Shaped by competing visions: A frank look at the Constitution

Crisp and cogent, Gautam Bhatia's The Indian Constitution analyses modern India's foundational document through the lens of power

- Parijata Bharadwaj

In his latest book, Gautam Bhatia takes us on an illuminating journey into the history, text, design, and power map of the Indian Constitution, which has been molded, at different points, by the judiciary. Shorn of veneration, it analyzes the constitution through the lens of power. It is from this vantage point that the author studies developments between 2019 and 2024, including the removal of the special status of Jammu and Kashmir, the toppling of state governments under opposition rule, the mass expulsion of Members of Parliament, and the use of the Enforcement Directorate and the UAPA to quell dissent.

He then concludes that these are not sudden aberrations. Bhatia's core arguments rest on the following propositions: "First, that the Indian Constitution, like any other constitution, is a terrain of contestation between different and competing visions of power; secondly, that the Constitution has been characterized by a 'centralizing drift' towards a statist, homogenous, and executive-oriented vision of power at the cost of a more decentralized, plural, and distributed vision; and thirdly, this 'centralizing drift' is both embedded in the Constitution's text and design, and has been accelerated through the judgments of the Supreme Court at various 'inflection points' in our constitutional history."