Assembling India's Constitution : A New Democractic History - A Conversation with Prof. Rohit De and Prof. Ornit Shani

In this episode, Prof. Srijan Sandip Mandal from NALSAR and Jeetendra from Law and Other Things speaks with Professors Rohit De (Yale University) and Ornit Shani (University of Haifa), whose new book Assembling India’s Constitution: A New Democratic History (Cambridge University Press, 2025) offers a transformative account of how India’s Constitution came to be.

Challenging the familiar story that it was crafted only within the Constituent Assembly, the authors show how people across India— from princely states, courts, and tribal regions to everyday citizens—actively debated, contested, and co-created constitutional ideas.

The conversation explores the book’s rich archival discoveries, the “fever of constitutional expectations” that gripped the country in the 1940s, and how ordinary Indians helped shape the foundations of democracy.