Understanding Drafting Committee And The Making Of The Constitution

The Constitution of India which embraces the principles of equality, liberty and fraternity and lays down the fundamental rights and duties of Indians has a very intriguing story behind its formation. The Constitution which gives a dominion status to India has faced many hurdles, debates and discussions during its formation. The Constitution of India is the result of hard work and rigorous research over three years. 

The Drafting Committee which was formed to make the constitution looked into all the minute details and created a constitution that provides equal rights to everyone. Read this article to know the interesting story to know how the constituent assembly members were selected, the formation of the drafting committee and what things were considered while drafting the constitution.

Formation of the Constituent Assembly

The Constituent Assembly is the reason why the Drafting Committee exists. The main objective of this committee was to draft the Constitution of India which gives the country a dominion status. In 1934 M.N Roy who was an Indian Marxist revolutionary,  political theorist and philosopher gave the idea of the constituent assembly. 

The Indian National Congress fine-tuned this idea and made it an official demand in 1935. Although this demand was rejected by the Britishers.

C. Rajagopalachari who was an independence activist raised his voice for the formation of the constituent assembly on 15 November 1939. This demand was accepted by the Britishers in August 1940.

Structure of the Constituent Assembly

In 1946 the cabinet mission came to India with the aim to transfer the power from the British Raj to the Indian political leadership. Under this mission, the elections for the constituent assembly were held for the first time. The constituent assembly members were elected by the provincial assemblies. The elections were in the form of a single, transferable-vote system.

The final structure of the constituent assembly is as follows:

• 292 members acted as the representatives of the provinces.
• 93 represented the princely states.
• 4 members were positioned as the chief commissioner provinces of Ajmer-Merwara, Delhi,  Coorg and British Baluchistan.

So, the total strength of the assembly was 389. Although after this election the planning of the constitution didn’t go smoothly because the Muslim League refused to cooperate with the Indian National Congress. Riots between Hindu-Muslim began and the Muslim League demanded its own constituent assembly for Muslims which are residing in India.

At that time partition between India and Pakistan was made and then India got independence on 15 August 1947. On 9 December 1946, the constituent assembly met for the first time and again on 14 August 1947 they reassembled as a sovereign body. Due to the partition new elections for the constituent assembly were made and the members were reduced to 299. Dr Rajendra Prasad was the President of the constituent assembly.

The Drafting Committee

To avoid any kind of mismanagement and to speed up the process of constitution-making the constituent assembly made several committees. Among numerous committees, the drafting committee played a major role in the making of the constitution. Dr B.R. Ambedkar, who is regarded as the ‘Father of the Constitution was the Chairman of the drafting committee. Apart from him, there were 6 other members:

1. N Madhava Rau
2. T T Krishnamachari
3. Dr K M Munshi
4. Syed Mohammad Saadullah
5. N Gopalaswamy Ayyangar;
6. Alladi Krishnaswamy Ayyar

Making of the Constitution

B. N. Rau served as a constitutional advisor to the Government of India. He took a tour of western democracies and studied various constitutions to get an idea of how other countries are drafting their own constitution. B.N. Rau were understanding the core principles of the constitution. He made a series of notes that were sent to the committee which helped them draft an effective constitution. Dr B.R. Ambedkar also studied the constitutions of about 60 countries. 

Many members preferred the European-American constitutional structure. While other members wanted to draft a constitution keeping in mind India’s own indigenous traditions. Due to the second world war, there was a massive shortage of food grains and the country witnessed a downfall in economic and social growth. All this made the committee think about national government control.

Further, the partition and bloodshed everywhere pointed out that the provincial law is weak. Apart from this the communist rebellion in Telangana highlighted the need to have a strong central government that can manage external defence and internal security.

Now, the structure of the political system was influenced by the European and American models.  The decisions taken by the assembly were influenced by numerous concerns like economic growth, communal violence during partition, industrial productivity, growth of agriculture and massive flow of refugees.

The implementation of fundamental rights of the citizens and Directive Principles of State Policy also became part of the constitution. In total six fundamental rights were decided: the Right to Equality, the Right to Freedom, the Right against Exploitation, the Right to Freedom of Religion, Cultural and Educational Rights, the Right to 

Property, and the Right to Constitutional Remedies.  The Directive Principles made sure that the country would be free from social coercion. The assembly paid special attention to the rights of the communities. Apart from the above mention things the assembly had gone through so many heated discussions, and debates and looked into each minute detail while making the constitution.

Enactment and Enforcement of the Constitution

It took three years to draft the constitution, holding eleven sessions over a 165-day period. All the hard work which was done in these three years showed its fruitful result on November 26 1949, when the constitution was adopted with a Preamble, 395 Articles, and 8 Schedules. On January 26 1950, the Constitution of India came into effect. Currently, the constitution has 470 articles which are grouped into 25 parts, 12 schedules and 5 appendices.

Conclusion

As you can see a lot of work and research has been done while drafting the constitution. India is a big country with so many cultures and religions. The committee took around 3 years to draft the constitution because they wanted to make sure that every culture and religion is respected. At the same time, equal rights and opportunities are provided to every Indian.