Project
work of
Constitutional law
Topic- Book Review of
THE INDIAN CONSTITUTION -CORNERSTONE OF
NATION BY
GRANVILLE AUSTIN
Submitted to- Nasir Sir
Submitted by-Saba Afreen Gi7453
16BALLB76
Group 3rd
Book Review
Granville Austin - The Indian Constitution - Cornerstone of a Nation - Oxford
University Press 1999.
“The classical work of Granville Austin is a must for every judge, lawyer,
historian, researcher and other persons interested in the constitutional history of
India.” Soli J. Sorabjee, Attorney General of India
“A must for libraries and for serious students of the subcontinent .”
Judith Brown, Beit prof. Of Commonwealth History, Oxford University
“Austin’s deserved high reputation for commitment to the most exacting
standards of scholarship and perceptive and scrupulous fair analysis on India’s
Constitution and politics, was established with the publication of his book The
Indian Constitution.Over the years the book became classic. The reputation is
consolidated now with the appearance of his long awaited and truly monumental
Working a Democratic Constitution, a book that deserves to rank among the
half dozen or so most affairs of India written over the last two or three decades.”
KM de Silva, Executive Director of the International Centre for Ethnic
Studies Kandy/Colombo, Sri Lanka
About the author
Granville Seward Austin (1927 – 6 July 2014) was an American historian and a
leading authority on the Indian Constitution.
Austin received most of his early education at Norwich, Vermont, USA. Austin
graduated from Dartmouth College with a BA in American Literature. He then
earned a doctorate in Modern Indian History from Oxford University.
He worked as a journalist/photographer and later served with the U. S.
Information Service, Department of State, Department of Health, Education and
Welfare, and on the staff of a U. S. senator. He has held fellowships or grants
from St. Antony's College, Oxford, the Ford Foundation, the Fulbright Program,
the American Institute of Indian Studies, the Rockefeller Foundation, the
Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation,
and the Institute of Current World Affairs.
Austin is the author of two seminal political histories of the constitution of India,
The Indian Constitution: Cornerstone of a Nation and Working a Democratic
Constitution: The Indian Experience.
Granville Austin died on 6 July 2014.In 2011, in recognition for his writing on the
framing and working of the Indian Constitution, Granville Austin was awarded a
Padma Shri award, the fourth highest civilian honor of the Republic of
India.National Translation Mission of the Ministry of Human Resource
Development of the Government of India has selected The Indian Constitution:
Cornerstone of a Nation for translation into Indian languages. The book has
already been published in Telugu, Marathi, Punjabi and Odia languages.
The Indian Constitution, Cornerstone of a nation-
This book will certainly reveal to you to be the most effective book. This book by
Granville Austin will certainly be your ideal option for far better reading book. You
can take the book as a source making much better principle.
As understood, book The Indian Constitution i s well known as the home
window to open up the world, the life and also new people. The author
Granville Austin leaves behind him a treasured legacy of scholarly analysis on
the Indian constitution, which he described as, “first and foremost a social
document,” one that embodied the objectives of a “social revolution.”
Reviewing his work Upendra Baxi, Professor of Law in Development at the
University of Warwick, United Kingdom,wrote that the volume, “provides the
most comprehensive, insightful and balanced account of the work of the
Constituent Assembly which drafted the Indian Constitution in the brief span
of time from December, 1946 to December, 1949 – a time of strife, turbulence
and ferment not merely in India but in the entire world.”
Including a second, seminal book, ‘Working a Democratic Constitution: The
Indian Experience,’ Professor Austin’s definitive studies of constitution-making in
India are said to have effectively displaced much of the pseudo-literature on the
subject.
His writings have sometimes been cited by the Indian Supreme Court and are
said to have significantly informed legal thinking, jurisprudence and the evolution
of Indian constitutional law.
This book is a political history of framing of the Constitution of how past and
present aims and events,ideals and personalities moved the members of the
constituent assembly to write the constitution as they did. It has been called a
political history to distinguish it from the many volumes having more legalistic
approach. Several of these have been valuable contribution in this field but they
have not contributed greatly to our knowledge of India in the year since world
-war 2. The author has intended to do this in some measure. It is hoped that the
book will provide the general reader with some insight in to the political bases
and motivation of Indian life and at the same time provide the close student of
Indian affairs with the first account bases on manuscript sources of the working
of Constituent assembly.
To Granville Austin, ’’The Indian Constitution is first and foremost a social
document”.The Constitution is an organic instrument embodying the social
values and aspirations of those who are to be governed by it. It is the blue-print
of a new social order based on justice, freedom, equality and human dignity. It
has established political democracy and imposed on the State the obligation to
transform itself into social and economic democracy through peaceful means and
Rule of Law. Since the commencement of the Constitution,the guarantees of
certain valuable rights and privileges in chapters III and IV of the Constitution
have opened new avenues for the realisation o hopes and aspirations of the
people. To our labourers, the Directive Principles represent a charter of
economic freedoms. It lays down the socio-economic rights considered as
necessary ingredients towards attaining good life.During the last two decades the
Indian economy has made significant progress.The industrial base of the
economy has also advanced considerably. Laws and institutions have been
developed to provide larger opportunities to our labourers for their economic
betterment and social amelioration. Despite this fact, i t is believed in some
quarters that the Constitution has not been able to fulfil all the rising expectations
of the workers. The object of the present study is to determine objectively the
impact of the Constitution on the working and living conditions of industrial labour
in India. The workers are the main instruments of the economic progress of the
country , and on this progress rests in no small measure the social and cultural
progress of the entire Indian community. It seems, therefore , quite legitimate to
enquire how far the State has been able to fulfill the promises made to the
workers in the body of the Constitution . The introductory part of this thesis deals
with the subject in its historical perspective.This is followed by an analysis of
some basic concepts, such as the Welfare State, the Socialistic Pattern of
Society and Social Justice.The first chapter studies the concept of Constituent
assembly.
The second chapter examines the two revolution national and social. With
independence the national revolution would be completed but the social
revolution must go on. The first task of the assembly is to free india through new
Constitution, to freed the starving people and clothe the naked masses and to
give every indian the full opportunity to develop himself according to his capacity.
Everyone should be able to enjoy the three basic freedoms, freedom of speech
and expression, freedom of assembly and freedom of association, which are so
essential for the realisation of their socio economic rights. The enquiry reveals
that labour has been able to enjoy the first two of these freedoms in a fair
measure. But the State has not yet been able to make labour fully enjoy the third
freedom as the right to form trade unions has lost its significance in the absence
of a law of recognition. The third chapter is about fundamental rights and
directive principles.
It seeks to assess the extent to which the State has been able to secure the 'right
to work'. The argument that labour has not been able to enjoy this right because
there is wide prevalence of large-scale industrial unemployment in India, arising
out of retrenchment, closure and lay-off, has been critically reviewed. The point
that the State should ensure job security instead of taking measures for providing
insurance during the period of industrial unemployment, has also been
thoroughly discussed. Directive principles however one finds even clearer
statement of social revolution.
The fourth chapter deals with the right to living wage which is essential to labour
for its material advancement and spiritual development. The meaning of the
concept of living wage has been clearly stated and the enquiry has brought out
the fact that what the State has been able to secure to the workers in organised
industries is not living wage but minimum living wage. The workers in
unorganised sector are still groaning under poverty -level wages. It has "been
argued that the State should provide minimum living wage to these workers
before securing need-based minimum wage to the organised workers who are in
a much better position.The fifth chapter is about the executive. Members of
constituent assembly were committed to frame Democratic Constitution for india.
It examines the extent to which the State has been able to ensure income
security to labour through social security measures. The enquiry shows that the
State has been provided partial relief to labour during sickness, disablement, old
age and maternity. There is still enough scope for improvement in these
areas.The State is required to launch a comprehensive scheme of social security
and bring within its fold all workers of both the organised and unorganised
industries.The sixth chapter is concerned with the legislature through popular
government. The seventh chapter deals with the judiciary and the social
revolution. Judiciary was to be an arm of social revolution. Another following
chapters deals with the federal character of the Constitution with the distribution
of revenues. 11 chapter concerns with the amending process of the Constitution
with its dual nature of flexibility as well as rigidity. Chapter 12 deals with the
need of choosing one national language as to promote the integrity and unity
among the citizens with the diversity of languages among them.
The constituent assembly brought into being by the will of the indian people in
the last scene of the last Act with the help of the British drafted the constitution
for Indian in the years from December 1946 to December 1949. In the assembly
Indians for the first time in a century and a half were responsible for their own
governance. They were at last free to shape their long proclaimed aims and
aspirations and to create the national institutions that would facilitate the
fulfillment of these aims. The members of the Constituent assembly realised
could not by themselves make a new India but they intended to light up the way.
Rajeev Dhawan in his book review of Sarbani Sen,Popular Sovereignty And
Democratic Transformation : The Constitution of India has written:
“Granville Austin’s book The Indian Constitution, Cornerstone was published in
1966. This had an important effect on scholars of Constitution making. Austin
had scoured through the records which nobody had bothered to look at earlier.
He has examined the process of making of the Constitution as a whole. Austin has
held the field-grandly followe by his Working a Democratic Constitution, The
Indian Experience 1999.”
There have been studies of legal and legalistic aspects of Indian Constitution but
apart from the admirable collection of writings of Sri BN Rao (B N Rav, India’s
Constitution in making ed,B,Shiva Rao.Bombay,Orient longmans 1960),
there are virtually no account of how the constitution makers went to work. Dr
Austin was able to gain access to a large and varied numbers of unpublished
documents including the correspondence of Dr Rajendra Prasad. He has
produced which usually termed as ‘exhaustive study’. Dr Austin evokes as a
classical picture of the fathers of the nation deliberating over the basic issues and
creating a constitution as a act of concerted will.
According to Austin the constituent assembly followed no coherent scheme for
keeping records in public of its historic meetings so it was through persistent
legwork that Austin gained access to primary resources. Austin wrote to and met
with P M Jawaharlal Nehru who gave him access to private papers of constituent
assembly and records of assembly’s debates.
Watching Nehru in his natural habitat convinced Austin that Indian democracy
was no fad. It had strong constitutional foundation in law, politics and in the
public imagination. Its a point he made emphatically in Cornerstone. This set
Austin apart from most western commentators,who seriously doubted modern
india’s viability.
Conclusion
After many years of hand research and digging out thousands of documents from
archives and interviewing concerned personalities, this volume provides a
detailed and authentic version of incidents that unfolded in the Indian political
scenario and of the various individual concerned.
This history of indian polity from its inception in 1950 to the end of Mrs Gandhi’s
regime in 1985,is being covered extensively and meticulously in every detail in
the well researched volume by the American civil servant Granville Austin. The
survey doesn't restrict itself to the 38 years window because to quote Austin
himself “constitutional development neither began in 1950 nor ceased in
1985” and he provides enough background before its inauguration and peeps
back at important Constitutional development after 1985 as well.
Bibliography
● Austin Granville, The Indian Constitution, Cornerstone of a nation. Oxford
university press 1998
● Newspaper - The indian express
● The Times of India
● Journals of Indian Law Institute
