How Indian is our Constitution?

On the birth anniversary of Babasaheb Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar, it’s only fitting to ask: is the Indian Constitution, drafted by Babasaheb, a truly Indian document? At first glance, the question might seem bizarre or even absurd. Babasaheb himself might not have had the slightest interest in answering such a thing.

But today, it has become essential to answer it. Because the forces attacking the Constitution no longer dare to attack Babasaheb directly. They have come to terms with the political necessity of garlanding his statue. They have learnt the hard way that any talk of amending the Constitution does not sit well with the people.

So, the game has changed. The Constitution is still being paid lip service, even as a subtle yet dangerous campaign is underway to undermine its legitimacy.

The most lethal weapon in this campaign is this question: is the Indian Constitution truly Indian? By branding the Constitution a ‘foreign import’, many birds can be killed with one stone. It lays the groundwork for a long-term plan to alter the Constitution.

It opens the door to smuggling in all those regressive ideas the Constituent Assembly had junked. And it quietly chips away at Babasaheb’s intellectual and political legacy. The ones raising this question offer specious arguments.

They say several provisions of the Indian Constitution were lifted from the Government of India Act of 1935, which the British drafted. They point out that many sections of the Constitution were inspired by European and American models — fundamental rights were borrowed from the US Constitution and the Directive Principles came from Ireland. Babasaheb Ambedkar and most other Constitution-makers were influenced by Western philosophy.

If ‘Indian’ were to mean a document untouched by Western concepts or institutions, the Indian Constitution isn’t ‘Indian’ — and couldn’t possibly have been. Today, across the globe, the formal structure of the state is built around democratic institutions like the legislature, executive and judiciary.

If those are considered foreign constructs, then pretty much every constitution in the world is foreign. By that logic, the very idea of constitutional democracy is foreign. Not just democracy, our language, clothes, even our food would all be ‘foreign’.

The problem, really, lies in this narrow definition of ‘Indianness’. To assess whether the Constitution is Indian, we need to ask the kind of questions we ask about Indian cinema. It would be ridiculous to call Indian cinema ‘foreign’ because the art and technology of filmmaking came from abroad.

The form may be imported, but the soul, the emotions, the storytelling—they’re unmistakably Indian. Similarly, the Indian-ness of the Constitution cannot be judged by whether it used Western phrases or borrowed institutional frameworks.

The real questions are: Were the ideas that were shaped using this modern constitutional vocabulary Indian in essence? Were democratic institutions adapted to the Indian context? Was the underlying philosophy of the Constitution rooted in India’s intellectual traditions?

Once we frame the question this way, we begin to grasp the Constitution’s Indian soul. In this deeper sense, the Constitution was not written in just two years — it took a hundred years to come into being. It was not born of a single person, party or ideology.

This document is the distilled wisdom of India’s modern political thought. It represents an ancient civilisation grappling with modernity, trying to find what in its past is worth keeping and what must be discarded. Through this churn, Indian society embraced the best of its past and present, while rejecting its regressive elements.

Through this ideological tussle, India crafted a homegrown version of modernity — and our Constitution is an expression of that uniquely Indian modernity.

The Preamble to the Indian Constitution enshrines the core moral code of the Indian republic. The words may seem borrowed from Western political philosophy, but we redefined them for our own context. ‘Liberty’, for instance, does not mean unrestrained individualism—it means freedom gained within and through the community.

‘Equality’ is born of compassion. ‘Fraternity’ springs from the idea of coexistence and friendship. Babasaheb himself had said — don’t think I borrowed liberty, equality and fraternity from France; I learned them from my teacher, Gautam Buddha.

In the same way, the institutional framework of the Indian Constitution moulds Western democratic structures to suit our needs and vision. We didn’t copy the European idea of a single, homogenous nation state — we built institutions to reflect the rich diversity of Bharat.

Instead of adopting the American model of federalism, we created a ‘Union of States’ to suit Indian realities. Instead of the more rigid French idea of secularism, we adopted the principle of ‘sarva dharma sambhav’ — equal respect for all religions — tailored to our multi-faith society.

The constitutional resolve to eradicate untouchability and dismantle the caste system did not come from the West either. It came from our own sant tradition — a spiritual and social revolt against entrenched discrimination.

You could say the Indian-ness of our Constitution is a bit like the much-loved bread pakora. We took bread, a foreign import, dunked it in a thick desi batter, and turned it into a dish bursting with Indian flavour. That’s Indian genius for you.