By Shubham Yadav
The imagery that revolution invokes depends on the standpoint of the spectator. Revolution, for the elites and powerholders, is bloody, chaotic, disruptive, and tumultuous.[1] For the masses who revolt, it can be an emancipatory ordeal that signifies a clear break with the past – emancipatory in its constructive sense and ordeal in its destructive sense.[2] The clear break separates the present and the future by a strict boundary and throws the present into the custody of the past. Revolutions are a crucial subject in the field of constitutional studies, since governments usually designed constitutions to serve as testimony to this break and as an attempt to stabilize the tenuous political atmosphere by (re)organizing power relations. French constitution(s) chronologically succeeded a revolution, so did the American one, but unlike this sequential trajectory, India’s constitution did not temporally succeed a revolution.[3] Instead, when the makers of the constitution met at the capital city of New Delhi, they knew their job was to construct a constitution that could avert a revolution. Revolution at that moment was seen as a complete break with the past that could transform the masses’ potential into institutional power that the spirit of the anticolonial movement promised.
Scholars frequently approach revolutions through a pedagogical lens to seek lessons on the how, why, and what of revolutionary change. However, authors rarely discuss the impact of revolutions on the construction of new constitutions. In The Gun, the Ship, and the Pen, Linda Colley examines the roles of revolutions in the formation of constitutions.[4] Similarly, this essay undertakes this task by focusing on the pedagogical role of revolutions and revolutionaries. By examining the impact of revolutionary impulses in the Indian anticolonial movement, which failed to achieve a complete change in the socio-political landscape, I highlight the pedagogical role these impulses played, even when their proponents were excluded from the formal constitution-making process.
Since the beginning of the anticolonial movement, the British saw Indians as incapable of democratic self-governance. To prove the British wrong, these “incapable masses” were mobilized, appropriated, and assigned a specific role within a controlled environment, so they would resist but remain controllable and malleable against the British. Organizers condemned violent revolts,[5] to an extent that these top elites would call off movements when they saw masses violating the moral code of a protestor, stylized personally by M.K. Gandhi on the lines of non-violence and spiritual resistance.[6] Revolutionaries who broke this code and sought direct confrontation with the empire were called “mad youth.”[7] This centralized control and morality, judging the movements, was exemplary of the Indian anticolonial movement, which stood to be central in the making of the postcolonial nation. Sandipto Dasgupta illuminates all these dimensions of the anticolonial era and transition towards a postcolonial nation in his Legalizing the Revolution.[8] Dasgupta explores the Indian constitution-making process as a unique political and social project aimed at navigating the transition from colonial rule to independence. His central thesis is that the Indian Constitution was not just a legal document, but a deliberate attempt to “legalize the revolution,” to domesticate the radical, unruly demands of the decolonization movement into the disciplined, orderly formalism of a constitutional state. This attempt at locating the radical, unruly demands of the decolonization movement and pitting them against the administrative mode of governance of the anticolonial and postcolonial elite, serves as this essay’s foundation for highlighting the pedagogical role of these revolutionary tendencies. By examining revolutionary actors and their management by anticolonial elites, I argue that revolutions play a deeper role in constitution-making, not just by teaching future generations, but also by actively contributing to it by presenting a terrifying specter of revolution-to-come.
This article examines the indictment of revolution in Indian constitutional history by locating the obscured multiple axes and actors of revolution and revolutionary politics. The task at the constitutional moment was to prevent this revolution whose imagery and characters were well formed. “The philosophy of bomb,” popularized by revolutionaries, had troubled the anticolonial elite who referred to these revolutionaries and their ideologies as the “cult of the bomb.”[9] This essay highlights three axes – the popular, the social, and the ideological front – along which an anticipated revolution was conceived, from the perspective of the anticolonial elite, by three other main sets of actors – the peasant masses, the revolutionaries, and anti-discrimination activists such as Jyotirao Phule and B. R. Ambedkar. These actors traversed their respective axes to tap into the potentia of the constitutional moment, which lasted for decades before and after the proclamation of formal independence in 1947.
While Dasgupta highlights these actors and axes, I take his analysis further and examine what these players posed for a formal constitution-making process. If Dasgupta traces the transformation of a revolutionary people into constitutional citizens, this essay complicates the emerging historiography[10] that has shifted the focus from revolution to decolonization. By engaging with Dasgupta, this essay illuminates the moment of conversation between obscured actors and anti-/post-colonial elites and highlights their pedagogical impact on the constitution-making process.
India became a sovereign republic in 1950 by adopting a constitution that its people gave to themselves, at least as the Preamble proclaims. These masses, mobilized and energized by the fervor of organizing and resistance, imagined postcolonial construction as an emancipatory project. Both this energy and their imagination alerted the central elites, mainly constituted by upper caste and landholding elites, who saw constitution-making as a stage for gaining legitimacy and further control by planning a social transformation.[11] The constitution had to provide: a blueprint of social change without disruption,[12] construction without destruction, and emancipation without ordeal. Unless the constitution provided for it, the increasing elastic potential energy of the masses could convert into disruptive kinetic energy, disrupting the process of state formation.
Preamble of the Indian Constitution, 1950, Wikipedia
Dasgupta pits “transformation” against “revolution.” The specter of transformation was achieved through practices of administration and state-controlled development, whereas revolution, as looked through the lens of the masses, would deal with the socio-economic question in urgency. For Dasgupta, transformation was a process of controlled social revolution, planned and disciplined by the ruling elite to prevent a real, bloody, disruptive revolution. Or to say, to conduct a revolution without a revolution, which, according to him, amounted to legalizing the revolution.
Dasgupta highlights three kinds of relationships that existed between anticolonial elites and the popular masses. “Distance, mobilization and governance” as temporally sequential relationships, were the dominant frameworks for interacting with the masses, and their plight, under the colonial rule.[13] Until Gandhi’s entry onto the anticolonial stage in the second decade of the 1900s, the policy of the anticolonial elite under the Indian National Congress was to view the masses as intellectually and democratically impoverished, while the British were seen as benevolent rulers who could uplift these masses out of darkness through social and educational reforms. Gandhi, after his stint as an anti-racism activist in South Africa, returned to India and organized the masses for a popular anti-colonial struggle. This mobilization, Dasgupta argues, had alerted the Indian National Congress about its tendency to go out of control; therefore, the third policy was to govern and administer to rule and discipline any vociferous/disruptive tendencies.[14] The social question was delayed until political freedom was secured to present a united front against the empire.[15] However, once political freedom was imminent, the social question – widespread income disparities, zamindari system,[16] caste discrimination, power concentration, suppression of dissent – could not be delayed anymore, thus a blueprint of social transformation was coded into the constitution. However, this codification was not just the avoidance of the conflict or revolt, but a response to the pedagogical aspects of the revolution.
Even though Gandhi tried to establish a binary of oppression between colonizer and local, the peasants and other oppressed groups knew the British were not the only oppressors. One of the most crucial determinants of people’s unrest was their local conditions – the zamindari and caste system. The anticolonial elite tried to reconcile these tensions by over-emphasizing the perturbations of the empire and pushing indigenous oppressions under the rug. However, once the peasant masses and workers had been mobilized to form a popular front, it was difficult to discipline their means, since deep-rooted socio-economic oppression was the defining factor of their freedom. Workers’ unions readily organized strikes, and peasants refused to pay dues to their landlords.[17] On the anti-discrimination axis, organic intellectuals such as Phule and Ambedkar had already composed volumes highlighting the indigenous basis of caste oppression and had sought to use the empire to their benefit.[18] At the same time, revolutionaries, such as members of Hindustan Socialist Republican Association,[19] saw the amplitude of non-violent politics too feeble to make “the deaf [empire] hear.”[20] Thus, they presented a revolutionary front as oppositional and alternative to the politics of Gandhi and the anticolonial elite. Working through these three axes – popular, social, and ideological, the peasant masses, anti-discrimination activists, and revolutionaries, respectively, presented an aggregated but mutually synchronous ecology against the anticolonial elite, who were to rule and design the nation-in-becoming.[21] I call the interweaving of these oppositional and alternative elements – the thematics of the revolution, since they acted separately, yet had a combined thematic effect on the construction of the postcolony. By the thematics of revolution, I refer to the multiple themes and contents of the specter of revolution that haunted the elites.
The aggregate yet combined efforts of these three sets of actors not only alerted the elites but also instructed them in designing a constitution for the postcolonial nation. This is what I call the “pedagogics” of the revolution. To avert the crises that these thematics of revolution posed as a coalesced force, their mutually inclusive image was kept in mind and background while drafting the constitution. These images served as a positive-negative coupled function. Positively, the constitution was drafted to initiate a process of social transformation, exemplified in its fundamental rights and directive principles of state policy.[22] However, signposted with reasonable restrictions and constitutional provision for preventive detention came out negatively from the image, to discipline these revolutionary tendencies. Thus, the constitution was not only made emancipatory, but also hegemonic and centralizing.[23] This is how the apparition of the People, with capital P, drafted a constitution under the virtue of an active absence. To avoid the disruptions these actors and axes could have caused, the constitution makers designed a socially transformational constitution. Therefore, the thematics of the revolution led to its pedagogics, which instructed the constitution-makers and attempted to discipline the masses.
Shubham Yadav is a Senior Research Fellow at the Zakir Husain Centre of Educational Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, India. He writes on caste, constitution, and their interface at the judiciary.
Title Image: Author’s Photograph. On one of the walls of a public library in Thrissur, Kerala, India is graffitied with the moment the Constitution was handed over to the President of the Assembly by the Chairperson of the Drafting Committee.
Further Reading:
Ambedkar, Bhimrao Ramji. What Congress and Gandhi Have Done to the Untouchables. Gautam Book Centre, 1946.
Bhatia, Gautam. The Indian Constitution: A Conversation with Power. Gurgaon, Haryana, India: HarperCollins, 2025.
Colley, Linda. The Gun, the Ship and the Pen: Warfare, Constitutions and the Making of the Modern World. Profile Books, 2021.
Dasgupta, Sandipto. Legalizing the Revolution: India and the Constitution of the Postcolony. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press & Assessment, 2024.
De, Rohit, and Shani, Ornit. Assembling India’s Constitution: A New Democratic History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2025.
Nunes, Rodrigo. Neither Vertical nor Horizontal: A Theory of Political Organisation. London: Verso, 2021.
Endnotes:
[1] Sandipto Dasgupta, Legalizing the Revolution: India and the Constitution of the Postcolony (Cambridge University Press, 2024).
[2] Granville Austin, The Indian Constitution: Cornerstone of a Nation (Clarendon Press, 1966).
[3] Dasgupta, Legalizing the Revolution.
[4] Linda Colley, The Gun, the Ship and the Pen: Warfare, Constitutions and the Making of the Modern World (Profile Books, 2021).
[5] Shahid Amin, Event, Metaphor, Memory: Chauri Chaura, 1922-1992 (Oxford University Press, 1995).
[6] M.K. Gandhi launched non-cooperation movement in 1909 which turned violent at places and a police station was put to fire in Chauri Chaura. Gandhi condemned this to the extent that he called off the movement. For a detailed account, see Amin, Event, Metaphor, Memory.
[7] Saurav Kumar Rai, “Mahatma Gandhi and Congress on Bhagat Singh’s Martyrdom,” March 18, 2019, https://lokayat.org.in/2019/mahatma-gandhi-and-congress-on-bhagat-singhs-martyrdom/.
[8] Dasgupta, Legalizing the Revolution.
[9] Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA) planted a bomb on Viceroy Irwin’s train. M.K. Gandhi criticized the act through an article named “The Cult of the Bomb,” in his journal Young India. HSRA replied to the article by writing “The Philosophy of the Bomb” in response.
[10] For literature on this recent trend refer, Khosla, Madhav. India’s Founding Moment: The Constitution of a Most Surprising Democracy, 2020.; Sengupta, Arghya. The Colonial Constitution, 2023.
[11] Dasgupta, Legalizing the Revolution, 30.
[12] Dasgupta, Legalizing the Revolution, 49-57.
[13] Dasgupta, Legalizing the Revolution, 57-70.
[14] Dasgupta, Legalizing the Revolution, 70-75.
[15] Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, What Congress and Gandhi Have Done to the Untouchables (Gautam Book Centre, 1946).
[16] The zamindari system was a colonial-era institution of landlordism in India that established a rigid framework for property ownership and land revenue collection. Facilitated by the British colonial regime, this system vested vast tracts of land in Indigenous landlords (zamindars), creating a “highly uneven distribution of landholding” that subjected the rural masses to a “deep-rooted hierarchy and oppression.” Because these landlords were widely perceived as “unproductive, oppressive, and collaborators of the colonial rulers,” the dismantling of their power became a central goal of anticolonial politics. Following independence, the Indian state viewed the abolition of the zamindari system through land reforms as a critical necessity to address the “social question” of inequality and to prevent the radicalization of the peasantry into violent, extra-legal “insurrections and bloodshed,” For more on the zamindari system, see Sandipto Dasgupta, “A Materialist Analysis of the Indian Constitution,” in The Cambridge Handbook on the Material Constitution, edited by Marco Goldoni and Michael A. Wilkinson (Cambridge University Press, 2023), 290.
[17] Dasgupta, Legalizing the Revolution, 64.
[18] Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, Annihilation of Caste: Speech (1936).
[19] The Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA) was a radical, left-wing Indian revolutionary organization formed in 1928 to overthrow British colonial rule through armed resistance and establish a socialist republic in India. It was a crucial rebranding of an older organization, the Hindustan Republican Association (HRA), which had been crippled by British crackdowns following the famous Kakori Train Robbery of 1925.
[20] The historic phrase, “If the deaf are to hear, the sound has to be very loud” (originally written as “It takes a loud voice to make the deaf hear”) is the opening line of the leaflets distributed by Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt. They released this statement on April 8, 1929, immediately after detonating low-intensity, non-lethal smoke bombs inside the Central Legislative Assembly in Delhi.
[21] I borrow “ecology” from Rodrigo Nunes. He situates ecology as greater than organization and lesser than organism. Ecology as a complex of aggregate organizations and efforts depicts the picture of anticolonial activism in the truest sense. The movement of the anticolonial elite was, just, one of the many movements and efforts against colonial rule. For ecology, see Rodrigo Nunes, Neither Vertical nor Horizontal: A Theory of Political Organisation (London: Verso, 2021), 147-182.
[22] Part III of the Indian Constitution; Part IV of the Indian Constitution – Directive Principles of State Policy were guiding principles that the state was supposed to follow in its legislation. B.R. Ambedkar, the Chairperson of the Drafting Committee of the Indian Constituent Assembly, defined them as “fundamental principles of governance.”
[23] Gautam Bhatia, The Indian Constitution: A Conversation with Power (Gurgaon, Haryana, India: HarperCollins, 2025).
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