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Dalits need to understand that the Constitution was not actually drafted by Ambedkar in the sense of laying down its fundamental structure and provisions – Nehru did. Ambedkar was appointed chairman of the drafting committee by the Constituent Assembly, which was controlled by the Congress, and Nehru was its undisputed leader. Over the years, many books and articles have revealed that it was Nehru who shaped the basic structure of the Constitution. In his 1997 book Worshiping False Gods: Ambedkar and the Facts Which Have Been Erased, Arun Shourie detailed how Ambedkar’s role was primarily in implementing the decisions of the Assembly. Sudhindra Kulkarni has also written extensively on this, including in his 2024 article, writing, “The essence of the Preamble and most of the other defining features of the Constitution came from the Congress – primarily from Nehru.”
In my 2016 article, I outlined his view, which he presented before the Assembly’s subcommittee on fundamental rights, just seven months before he was appointed to the drafting committee. Ambedkar proposed that India should become an American-style federation and have a constitutional structure with many similarities to the American presidential system, including a fixed-term executive.
I have discussed before. Just three years after its adoption, he publicly rejected it in Parliament, saying, “Sir, my friends tell me that I have made the Constitution. But I’m absolutely ready to say that I would be the first one to burn it. It doesn’t suit anyone.” Ambedkar opposed the highly centralized system of the Constitution, in which power was concentrated in the hands of the executive (Prime Minister or Chief Minister), and its inherent majoritarianism. He believed that, for a nation with a permanent Hindu majority, a system based solely on majority rule was unsuitable.
As India’s history has shown, Ambedkar was right on both counts – centralization of power and majoritarianism. The concentration of power has allowed Prime Ministers to take arbitrary decisions, such as Modi’s demonetization, and to amend the Constitution at will, such as Nehru’s First Amendment, which created a new schedule to protect laws from judicial review, or Indira’s Gandhi’s 42nd amendment, which made the President subordinate to the Prime Minister. Let’s not forget Indira Gandhi’s Emergency. The majority-accepting-all feature of the Constitution is undermining India’s social harmony, as the ongoing conflicts in Kashmir and Manipur show.
There are significant flaws in our Constitution. I’ve discussed before how this is, and how so-called reforms over time have exacerbated these issues. It is time that Indian political parties move beyond Ambedkar’s lip service and start following his advice to reform the Constitution.
(The author is Founder and CEO of Divya Himachal Group and author of ‘Why India Needs the Presidential System’. He can be contacted at @BhanuDhamijaThis is a personal blog and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint Neither endorses nor is responsible for it.)
