Articles for category: Indian Constitutionalism in the Last Decade

Reimagining Indian Federalism

As India’s new dominant party system coalesced after 2014, the country entered a phase of centralisation. India has always had federalism with a strong centre, but from the late 1980s to the mid-2010s, political and economic regionalism and national coalition governments encompassing national and regional parties produced an appearance of deepening federalisation. Since 2014, when the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) became the first party in over 25 years to win an outright parliamentary majority, the twin pillars of political centralisation under a dominant party system and economic concentration, have once again drawn attention to the contested nature of India’s federal contract.

7. April 2024

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Civil Society and its Engagement with the Constitution

The Indian Constitution is as much a culmination of the ideas of the freedom movement against colonial powers as it is of the achievement of a social revolution through law. Our Constitution, which was inspired by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, thus, not only provided for political freedom from foreign rule and established a democratic republic, but it also provided a road map to undo the deeply entrenched hierarchies, inequalities, and social exclusions in our society and therefore for a social transformation. Much of the civil society interventions of the last seven decades have been to work for redeeming the promise of the constitution inside and outside courts.

5. April 2024

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Indian Constitutionalism in the Last Decade

Having been governed by Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for the last ten years, India will hold elections in the following weeks. We use this moment as an opportunity to reflect upon the last decade and assess how the Hindu nationalists have impacted Indian constitutionalism. To do so, we have asked legal scholars and practitioners to reflect upon the developments in particular areas of Indian constitutional law over the last decade. This blog post will provide an introduction to the symposium.

5. April 2024

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