{"id":12511,"date":"2019-12-28T02:09:20","date_gmt":"2019-12-27T17:09:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2019\/dec\/27\/fighting-back-over-india-constitution"},"modified":"2019-12-28T02:09:20","modified_gmt":"2019-12-27T17:09:20","slug":"fighting-back-over-indias-constitution-letters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=12511","title":{"rendered":"Fighting back over India\u2019s constitution | Letters"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Vinita Damodaran <\/strong>lauds the protesters in India rallying to protect the postcolonial constitution, and <strong>Laura Phillips <\/strong>criticises the British colonial legacy in Canada<\/p>\n<p>The protests erupting all over India about the changes to citizenship embodied in the Citizenship (Amendment) Act are heartwarming because they tell us that Indian democracy is alive and well at its grassroots, despite its current parliamentarians having ridden roughshod over the constitution (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2019\/dec\/20\/india-largest-protests-in-decades-signal-modi-may-have-gone-too-far\" title=\"\">Jails fill amid rage on the streets<\/a>, 21 December). This constitution was carefully debated and crafted in the constituent assembly over a three-year period as its makers, trained in the art of nationalist resistance, wrested control from the colonial state in an extraordinary exercise of moral and political legitimacy that laid bare the nature of British colonialism.<\/p>\n<p>In Henry Maine\u2019s words, British India was a \u201cmost extraordinary experiment\u201d involving \u201cthe virtually despotic government of a dependency by a free people\u201d. The postcolonial state of India that emerged in 1947, despite the bloody internecine conflict at its birth, did fulfil its promise at some level, to its citizens of \u201ca sovereign, socialist and democratic republic\u201d with justice, liberty and equality to all for the next 70 years. The constitutional imbroglio that India is in today is a result of a hasty and communally motivated act that goes against the vision of the architects of this great and diverse nation and its remarkable constitution.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2019\/dec\/27\/fighting-back-over-india-constitution\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Vinita Damodaran lauds the protesters in India rallying to protect the postcolonial constitution, and Laura Phillips criticises the British colonial legacy in CanadaThe protests erupting all over India about the changes to citizenship embodied in the C&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":269,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[246,244,749,62,503,61,52,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-americas","category-canada","category-colonialism","category-india","category-indigenous-peoples","category-south-and-central-asia","category-uk-news","category-world-news"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/269"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12511"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12511\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12512,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12511\/revisions\/12512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}