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Working a Democratic Constitution: The Indian Experience. By GRANVILLE AUSTIN. New Delhi and New York: Oxford University Press, 1999- xvii, 771 pp. Rs 1250.
Granville Austin's earlier volume The Indian Constitution: Cornerstone of a Nation published in 1966 (Oxford: Clarendon Press), described the work of the Constituent Assembly and recounted early experiences under the constitution which was adopted in 1950. The present volume carries the story down to the time of Mrs. Gandhi's assassination in 1984. If the first volume became authoritative because of the care and thoroughness of its scholarship, then the present volume is entitled to the same status for the period that it covers. It is longer and richer in detail than the first volume. Eventually, it may be hoped, there will be a third volume, bringing the account down to the present day. In writing the present volume, the author has had access to important unpublished materials and has interviewed many of the persons who played crucial roles in the events that he recounts. Austin has lived in India for considerable periods of time over many years, so he is able to render nuanced judgments regarding the intricate network of causes of the events that he describes and the motives of those involved.
Working a Democratic Constitution: The Indian Experience is hard to categorize. It is a book about Indian constitutional law as it developed over a period of thirty-five years. Although the author is not a lawyer and disclaims legal expertise, the fact of the matter is that he has mastered a large body of legal materials-constitutional provisions, statutes, and judicial decisions-and has become thoroughly familiar with the ideas and doctrines in which they deal. Working a Democratic Constitution is also a book of political science, as it insightfully expounds the theories of governance, sometimes conflicting, that are to be found not only in the constitution but also in the minds of those who used, and opposed the use of, state power during the first thirty-five years of independence. It is also a book about politics, as it describes...