Discuss the dominant external and internal influences in the framing of the Indian Constitution. (2008)
The Constituent Assembly borrowed openly, and B. R. Ambedkar saw nothing to hide in that. A constitution framed “so late in the day”, he argued on 4 November 1948, could be new only in its variations fitted to the country’s needs. The useful question is therefore not whether India borrowed, but which forces chose and reshaped what it borrowed.
External influences
| Source | What it supplied |
|---|---|
| Government of India Act 1935 | Federal scheme, three lists, Governor, emergency powers, much administrative detail |
| Britain | Parliamentary executive, cabinet responsibility, rule of law, writs |
| United States | Fundamental rights, judicial review, an impeachable President |
| Ireland | Directive Principles; mode of electing the President |
| Canada, Australia | A federation with a strong centre; the Concurrent List, trade and commerce |
| Weimar Germany | Suspension of rights during emergency |
| France, USSR | Liberty, equality, fraternity; the ideal of economic justice and planning |
The post-war order also left a mark: Article 51 on international peace echoes the UN Charter, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted in December 1948, while drafting was under way. B. N. Rau, the Constitutional Adviser, studied foreign constitutions at first hand and on Felix Frankfurter’s warning steered the Assembly away from American due process in Article 21.
Internal influences
- The national movement: its programme ran from the rights of the Nehru Report (1928) to the Karachi Resolution (1931), and it supplied universal adult franchise, secularism, and the Assembly’s leaders and legitimacy.
- Gandhian thought: village panchayats (Article 40), cottage industry, prohibition and cow protection entered Part IV. The village republic that Shriman Narayan Agarwal’s Gandhian Constitution for Free India (1946) proposed was, however, set aside.
- Social reform and Ambedkar: the anti-caste struggle produced Article 17, reserved seats and the non-discrimination clauses.
- Partition and communal violence: separate electorates were abolished, and the Union Powers Committee reversed the weak-centre scheme of the Cabinet Mission.
- Princely integration and diversity: Part B states, Article 370, the Fifth and Sixth Schedules and the compromise on official language.
- Nehruvian socialism: Article 39(b)–(c) on distributing material resources and preventing concentration of wealth.
Which dominated?
- Form was external, substance internal. The method was selection and modification: foreign models supplied tools, and Indian purposes decided which tools were used and how they were altered.
- Madhav Khosla (India’s Founding Moment, 2020) shows that codification, centralisation and adult suffrage were answers to an Indian problem: building democracy where colonial theory said it could not exist.
- The critics dissent. K. Hanumanthaiya heard “an English band” rather than the veena, and Gandhians regretted a Constitution built from the top down. The weight of the 1935 Act supports them on administrative continuity.
- The internal core has held. In Dr. Balram Singh v. Union of India (November 2024) the Supreme Court upheld “socialist” and “secular” in the Preamble, observing that both ideals already ran through the original text.
Conclusion
The 1935 Act was the dominant external influence and the national movement, sharpened by partition, the dominant internal one. The second governed the first. Borrowed machinery was fitted to purposes India’s own history had set, which makes the Constitution adapted rather than derivative.