Resumen de India’s Founding Moment:: The Constitution of a Most Surprising Democracy

Rajeev Kadambi

• This work on the Indian Constitution and the intellectual history of modern India foregrounds an important argument about understanding Indian democracy through the founders of the Constitution. It argues that the founding moment of the Constitution created democracy through democratic politics. The author makes a compelling case for seeing the Constitution as a pedagogical project that aimed to create citizens for self-rule. The book covers the circulation of ideas and thinkers ranging from Gandhi, Nehru, and Ambedkar on the period spanning India’s transition to political freedom. The book gives close attention to elite deliberations of the Constituent Assembly entrusted with the legal and political framework for India. While there are extant accounts on Indian democracy as well as narratives on India’s constitution making,1 the unique contribution of this book lies in not seeing these two strands of scholarship as distinct but as a correspondence of ideas. Through this book,...