You Must Know Your Constitution
Fali S. Narimanliterature, and it is also one of the longest. Dr Samuel Johnson had written
that none wished it longer than it is. The same is often said about India’s
written Constitution. As enacted in 1950, it contained 395 Articles (with a
glorious chapter on fundamental rights) together with an Appendix of Eight
Schedules, occupying in the Official Edition 251 printed pages (As now
amended, it has been recently described as “a 146,385 – word tome”!).
By October 1947, Constitutional Advisor, B. N. Rau, had prepared the
first draft of INDIA’s Constitution, and during two-and-a-half years of intense
debate and discussion in the Constituent Assembly, the Constitution of India
was ultimately finalised on 26 November 1949. But leading Commonwealth
historian of the time was not impressed! Delivering a lecture on India’s
Constitution at the University of Madras, in 1951, Sir Ivor Jennings
described it as: ‘Too long, too rigid, too prolix’, and said that the dominance
in the Constituent Assembly of lawyer-politicians had contributed to its
complexity! In fact, he characterised India’s Constitution as ‘a truly oriental
display of occidental constitutional devices.’ Harsh words!