About the Book
The Constitution of India embodies a moment of profound transformation—one in which the subjects of an alien, colonial regime became the free citizens of a republic. Yet, this is the story of constitutions the world over. The Indian Constitution was, however, transformative in a second sense as well: it sought a thorough reconstruction of State and society itself.
The Transformative Constitution is an attempt to understand—and to give primacy to—this original transformative vision of the Constitution. Gautam Bhatia interprets India’s founding document in a way which is faithful to its text, structure, and history, and above all to its overarching commitment to political and social transformation.
He picks out nine cases—and analyses their judgements in detail in the context of seven decades’ worth of jurisprudence—to show how they advance the core principles of equality, fraternity, and liberty enshrined in it. This is a treatise that presents a new way of reading the Constitution as India approaches the seventieth anniversary of its adoption.
The book will be released by Justice S Ravindra Bhat – Sitting Judge, High Court of Delhi.
About the Author
Gautam Bhatia graduated from the National Law School of India University in 2011. He read for the BCL and the MPhil at the University of Oxford (on a Rhodes scholarship), and the LLM at Yale Law School. He practiced law for four years in New Delhi, was visiting faculty at various Law Schools, and is presently reading for a D.Phil in Law at the University of Oxford. He has been part of legal teams involved in contemporary constitutional cases, such as the right to privacy case, the Section 377 challenge, and the Aadhaar challenge.
About the Panellists
Usha Ramanathan works on the jurisprudence of law, poverty and rights. She researches, writes and speaks on issues that include the nature of law, Bhopal Gas Disaster, mass displacement, eminent domain, manual scavenging, civil liberties including the death penalty, beggary, criminal law, custodial institutions, the environment, judicial process. She has been tracking, and engaging with, the UID project and has written, and debated extensively, on the subject. Her work draws heavily upon non-governmental experience in its encounters with the state, a 6 year stint with a law journal (Supreme Court Cases) as reporter from the Supreme Court, and engaging with matters of public policy. She is a regular speaker at various universities, that have included MIT, Yale in the US, York, Osborne, Ottawa and Queens in Canada, SOAS and Essex in the UK, Humboldt in Germany and many universities in India.
Seema Chishti has been in journalism for more than two and a half decades. She is the Deputy Editor at The Indian Express. Prior to this, she was with the BBC and Hindustan Times Television. Along with two of her co-authors, she has put together a story of independent India through hindi film songs. The book is called Note By Note, The India Story (1947-2017).
Shankar Gopalakrishnan is a writer and organiser based out of Dehradun. He is affiliated with the Campaign for Survival and Dignity, a national platform of adivasi and forest dwellers’ organisations, and Chetna Andolan, a people’s organisation of the state of Uttarakhand. He has written about political economy, control over natural resources, hate politics, migration, workers’ issues, and other issues relating to social change.
Tea will be served at 6 p.m. RSVP for the event: Percy.Bharucha@harpercollins-india.com.
