Founding Mothers of the Indian Republic

It shows that women members of the Constituent Assembly contributed significantly to shaping the moral imagination enshrined in the Constitution of India. By showcasing the immense debt owed by several of its articles to these women it breaks new ground in the fields of modern Indian history, women's history, and constitutional studies.

The book begins with the momentous task of demolishing the prejudices attached with the phrase 'founding fathers' that has held an immense sway over constitutional interpretation. It shows that women members of the Indian Constituent Assembly had painstakingly co-authored a Constitution that embodied a moral imagination developed by years of feminist politics. It traces the genealogies of several constitutional provisions to argue that, without the interventions of these women framers, the Constitution would hardly have a much poorer document of rights and statecraft that it is. Situating these interventions in the larger trajectory of Indian feminism in which they are rooted, in the nationalist discourse with which they perpetually negotiated, and in the larger human rights discourse of the 1940s, the book shows that the women members of the Indian Constituent Assembly were much more than the 'founding mothers' of a republic.