Founding Mothers of the Indian Republic
Gender Politics of the Framing of the Constitution

A work on women's involvement to drafting of India's Constitution, a contribution to understanding of the foundation of the republic.

Achyut Chetan (Author)

9781108832564, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 5 January 2023

400 pages
23.6 x 16.3 x 2.6 cm, 0.6 kg

'The book is, without doubt, a must-read for any researcher on Indian constitutionalism and on the feminist movement in India, as many of the principles and ideals on which the feminist movement has carried forward in India can be traced back to the stances of the founding mothers of the Indian Republic.' Alisha Dhingra, Jindal Global Law Review

The book begins with the momentous task of demolishing the prejudices attached with the phrase 'founding fathers' that has held an immense sway over constitutional interpretation. It shows that women members of the Indian Constituent Assembly had painstakingly co-authored a Constitution that embodied a moral imagination developed by years of feminist politics. It traces the genealogies of several constitutional provisions to argue that, without the interventions of these women framers, the Constitution would hardly have a much poorer document of rights and statecraft that it is. Situating these interventions in the larger trajectory of Indian feminism in which they are rooted, in the nationalist discourse with which they perpetually negotiated, and in the larger human rights discourse of the 1940s, the book shows that the women members of the Indian Constituent Assembly were much more than the 'founding mothers' of a republic.

Abbreviations
Preface
Acknowledgements
Epigraph
Introduction: Towards a feminist reading of the making of the Constitution
1. Against the shadow of the founding fathers: A minority report
2. In search of the missing mothers
3. Women's moral imaginary and constitutional politics: 1927-1946
4. Patterns of participation: women members in the Constituent Assembly
5. Writing the rights: Inscribing constitutional morality
6. Reformulating the 'woman's question': Challenging customs and traditions
7. After the framing
Conclusion: Remembering the founding mothers
Appendix: Texts and contexts of the framing: A timeline
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Constitutional & administrative law [LND], Gender & the law [LAQG], Constitution: government & the state [JPHC], Politics & government [JP], Society & culture: general [JF], History [HB]