Question

Explain the difficulties faced by the Constitution makers in India.

Answer 1

Hey friend here is your answer .

The drafting of the Indian Constitution was an arduous task as we were a new born democracy in the face of turmoil. Delving into a bit of history will present a clearer picture. After almost 200 years of being under the British rule, democracy was an unknown concept. Previously, there were no demarcated ‘states’ as we have it today, rather there were princely states and territories. people were subjects of these individual states and not citizens of a national whole. Also, the partition of India was largely on religious grounds rather than being purely on administrative grounds. The post partition mayhem is etched in Indian history. Several factors made the Constitution drafting process an arduous task.

Firstly, following the partition of India several princely states were given a choice of either staying with India or joining the nation of Pakistan. The princely states of Hyderabad, Jammu and Kashmir, among others were given this choice. Had the princely states decide to accede to Pakistan, the history would have been entirely different. The Constituent Assembly were faced with the particular problem of drafting a uniform document acceptable to all the units of the post 1947 India.The existing statutes like the Indian Councils Act (1909), the Government of India Act (1919), the Government of India Act (1935) and the Indian Independence Act (1947) had laid down guidelines but framing a document based entirely for an independent India was not an easy task.The vast cultural, lingual, caste, regional and other differences did not help. The idea was to prepare a document which would be binding across the length and breadth of the nation. The existing differences gave rise to the fear of sub-nationalistic and separatist tendencies. The present day states of Goa, Sikkim, Daman and Diu (UT) were still not independent territories.The communal discord following the partition was destructive to the spirit of democracy on which the Constitution was pivoted. The distinct personal laws and such margins for all religions were allowed to keep the secular fabric of India intact. The concept of communal electorates was however done away with. As predicted by Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, Article 44 of the Constitution directing a Uniform Civil Code for India still remains a bone of contention among religious groups and political parties.The ideas of citizenship, federalism, State, Parliament, Judiciary, Legislature and Executive had to be developed from the grass root level. The Constituent Assembly sought inspiration from the Constitutions of several other functioning democracies of the world. Our Constitution is therefore known as ‘a bag of borrowings’. It wasn’t easy to sieve out the most relevant and beneficial policies to incorporate in the Indian Constitution.

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