Minorities' rights

Forgetting Partition: Constitutional Amnesia and Nationalism

Author(s): 
Kanika Gauba
Publisher/Sponsor: 
Economic & Political Weekly
www.epw.in/journal/2016/39/special-articles/forgetting-partition.html

History’s silence resonates in the textual silence of the Indian Constitution on the immense scale of violence and exodus accompanying the partition of the subcontinent, despite the contemporaneity of partition and constitution writing. Clearly discernible on a closer reading of the Constituent Assembly's debates are implicit influences of partition on key constitutional decisions, such as citizenship, political safeguards for religious minorities and provisions creating a strong central tendency in the union.