Sixteen Stormy Days
The Story of the First Amendment to the Constitution of India
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Sixteen Stormy Days
Narrated by:
Mikhail Sen
Buy Now for ₹611.00
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Narrated by:
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Mikhail Sen
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Written by:
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Tripurdaman Singh
On 26th January 1950 India became a republic, shedding its last links with its colonial past and inaugurating a new era of liberty and freedom. With fundamental rights and civil liberties guaranteed by the state, the new constitution was universally acclaimed as the ‘world’s greatest experiment in liberal government’.
This idealistic birth of a new republic meant a clean break with a repressive past. And yet, barely twelve months later, the very makers of the constitution were denouncing their own creation. Passed in June 1951, the First Amendment to the Constitution was a pivotal moment in Indian constitutional history.
Sixteen Stormy Days explores the contentious legacy of this First Amendment which drastically curbed freedom of speech, restricted freedom against discrimination and circumscribed the right to property.
It follows the sixteen days of debate that led up to it, the people that created it, the great battle waged against it and the immense consequences it has had for Indian democracy. It is a cautionary tale about an almost forgotten but hugely consequential piece of history that holds the key to understanding the position of civil liberties and individual freedoms in India today. It challenges conventional wisdom on iconic figures such as Jawaharlal Nehru, B.R. Ambedkar, Rajendra Prasad, Sardar Patel and Shyama Prasad Mookerji, and lays bare the vast gulf between the liberal promise of India’s Constitution and the authoritarian impulses of her first government.
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Critic Reviews
‘A page-turner’
‘Exhaustively researched… very readable…’
‘A compelling read’
‘History written as thriller… exceptional’
‘A scintillating examination of the First Amendment… Brings the legacies of Nehru and Modi uncomfortably close…’
‘Extremely well researched, beautifully written and qualitatively brilliant’
‘…simply written, yet riveting account will appeal to legal and academic scholars, as well as a wide readership of interested citizens’
This riveting book highlights Nehru’s role in post-colonial India’s first constitutional crisis. Singh’s nuanced perspectives comprehensively capture the historical and legal contexts that defined the event. It is masterfully written—a book for anyone who wants to look behind the veil of the world’s largest constitutional democracy. (Adeel Hussain, Associate Professor of Legal Studies, New York University, USA)
This book is dynamite. It will shock those who take a rosy view of the Constitution and the freedoms it grants to Indian citizens. This story, so far untold, should lead to a serious re-examination of the history and contents of the Constitution. (Lord Meghnad Desai, Emeritus Professor, London School of Economics, UK)
A long overdue study of the way in which the liberties guaranteed by India’s constitution were sabotaged by the very government that had promulgated it, thus returning the newly independent state to its colonial origins. (Professor Faisal Devji, University of Oxford, UK)
This blow-by-blow account of the first amendment of the Indian Constitution—arguably the most far-reaching—upends many a comforting myth about the Indian republic. Singh’s gripping account of this hitherto understudied and high-stakes political battle is at its provocative best when it challenges efforts at understanding the past through the lens of one-dimensional heroes and villains. (Mrinalini Sinha, author of Spectres of Mother India: The Global Restructuring of an Empire)
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