Indias Communal Constitution Law Religion And The Making Of A People Mathew John by Mathew John 9781009317757, 100931775X instant download after payment.

This book speaks to debates on law, constitutionalism and the contested terrain of political identity in modern India. Set against the overwhelmingly liberal design of the Indian Constitution, the book demonstrates a tendency in the Constitution and its practice to identify the Indian people in parochial and especially in religious terms. Named India’s Communal Constitution, this tendency is illustrated by drawing on constitutional debates and practice as they address religious freedom, personal law, minority rights and the identification of caste groups. Thus, casting the Constitution and its practice as a field of contestation, the aspiration to define the Indian people as a community of individual citizens is brought face to face with one of its most significant antagonists – the tendency to cast the Indian people as an embodiment of religious communities, which this book examines and details as India’s Communal Constitution. 

Mathew John is Professor of Law at the Jindal Global Law School, O.P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat, Haryana. This book grew out of his doctoral work at the London School of Economics on the role that law has played in managing and organising religious tensions in South Asia. He works and publishes on issues bearing on public law, constitutionalism, constitutional theory, pluralism and the legal history of modern India.