The Making of the Constitution

A revision book that treats the Constitution as a finished object — a set of numbered boxes to be memorised — misses half of what examiners actually ask. Prelims and mains both probe the process: who sat in the Constituent Assembly, what committee wrote what, which country's constitution supplied which feature, and how a document born out of Partition-era anxiety ended up shaping itself the way it did. This section fills that gap before the Part-by-Part walkthrough begins.

The Objectives Resolution

On 13 December 1946, four days after the Constituent Assembly first met, Jawaharlal Nehru moved the Objectives Resolution — a short statement of intent that the Assembly adopted on 22 January 1947 and that later, almost unchanged, became the Preamble. It declared India would be an "Independent Sovereign Republic," guaranteed justice, equality and freedom to all its people, and promised "adequate safeguards" for minorities, backward and tribal areas, and depressed classes. Read the Preamble today and you are essentially reading Nehru's Resolution in its final, polished form — sovereignty and republicanism were there from day one; socialist and secular were inserted only later, by the 42nd Amendment in 1976, which is precisely why examiners like to ask which Preamble words are original and which were bolted on afterward.

The Constituent Assembly: composition and character

The Assembly was not directly elected by universal suffrage — it could not have been, since India had no such franchise yet. It was elected indirectly by the members of the Provincial Legislative Assemblies, themselves chosen on a restricted franchise, under the scheme the Cabinet Mission Plan (1946) proposed. The original strength was to be 389 (292 from British Indian provinces, 4 from Chief Commissioners' Provinces, 93 from the Princely States); after Partition and the withdrawal of Muslim League members who went on to Pakistan's own Constituent Assembly, the working strength that actually framed India's Constitution settled at 299. Dr. Rajendra Prasad was elected President of the Assembly; Dr. Sachchidananda Sinha had chaired its first, provisional sitting as the oldest member present. B.N. Rau served as the Assembly's Constitutional Adviser and prepared the original draft that the Drafting Committee then worked from.

The Drafting Committee

The Assembly worked through numerous committees, but the one every exam fixates on is the Drafting Committee, constituted on 29 August 1947 with seven members, chaired by Dr. B.R. Ambedkar. Its job was to scrutinise B.N. Rau's draft clause by clause and produce the text the Assembly would actually debate and vote on — which is why Ambedkar is remembered as the "Chief Architect" or "Father" of the Constitution, even though hundreds of members contributed to the final text across roughly 165 sittings of debate.

Memory hook for the Drafting Committee — "ABKJM-SN" (say it as a clipped surname roll-call): Ambedkar (Chairman) · Benegal Rau (adviser, not a formal member, but do not forget him) · Kanhaiyalal Munshi · John Mathai · Mohammed Saadullah · Syed Alladi Krishnaswami Ayyar · N. Gopalaswami Ayyangar

The seven formally appointed members were: B.R. Ambedkar (Chairman), N. Gopalaswami Ayyangar, Alladi Krishnaswami Ayyar, K.M. Munshi, Syed Mohammed Saadullah, N. Madhava Rao (who replaced B.L. Mitter after the latter resigned on health grounds), and T.T. Krishnamachari (who replaced D.P. Khaitan after Khaitan's death in 1948). Examiners occasionally test this replacement detail — two of the seven original names did not serve the full term.

Practice Recall. Cover the paragraph above and try to name all seven original members of the Drafting Committee, plus its Chairman — before reading on.

Answer: Ambedkar (Chairman), N. Gopalaswami Ayyangar, Alladi Krishnaswami Ayyar, K.M. Munshi, Syed Mohammed Saadullah, N. Madhava Rao, T.T. Krishnamachari.

How long it took, and what it cost

The Assembly held its first sitting on 9 December 1946 and adopted the finished Constitution on 26 November 1949 — a duration of 2 years, 11 months, 18 days, spread over 11 sessions and about 165 days of actual sitting. The Constitution came into force on 26 January 1950 — chosen deliberately, since 26 January had already been observed as "Purna Swaraj" (complete independence) day since the Lahore session of the Indian National Congress in 1929-30. The final handwritten, calligraphed and illustrated copy (each page bordered by artists of the Shantiniketan school, under Nandalal Bose) is preserved in a helium-filled case in the Library of the Parliament of India.

Borrowed features: a table examiners return to every year

The Constitution's framers were unembarrassed about borrowing what worked elsewhere while rejecting what did not fit India's needs — Ambedkar himself defended this as simply gathering "the best" from world experience. The single most frequently tested list in this entire subject is which feature came from which country.

Memory hook — "GIFT from ABCDEFG" (a made-up acronym, but built to stick): Government of India Act 1935 gave the skeleton (federal scheme, provincial autonomy, Public Service Commissions, office of Governor, emergency provisions); the rest came, roughly, from Australia, Britain, Canada, DPSP-Ireland, Equality-USA, France, Germany/USSR-style planning ideas, and South Africa for the amendment procedure.

Exam favourite: the pairing that trips people up most is judicial review from the USA versus the amendment procedure from South Africa — both are procedural safeguards, both get attributed to "America" by guesswork, and only one of them actually is.

Practice Recall. Without looking at the table above, try to match each of these to its source country: Fundamental Rights · DPSPs · amendment procedure · Concurrent List · Fundamental Duties · federal-with-strong-Centre model · Emergency provisions.

Answer: Fundamental Rights — USA. DPSPs — Ireland. Amendment procedure — South Africa. Concurrent List — Australia. Fundamental Duties — USSR. Federal-with-strong-Centre — Canada. Emergency provisions — Weimar Germany.