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

'Arriving as it does on the 75th anniversary of Independence, Founding Mothers is an important corrective to standard accounts of India's constitution-making. Achyut Chetan's 'invitation to unforget' the mothers of the Republic bears the promise of unsettling conventional understandings of the Indian Constitution. Chetan joins a select group of scholars who seek to provoke new research into neglected histories and unsung actors at a time when constitutionalism is imperilled across the globe. Combining archival research with contextualized interpretive analysis, Chetan's bracing prose keeps the reader engaged in the arduous efforts undertaken by these remarkable Indians. Its specific adoption of a feminist lens provides an added layer of nuance to the project of nation-building and constitution-making that was simultaneously undertaken within the Indian Constituent Assembly.' Arun K. Thiruvengadam, National Law School, Bangalore

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]