Making of the Constitution

The Making of the Constitution

• The demand for India's political destiny to be determined by Indians was put forward by Mahatma Gandhi in 1922.
• Swaraj would not be a free gift of the British Parliament, but a declaration of India's self-expression.
• Expression through an Act of Parliament would be a courteous ratification of the declared wish of the people of India, similar to the case of the Union of South Africa.
• The failure of the Statutory Commission and the Round Table Conference led to the Government of India Act, 1935.
• Indian aspirations accentuated the demand for a Constitution made by the people of India without external interference.
• The National Congress officially asserted making a Constitution in 1935.
• Pandit Nehru definitively formulated his demand for a Constituent Assembly in 1938.
• The National Congress stands for independence and a democratic state.
• It proposed that a constitution of free India must be framed, without outside interference, by a Constituent Assembly elected on the basis of adult franchise.
• This was reiterated by the Working Committee of the Congress in 1939.
• The British Government resisted this demand until the outbreak of World War II.

Cripps Mission

• External circumstances forced the British to realize the urgency of solving Indian Constitutional problems.
• The Coalition Government in England recognized the principle that Indians should frame a new Constitution for autonomous India in 1940.
• In March 1942, when the Japanese were at the doors of India, Sir Stafford Cripps was sent with a draft declaration on proposals to be adopted at the end of the War for the Constitution of India.
• This was conditional on the two major political parties (Congress and the Muslim League) agreeing to accept them.
• The conditions were:
  • The Constitution of India was to be framed by an elected Constituent Assembly of the Indian people.
  • The Constitution should give India Dominion Status, as an equal partnership of the British Commonwealth of Nations.
  • There should be one Indian Union comprising all the Provinces and Indian States.