Borrowed constitution
Also called: Bag of borrowings · Topic: Making of the Constitution: Constituent Assembly, Sources and Salient Features · NCERT: Class 11, Ch 10 "The Philosophy of the Constitution"
Meaning
The "borrowed constitution" criticism says India's Constitution is just "a bag of borrowings". On this view it was copied from foreign constitutions and does not fit Indian life. NCERT (Class 11, The Philosophy of the Constitution) answers that the framers borrowed selectively and in new ways. They had to defend each borrowed idea as right for Indian problems. On 4 November 1948 Ambedkar argued that a constitution framed so late could only add "variations made to remove the faults and to accommodate it to the needs of the country".
Example
India took parliamentary government from Britain but gave it an elected President and a Parliament that is not sovereign. India took the Directive Principles from Ireland and deliberately made them non-justiciable, meaning no court can enforce them. Fundamental rights came from the USA but carry reasonable restrictions.
Don't confuse with
- Carbon copy of the 1935 Act: this is a separate criticism. It says the Constitution copied a colonial Indian law, the Government of India Act 1935, not foreign constitutions.
Related concepts
- Carbon copy of the 1935 Act
- Lawyers' paradise
- Criticism of the Constituent Assembly as unrepresentative