Book Review Of The Indian Constitution-the Corner Stone Of The Nation By Granville Austin

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work of   Constitutional law 

Topic- ​Book Review of    THE INDIAN CONSTITUTION -CORNERSTONE OF  NATION BY   GRANVILLE AUSTIN      Submitted to- ​Nasir Sir  Submitted by-​Saba Afreen Gi7453  16BALLB76  Group 3rd 

       Book Review Granville Austin - The Indian Constitution - Cornerstone of a Nation - Oxford  University Press 1999.  “The ​classical work of Granville Austin is a must for every judge, lawyer, historian, researcher and other persons interested in the constitutional history of India.” ​Soli J. Sorabjee, Attorney General of India

“A ​must for libraries and for serious students of the subcontinent .” Judith Brown, Beit prof. Of Commonwealth History, Oxford University “Austin’s ​deserved high reputation for commitment to the most exacting standards of scholarship and perceptive and scrupulous fair analysis on India’s Constitution and politics, was established with the publication of his book ​The Indian Constitution.​Over the years the book became classic. The reputation is consolidated now with the appearance of his long awaited and truly monumental Working a Democratic Constitution, ​a book that deserves to rank among the half dozen or so most affairs of India written over the last two or three decades.” KM de Silva, Executive Director of the International Centre for Ethnic Studies Kandy/Colombo, Sri Lanka

About the author Granville Seward Austin (1927 – 6 July 2014) was an American historian and a leading authority on the Indian Constitution. Austin received most of his early education at Norwich, Vermont, USA. Austin graduated from Dartmouth College with a BA in American Literature. He then earned a doctorate in Modern Indian History from Oxford University. He worked as a journalist/photographer and later served with the U. S. Information Service, Department of State, Department of Health, Education and Welfare, and on the staff of a U. S. senator. He has held fellowships or grants from St. Antony's College, Oxford, the Ford Foundation, the Fulbright Program, the American Institute of Indian Studies, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation, and the Institute of Current World Affairs. Austin is the author of two seminal political histories of the constitution of India, The Indian Constitution: Cornerstone of a Nation and Working a Democratic Constitution: The Indian Experience.

Granville Austin died on 6 July 2014.In 2011, in recognition for his writing on the framing and working of the Indian Constitution, Granville Austin was awarded a Padma Shri award, the fourth highest civilian honor of the Republic of India.National Translation Mission of the Ministry of Human Resource Development of the Government of India has selected The Indian Constitution: Cornerstone of a Nation for translation into Indian languages. The book has already been published in Telugu, Marathi, Punjabi and Odia languages.

The Indian Constitution, Cornerstone of a nation​This book will certainly reveal to you to be the most effective book. This book by Granville Austin will certainly be your ideal option for far better reading book. You can take the book as a source making much better principle.

As understood, book ​The Indian Constitution i​ s well known as the home window to open up the world, the life and also new people. ​The author

Granville Austin leaves behind him a treasured legacy of scholarly analysis on the Indian constitution, which he described as, “first and foremost a social document,” one that embodied the objectives of a “social revolution.”

Reviewing his work ​Upendra Baxi, Professor of Law in Development at the  University of Warwick, United Kingdom,​wrote that the volume, “provides the  most comprehensive, insightful and balanced account of the work of the  Constituent Assembly which drafted the Indian Constitution in the brief span  of time from December, 1946 to December, 1949 – a time of strife, turbulence  and ferment not merely in India but in the entire world.” Including a second, seminal book, ‘Working a Democratic Constitution: The Indian Experience,’ Professor Austin’s definitive studies of constitution-making in India are said to have effectively displaced much of the pseudo-literature on the subject. His writings have sometimes been cited by the Indian Supreme Court and are said to have significantly informed legal thinking, jurisprudence and the evolution of Indian constitutional law.

This book is a political history of framing of the Constitution of how past and present aims and events,ideals and personalities moved the members of the constituent assembly to write the constitution as they did. It has been called a political history to distinguish it from the many volumes having more legalistic approach. Several of these have been valuable contribution in this field but they have not contributed greatly to our knowledge of India in the year since world -war 2. The author has intended to do this in some measure. It is hoped that the book will provide the general reader with some insight in to the political bases and motivation of Indian life and at the same time provide the close student of Indian affairs with the first account bases on manuscript sources of the working of Constituent assembly. To Granville Austin, ’’The Indian Constitution is first and foremost a social document”.The Constitution is an organic instrument embodying the social values and aspirations of those who are to be governed by it. It is the blue-print of a new social order based on justice, freedom, equality and human dignity. It has established political democracy and imposed on the State the obligation to transform itself into social and economic democracy through peaceful means and Rule of Law. Since the commencement of the Constitution,the guarantees of certain valuable rights and privileges in chapters III and IV of the Constitution have opened new avenues for the realisation o hopes and aspirations of the people. To our labourers, the Directive Principles represent a charter of economic freedoms. It lays down the socio-economic rights considered as necessary ingredients towards attaining good life.During the last two decades the Indian economy has made significant progress.The industrial base of the economy has also advanced considerably. Laws and institutions have been developed to provide larger opportunities to our labourers for their economic betterment and social amelioration. Despite this fact, i t is believed in some quarters that the Constitution has not been able to fulfil all the rising expectations of the workers. The object of the present study is to determine objectively the impact of the Constitution on the working and living conditions of industrial labour in India. The workers are the main instruments of the economic progress of the country , and on this progress rests in no small measure the social and cultural progress of the entire Indian community. It seems, therefore , quite legitimate to enquire how far the State has been able to fulfill the promises made to the workers in the body of the Constitution . The introductory part of this thesis deals

with the subject in its historical perspective.This is followed by an analysis of some basic concepts, such as the Welfare State, the Socialistic Pattern of Society and Social Justice.The first chapter studies the concept of Constituent assembly. The second chapter examines the two revolution national and social. With independence the national revolution would be completed but the social revolution must go on. The first task of the assembly is to free india through new Constitution, to freed the starving people and clothe the naked masses and to give every indian the full opportunity to develop himself according to his capacity. Everyone should be able to enjoy the three basic freedoms, freedom of speech and expression, freedom of assembly and freedom of association, which are so essential for the realisation of their socio​ economic rights. The enquiry reveals that labour has been able to enjoy the first two of these freedoms in a fair measure. But the State has not yet been able to make labour fully enjoy the third freedom as the right to form trade unions has lost its significance in the absence of a law of recognition. The third chapter is about fundamental rights and directive principles. It seeks to assess the extent to which the State has been able to secure the 'right to work'. The argument that labour has not been able to enjoy this right because there is wide prevalence of large-scale industrial unemployment in India, arising out of retrenchment, closure and lay-off, has been critically reviewed. The point that the State should ensure job security instead of taking measures for providing insurance during the period of industrial unemployment, has also been thoroughly discussed. Directive principles however one finds even clearer statement of social revolution. The fourth chapter deals with the right to living wage which is essential to labour for its material advancement and spiritual development. The meaning of the concept of living wage has been clearly stated and the enquiry has brought out the fact that what the State has been able to secure to the workers in organised industries is not living wage but minimum living wage. The workers in unorganised sector are still groaning under poverty -level wages. It has "been argued that the State should provide minimum living wage to these workers before securing need-based minimum wage to the organised workers who are in a much better position.The fifth chapter is about the executive. Members of constituent assembly were committed to frame Democratic Constitution for india. It examines the extent to which the State has been able to ensure income

security to labour through social security measures. The enquiry shows that the State has been provided partial relief to labour during sickness, disablement, old age and maternity. There is still enough scope for improvement in these areas.The State is required to launch a comprehensive scheme of social security and bring within its fold all workers of both the organised and unorganised industries.The sixth chapter is concerned with the legislature through popular government. The seventh chapter deals with the judiciary and the social revolution. Judiciary was to be an arm of social revolution. Another following chapters deals with the federal character of the Constitution with the distribution of revenues. 11 chapter concerns with the amending process of the Constitution with its dual nature of flexibility as well as rigidity. Chapter 12 deals with the need of choosing one national language as to promote the integrity and unity among the citizens with the diversity of languages among them. The constituent assembly brought into being by the will of the indian people in the last scene of the last Act with the help of the British drafted the constitution for Indian in the years from December 1946 to December 1949. In the assembly Indians for the first time in a century and a half were responsible for their own governance. They were at last free to shape their long proclaimed aims and aspirations and to create the national institutions that would facilitate the fulfillment of these aims. The members of the Constituent assembly realised could not by themselves make a new India but they intended to light up the way.

Rajeev Dhawan ​in his book review of ​Sarbani Sen,Popular Sovereignty And

Democratic Transformation : The Constitution of India ​has written: “​Granville Austin’s book The Indian Constitution, Cornerstone was published in 1966. This had an important effect on scholars of Constitution making. Austin had scoured through the records which nobody had bothered to look at earlier. He has examined the process of making of the Constitution as a whole. Austin has held the field-grandly followe by his Working a Democratic Constitution, The Indian Experience 1999.” There have been studies of legal and legalistic aspects of Indian Constitution but apart from the admirable collection of writings of ​Sri BN Rao (B N Rav, India’s Constitution in making ed,B,Shiva Rao.Bombay,Orient longmans 1960),

there are virtually no account of how the constitution makers went to work. Dr Austin was able to gain access to a large and varied numbers of unpublished documents including the correspondence of Dr Rajendra Prasad. He has produced which usually termed as ‘exhaustive study’. Dr Austin evokes as a classical picture of the fathers of the nation deliberating over the basic issues and creating a constitution as a act of concerted will. According to Austin the constituent assembly followed no coherent scheme for keeping records in public of its historic meetings so it was through persistent legwork that Austin gained access to primary resources. Austin wrote to and met with P M Jawaharlal Nehru who gave him access to private papers of constituent assembly and records of assembly’s debates. Watching Nehru in his natural habitat convinced Austin that Indian democracy was no fad. It had strong constitutional foundation in law, politics and in the public imagination. Its a point he made emphatically in Cornerstone. This set Austin apart from most western commentators,who seriously doubted modern india’s viability.

Conclusion   After many years of hand research and digging out thousands of documents from archives and interviewing concerned personalities, this volume provides a detailed and authentic version of incidents that unfolded in the Indian political scenario and of the various individual concerned. This history of indian polity from its inception in 1950 to the end of Mrs Gandhi’s regime in 1985,is being covered extensively and meticulously in every detail in the well researched volume by the American civil servant Granville Austin. The survey doesn't restrict itself to the 38 years window because to quote Austin himself “​constitutional development neither began in 1950 nor ceased in

1985​” and he provides enough background before its inauguration and peeps back at important Constitutional development after 1985 as well.

Bibliography ● Austin Granville, The Indian Constitution, Cornerstone of a nation. Oxford university press 1998 ● Newspaper - The indian express ● The Times of India ● Journals of Indian Law Institute