Nikunj: Welcome to Postcards, your passport to unseen corners of people, policy, and politics. I'm your host, Nikunj, and today we are talking about a very, very fascinating topic: the Constitution. However, the episode is titled "People’s Constitution." Now, when we think about the Constitution, it is not something that is just discussed and debated in a courtroom, in the halls of policymakers, or even in schools, particularly law schools. It is also experienced, discussed, and debated in everyday offices, in municipality offices, in post offices, and so many other spaces that we can't even imagine. Which really talks about: what is the Constitution? Who is it truly for? How is it lived and experienced by everyone in a country? Is the Constitution an evolving piece of work or not? It also talks about who gets access, who gets excluded, who gets further marginalized, and who and what is being enshrined in everyday life. And so, therefore, we are talking about rights as paperwork, dignity as procedure, and freedom as something that may often depend on a very tiny administrative decision but can have such a huge ripple effect. I’m so delighted and thrilled and also grateful to have Dr. Puneeth with us today talking about this brilliant topic. Of course Dr. Puneeth right now works as a professor of law at the center for study of law and governance at Jawaharlal Nehru University Delhi and his works spans constitutional law judicial processes criminal law relationship between individual freedoms and national security and Dr. you have written in quite a few spaces online as well ranging from the wire and uh outlook and like quite a few I would say uh magazines that way as well

Dr. Puneeth: very few not much in public but I would still compared to what I should have actually written uh but I'm increasingly planning to write more and more in this media

Nikunj: Why are so many academics like yourself so self-critical? Like you started by saying, "Oh, I should be doing more. I haven't done as much." Where does that self-critique come from?

Dr. Puneeth: First of all, thank you for having me on your show. We always have this feeling that we could have done more than what we are doing. Actually, we prioritize generally—there is also a compulsion to write on what gives more of what we now call API points. You know, writing in journals, writing books, or writing edited chapters in edited books and all that. Generally, writing for the newspapers or other web-based platforms doesn't give us so much academic credit, and we don't prioritize it as much unless there is some issue that comes up which forces us to think and write something on it. So that's when I’ve written very few articles there. I've written more for the journals and other edited books and all that.

Nikunj: But what kind of stuff would you like to write more for the newspaper articles or any kind of advocacy?

Dr. Puneeth: In the sense that I don't think in advance about what I should be writing about. Whenever some issue crops up and if it prompts me enough to write something, I do that. In fact, I'm currently writing about the new suggestions that are made about connecting rights with duties and saying, "Unless you perform your duties, you don't get your rights." I’m about to finalize a short piece critiquing that very understanding of the "right of the right." Generally, we keep following because I focus more on constitutional law—I focus more on what the judiciary is doing with the Constitution as and when there is some issue that crops up and is important enough. If I find time, I immediately write a piece.

Nikunj: I want to start by talking to you—and I’m thinking of which is hard to imagine at this stage—but as a kid growing up in Karnataka, when you imagine yourself as a kid now, when did your love for law and the Constitution start? Were there a series of moments, or how did you really think about the Constitution at that time?

Dr. Puneeth: It’s very hard to say when exactly my attention was drawn towards the Constitution. I did my schooling in my native village in Karnataka up to seventh standard. There in my village and in the neighboring villages, Ambedkar Jayanti was celebrated in a big way, and that's when programs were being held and people were invited to deliver speeches. As a kid, I was always curious; you go and attend all kinds of speeches. So that's when we started learning that there's something called the Constitution that exists. Of course, in our schools too, Republic Day was celebrated and we used to participate in the processions followed by speeches. That’s the reason for us to have some understanding of what this Constitution is all about. We learned that there’s something called a Constitution that gives us rights and all that. We had civics papers in schools where you write all that. I recollect reading about some rights, nothing more than that. But for whatever reason, I decided very early on in life that I should be doing an LLB—particularly a five-year law degree. I decided about it almost firmly when I was in ninth standard. What particularly increased our interest in the Constitution is because in the late 1990s, there was this discussion about changing the Constitution because it was about to complete 50 years. There was discussion about changing the Constitution because it "stands in the way of progress of the country" and needs to be reformed. All these discussions created lots of curiosity about what this Constitution is all about.

Nikunj: If you have to define to a seven-year-old what is a Constitution and why is it important, how would you share that with them?

Dr. Puneeth: It is very difficult to simplify the Constitution as such. The Constitution is a foundational document of our republic. It is according to the Constitution that our body politic is constituted and governed. It establishes the major institutions for governance like the legislature, executive, and the judiciary both at the center and the state levels. It also provides for the establishment of various auxiliary institutions like the Comptroller and Auditor General of India, the public service commissions, and the election commissions, which are all very important in the governance of the country. What it does is organize power by vesting, divesting, diffusing, and sometimes limiting power. Limiting the power in the sense of conferring rights on people, which are essentially limitations on the state power. It also lays the blueprint for the progress and the path the country should take in the future. The Constitution of India is a much more ambitious project. It has a larger goal of transforming the country—not just its quality, but also the society and the economy. It is a very foundational document. It has all the essential framework and the principles that should direct the way governance is to be carried on in the country.

Nikunj: I think what's very fascinating is what you were talking about—that there are these folks who are sitting together and having all these debates about the future of the country. This is happening all before 1950. What kind of debates are they having when they're trying to give shape to the Constitution?

Dr. Puneeth: The Constitution that we have today is a product of extensive debates. As almost everyone knows now, it took 2 years, 11 months, and 13 days for the drafting of the Constitution, and it was discussed extensively in the Constituent Assembly. What is important for us to note is that the Constituent Assembly is not the only place where the Constitution was discussed. It was discussed outside as well, in many public forums. The draft Constitution was put in the public domain for about 8 months. In many seminars and conferences, it was discussed. It was discussed in many of the provincial assemblies too. What we have today, which is accessible, are the debates that were held in the Constituent Assembly. That itself is very enriching. It is often said that the debates in the Constituent Assembly set the highest benchmark of public discourse in the country. Never before in the past, and not after, was there such a discussion held on any of the issues that concern the nation. Though the Constituent Assembly consisted of a majority of members from one political party, the Congress, nobody was prevented from expressing their views and opinions. Even among members of the Congress, there were divergent opinions. In the process, many compromises were made, and many special provisions were made to get all the states along. It is a product of extensive discussions and deliberations. The best thing is that we have everything that was uttered in the Constituent Assembly documented, including the jokes that were made. That shows the amount of care and caution taken. People often have the tendency of saying that the Constitution of India is a photocopy of the Government of India Act and various other constitutions. In my opinion, that is not a correct understanding. I don't think they had to spend so much time deliberating if the work was only to copy-paste. Some provisions were debated for a very long time; sometimes even the choice of words was debated.

Nikunj: Is there another debate that comes to your mind which was heavily contested and where consensus was tough to achieve?

Dr. Puneeth: One of the highly contested aspects was the language policy. There were very extensive discussions, fierce disagreements, and compromises were struck. Even when it comes to fundamental rights—of course, there was never a discussion on whether fundamental rights should be part of the Constitution—there was consensus on that. But about certain specific aspects, say for example, the right to religion. The Constitution says the right to "profess, practice, and propagate" religion. Almost everybody agreed with "profess" and "practice," but some people had problems with "propagation," saying why should it be guaranteed as a fundamental right in a country where the majority are Hindus (a non-proselytizing religion). They were told that this was a promise made and we can't go back on it. Similarly, the choice between "procedure established by law" and "due process of law." Due process of law is an American concept. BN Rau consulted US Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, who said that with "due process," the judiciary will interfere far too much in state affairs. So we dropped "due process" and adopted "procedure established by law," though over a period, the Indian Supreme Court brought back due process through interpretive processes.

Nikunj: How did the general public start engaging with the newly formed Constitution? How are people starting to think about it?

Dr. Puneeth: People were very much aware and keen to follow the process of constitution-making. There is a book by Rohit De called Assembling India's Constitution where he talks about people's participation. Otherwise, our general understanding is that only the elites participated. But people wrote thousands of letters to the Constituent Assembly—tribals, people from the unorganized sector—telling the makers what they expect. Once the Constitution was brought into force, people started using it. For instance, many people were preventively detained after independence. The moment the Constitution was brought into force, hundreds of people in West Bengal and elsewhere approached the courts, arguing that the laws under which they were detained were not in conformity with the Constitution. The government actually enacted the Preventive Detention Act within months because they knew the courts would have otherwise released the prisoners. People from the beginning have started using the Constitution to assert their rights and challenge state actions.

Nikunj: I want to pivot to something technical but very important: the Basic Structure doctrine. How did that come about, and why is it so significant for the "People's Constitution"?

Dr. Puneeth: The Basic Structure doctrine emerged from the Kesavananda Bharati case in 1973. It was a response to the question: Can Parliament use its power to amend the Constitution to destroy its very essence? The Court said no. While Parliament can amend the Constitution, it cannot touch the "basic structure"—things like secularism, federalism, the independence of the judiciary, and the rule of law. It is significant because it protects the core identity of the Constitution from the temporary whims of a political majority. It ensures that the promises made to the people are permanent.

Nikunj: Were there any anxieties lingering around the direction of the Constitution that still exists in 2026?

Dr. Puneeth: There were lots of anxieties. Some were expressed in the Constituent Assembly by people with conservative viewpoints who did not want so much transformation. Even reforms like the Hindu Code Bill created lot of anxieties. Today, there are so many aspects of the Constitution which still remain in text and have not been translated into living realities. For example, the language issue remains a bone of contention. Similarly, reforms in personal law; they put a provision in the Directive Principles thinking that someday we can move towards a Uniform Civil Code (UCC), and it is still a very contentious issue. The Constitution did not intend to erase identities altogether, but it certainly intended to erase the practice of discrimination based on those identities.