{"id":4023,"date":"2019-08-14T07:11:07","date_gmt":"2019-08-14T07:11:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/0318da2.netsolhost.com\/pwarchive\/?p=4023"},"modified":"2019-08-16T11:36:09","modified_gmt":"2019-08-16T11:36:09","slug":"the-idea-of-the-indian-constitution-day-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/0318da2.netsolhost.com\/pwarchive\/?p=4023","title":{"rendered":"The Idea of the Indian Constitution: Day 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

Slightly dazed 9 AM start on a Saturday after a long, full and invigorating day 1: I was almost confident day 2 wouldn\u2019t be able to keep up. Until Gautam Bhatia began his talk.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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cccc<\/span>Speaking on the transformative nature of the Indian Constitution, lawyer and researcher Bhatia\u2019s arguments encouraged a fresh look at this text. He pressed for the need to locate the Constitution in the very debates in public discourse that informed its articles\u2014using as examples the Ambedkar-led Mahad Satyagraha finding voice in Article 15(2) that promises zero discrimination in every citizen\u2019s right to access of public facilities; prevalence of begaar in India\u2019s pre-independence history informing Article 23 against forced labour, among others. Urging us to not restrict constitutional vision to simply the INC-led Indian nationalist movement, Bhatia claimed progressiveness for the Constitution in its fighting for the individual\u2019s right to freedom from not just State, but also community oppression, as well as in its culmination from ground realities in Indian contexts.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u00a0cccc<\/span>Siddharth Varadarajan\u00a0 was next, sharing in his talk on media and the Constitution a vast range of experiences gained during his time as former Editor of The Hindu and as Founding Editor of The Wire\u2014the wide array of references rendering this talk particularly difficult to summarize.\u00a0 Outlining the dual tension between the recognition of the need for a free press in a democracy (indirectly through Article 19) and the concern for placing limits on the right to freedom of speech and expression, and derivatively of the press, reflected in the Constitution, Varadarajan traced a loose history of sorts of the media\u2019s role(s) in India and its shifting relations with the\u00a0 constitutional promises of freedom of speech and expression.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u00a0cccc<\/span>Sociologist Nandini Sundar\u2019s talk was in equal parts refreshing and informative as she looked at the making of the 5th and 6th schedules as moments in a legal and administrative history she traced back to the Scheduled Districts Act of 1874, and forward to the 2019 amendments to the Forest Rights Act 2006 and the State\u2019s response to the Patthargarhi movement. As part of a larger work she is currently researching, Prof. Sundar took us through fascinating debates between two Constituent Assembly members, the Gandhian AV Thakkar and once-India hockey captain Jaipal Singh Munda, sharing with us the many contemporary manifestations of conflicts on the rights of Scheduled tribes in the Constituent Assembly debates, that continue to pervade society.<\/span>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0cccc<\/span>Post-lunch, educationist Krishna Kumar deftly steered the larger deliberations at the conference straight into the classroom. He shared with us the skeleton of an assignment that he used to teach a unit on the Constitution in a B.El.Ed course and the effects he thereafter witnessed in the students\u2014I assume I am not speaking for myself alone when I say this session sparked off an interest in re-orienting the very approach to teaching a text such as the Constitution.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u00a0cccc<\/span>The day closed with two rather exciting and different parallel workshops\u2014one by Dalit lokshahir, activist and school History teacher Sambhaji Bhagat who shared his learnings from his project of training youth in taking the message of the Preamble of the Constitution to households; the second by oral historian, publisher and author Urvashi Butalia whose workshop centred on the case study of a woman \u2018abducted\u2019 and rescued in the aftermath of the 1947 Partition, focused on making participants think of the complexities at play in the defining of citizenship and the rights guaranteed therein. <\/span>Both this workshop and Prof Kumar\u2019s session directly lent themselves to classroom usage, offering the social science educators in the audience hands-on material to take back with them to adapt\/improvise around in their respective contexts<\/span>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Slightly dazed 9 AM start on a Saturday after a long, full and invigorating day 1: I was almost confident day 2 wouldn\u2019t be able to keep up. Until Gautam Bhatia began his talk.\u00a0 ccccSpeaking on the transformative nature of the Indian Constitution, lawyer and researcher Bhatia\u2019s arguments encouraged a fresh look at this text.…<\/p>\n

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