In his third talk in this series, Sri Devendra Swarup continued with his exploration of the structure and functioning of the Constituent Assembly, emphasising its non-representative character and its failure to take into account any Indian or Gandhian ideas and institutions in its deliberations.

The British used the constitutional reform process as an instrument to divide and rule the country. The Act of 1935 was part of that strategy. Our Constitution ended up adopting the same vocabulary. It seems that though the British have left, their way of thinking and even their policies of “divide and rule” continue to dominate our polity? How have the British come to dominate our functioning, thinking and world-view in this manner? Perhaps some answer to this question and some understanding of the fundamental core and direction of the British constitutional processes can be found by looking at the founding of the British power in India in the mid-eighteenth century and its unfolding over the next two centuries. From the next talk, we shall begin looking at these processes in some detail.

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