Assembling India’s Constitution — Law & Democracy Network

Join the Law & Democracy Network for a rich discussion of Rohit De (Yale) and Ornit Shani's (Haifa) 2025 book, Assembling India’s Constitution: A New Democratic History. As described by the publisher:

In this paradigm-shifting history, two leading historians of India re-examine the making of the Indian constitution from the perspective of the country's people. In a departure from dominant approaches that foreground the framing of the text within the Constituent Assembly, Ornit Shani and Rohit De instead demonstrate how it was shaped by diverse publics across India and beyond. They reveal multiple, parallel constitution-making processes underway across the subcontinent, highlighting how individuals and groups transformed constitutionalism into a medium of struggle and a tool for transformation. De and Shani argue that the deep sense of ownership the public assumed over the constitution became pivotal to the formation, legitimacy and endurance of India's democracy against arduous challenges and many odds. In highlighting the Indian case as a model for thinking through constitution making in plural societies, this is a vital contribution to constitutional and democratic history.

Rohit De is a lawyer and historian of modern South Asia and focuses on the legal history of the Indian subcontinent and the common law world. As a legal historian he moves beyond asking what the law was; to what actors thought law was and how this knowledge shaped their quotidian tactics, thoughts and actions. In recent years, this has enabled his research to move beyond the political borders to South Asia to uncover transnational legal geographies of commerce, migration and rights across East Africa, Southeast Asia and the Caribbean.

His book A People’s Constitution: Law and Everyday Life in the Indian Republic (Princeton University Press, 2018) explores how the Indian constitution, despite its elite authorship and alien antecedents, came to permeate everyday life and imagination in India during its transition from a colonial state to a democratic republic. A People’s Constitution won the Willard C Hurst Prize for the Best Book on Socio-Legal History from the Law and Society Association, the Heyman Prize in the Humanities from Yale University, the sole Honorable Mention for the Peter Gonville Stein Prize from the American Society for Legal History and was a finalist for the Kamaladevi Chattopadhayay Prize from the New India Foundation. It is currently being translated into Hindi, Marathi, Tamil and Malayalam.

His second book, Assembling the Indian Constitution, coauthored with Ornit Shani, examines how thousands of ordinary Indians, read, deliberated, debated and substantially engaged with the anticipated constitution at the time of its writing.

Ornit Shani is a historian of Modern India who focuses on the history of India’s democracy. Her scholarship covers India’s constitution making, the establishment of its electoral democracy, first elections, citizenship, identity and caste politics, and the rise of Hindu nationalism.

Her book How India Became Democratic: Citizenship and the Making of the Universal Franchise (Cambridge University Press, 2018) explored how the preparation of the first list of voters on the basis of adult franchise in anticipation of the constitution institutionalisedprocedural equality for the purpose of authorising a government. Doing so in India’s deeply hierarchical and unequal society became key to its democratic state building and transformed the meaning of social existence in India. The book won the 2019 Kamaladevi ChattophadyayNew India Foundation Prize for the best book on modern India.

Her first book, Communalism, Caste, and Hindu Nationalism: The Violence in Gujarat (Cambridge University Press, 2007), analyzes the rise of Hindu nationalism from the 1980s, tracing its emergence to growing tensions among Hindus rather than to a deepening conflict between Hindus and Muslims.

Her third book, Assembling India’s Constitution: A New Democratic History (Cambridge University Press, 2025), co-authored with Rohit De, examines how thousands of ordinary Indians, read, deliberated, debated and substantially engaged with the anticipated constitution at the time of its writing.

Ornit Shani received her PhD from the University of Cambridge.

Rupavardhini Balakrishnan Raju recently completed a DPhil in Law on nationalism, language, and constitutional identity at the University of Oxford. Her broad research interests lie in the intersection of public law and politics, federalism, constitutional democracy, the civil service, and accountability institutions.

She was previously a Stipendiary Lecturer in Administrative Law at Trinity College, Oxford and has taught Constitutional Law and Administrative Law at various other colleges. She is the founding co-convenor of the Law and Democracy Network at the Faculty of Law, University of Oxford.

She has worked as a civil servant in the Government of India, and was the Director of the National Academy of Audit and Accounts, India where she trained newly recruited civil servants.