KC Mahindra Scholar wherein he received the Oxford Law Faculty Prize for the course on 'Constitutionalism in Asia'. He has also completed his undergraduate degree (BA LLB (Hons.)) from the WB National University of Juridical Sciences in 2017 as a gold medallist (Rank 1) in the year 2022.
Jwalika is a Research Fellow in the Research Director's Office at the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, Delhi. She holds a Bachelor of Civil Law (LLM-equivalent) degree from the University of Oxford and a BA LLB (Hons) from the National Law School of India University, Bangalore. Her areas of interest include family law, equality and anti-discrimination law, and human rights, with a special emphasis on gender and sexuality. She is on the Board of Directors at OutLawed India, a not-for-profit organisation working to improve access to law and justice. At Vidhi, she has been providing legislative drafting assistance to various Ministries, Departments, and Authorities of the Central Government and various State Governments.
Navami Krishnamurthy is a Research Fellow for the Founder’s Office at Vidhi Karnataka. Her research interests lie in the areas of constitutional law, criminal and gender justice and their interplay with society. Before joining Vidhi, Navami worked under Senior Advocate Dr. Aditya Sondhi at his Bangalore chambers and engaged in constitutional, criminal and civil matters as well as research in the areas of criminal and constitutional law. She holds an undergraduate degree (BA LLB (Hons.) Programme) in law from OP Jindal Global University, Sonepat. Her hobbies include travelling, watching true-crime documentaries, horror movies and reading.
