Do you know why India celebrates Republic Day on January 26? It was on this day in 1950 that the Constitution of India came into effect, replacing the Government of India Act 1935. The Constituent Assembly chose January 26 as it was on this day in 1930 that the Indian National Congress raised a demand for Purna Swaraj — complete self-rule — through the Declaration of Indian Independence. This assertion by India’s freedom fighters emphatically rejected Britain’s offer of Dominion status to India.

The Constituent Assembly’s decisive enactment of the Constitution of India transformed the nature of the people of India — with this, we were no longer subjects of a British dominion; we were citizens of a sovereign, democratic, Republic of India.

Not only does the Constitution guarantee us many rights, it empowers us to demand these rights. In addition, it gives the citizens of India an important responsibility to shoulder — the duty of making India, that is Bharat, a better and stronger nation, and to enable fellow-citizens, irrespective of differences in religion, caste, class, or gender, to aspire to live in happiness, harmony, dignity, and contentment.

These noble ideas were born in noble thoughts, which were expressed in carefully considered and articulated words spoken by the members of the Constituent Assembly. They were debated, argued, pondered over, reconsidered, and finally accepted and inked in the draft of the Constitution.

From December 1946 to January 1950, the Constituent Assembly of India met over 114 days. The initial strength of the assembly had been 389, which was reduced to 299 after the departure of some members.

The second episode of this series, Dastaan-e-Samvidhaan — the story of the Constitution — remembers the landmark speeches made by prominent members of the Constituent Assembly, including Dr. Rajendra Prasad, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar, and Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, among others. In some instances, where original voice recordings were unavailable, we have taken the creative liberty to reimagine these speeches with the help of artificial intelligence tools while remaining scrupulously faithful to the documented content of the original speeches. These voice enactments are for the purposes of dramatisation only, and should not in any way be considered as replacements or substitutes for the original speeches.

Dastaan-e-Samvidhaan is presented by Vineet KKN Panchchi for Radio Azim Premji University.

Credits:

Akshay Ramuhalli, Bijoy Venugopal, Bruce Lee Mani, Harsh Gupta, Harshit Hillol Gogoi, Narayan Krishnaswamy, Prashant Vasudevan, Sameera Ahmed, Sananda Dasgupta, Seema Seth, Shraddha Gautam, Supriya Joshi, and Velu Shankar

For a full list of acknowledgements and resources, please visit our website: https://azimpremjiuniversity.edu.in/radio-azim-premji-university