India’s Constitutional Transformation

Themes:

The literature on constitutional breakdown in India is now widespread, but the precise nature of the breakdown remains understudied. This presentation will focus on the breakdown by thinking about the nature of the Indian state, and the way in which its rise is closely linked to its capacity to modulate itself according to different preferences. Crucial to this understanding is appreciating the longer-run anomalies that have shaped the construction of state power in India. A turn to the nature of state power helps us grasp the distinct nature of the present constitutional transformation in India. There may be lessons regarding democratic strain in other polities.

Biography of speaker:

Madhav Khosla is an Associate Professor of Law at Columbia University. He is interested in the study of constitutions, especially from a comparative and theoretical perspective. Khosla's books include India’s Founding Moment: The Constitution of a Most Surprising Democracy (Harvard University Press 2020), which was an Economist Best Book of 2020 and co-winner of the Order of the Coif Book Award 2021, The Oxford Handbook of the Indian Constitution (ed. with Sujit Choudhry and Pratap Bhanu Mehta, Oxford University Press 2016), and Unstable Constitutionalism: Law and Politics in South Asia (ed. with Mark Tushnet, Cambridge University Press 2015).

Reading Material:

https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/the-three-faces-of-the-indian-state/

Contact: Prof Joshua Getzler,

St Hugh’s College and Law Faculty, joshua.getzler@law.ox.ac.uk