I. Toward a Feminist Reading of the Constitution (A Review of the Founding Mothers of the Indian Republic by Achyut Chetan)
To understand the Founding Mothers of the Indian republic — and how their authorial intentions animate the Constitution as a living document — we must situate their efforts within a layered moral imaginary and gendered politics of transformation.
Though not exhaustive of India’s diversity, these women arrived at constitutional authorship through deeply political engagements with the All India Women’s Conference (AIWC). Through the AIWC, figures like Amrit Kaur, Hansa Mehta, and Aizaz Rasul sharpened their capacity to translate women’s demands into legal discourse.
To hear the voice of our founding mothers, we must listen not only to their speeches but to their writing. Their dissent notes, memoranda, charters of rights, and subcommittee work form a constitutional poetics of transformation.
II. Writing as Politics: Beyond the Assembly Floor
History privileges speech. But feminist politics recognises the subversive act of writing, especially in a space where women were far outnumbered.
Texts like Women’s Role in the Planned Economy, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the Women’s Charter reveal the broader discursive field that gave rise to their vision of liberty, equality, and secularism.
These framers conceptualised women as a minority with disabilities, stemming from socio-economic structures rather than biology — an early articulation of what we might now call intersectional structural justice.
This historical understanding of the condition of women in Indian society informed their principles of humanist rationality, secular thinking, and constitutional liberty.
III. Constructive Citizenship: A Vision Rooted in Justice
Amrit Kaur envisioned a constructive citizenship — one that reimagines the individual as both the subject and agent of constitutional morality. “This radical departure from conservative framers who wanted to root Indian society in the village or the family gave rise to a profound redefinition of the political. To them, Fundamental Rights were not merely protections against the State, but recoveries of inherent freedom curtailed by religion and family – private institutions historically insulated from political scrutiny.”
This marked one of the earliest rehearsals of feminist refusal to distinguish the personal from the political — a legacy often obscured but foundational.
IV. Feminist Futures: In Solidarity with Ambedkar
The women framers shared a deep alignment with Dr. B.R. Ambedkar’s dream of democracy — a dream that centered the individual, not the community, as the bearer of rights.
They challenged the patriarchal impulse that cloaked itself in the rhetoric of “civilizational ethos” and rejected calls to make the family or village the primary social unit. By insisting on the individual as the base unit of society, they argued for a justice aligned with the future — not the exclusionary shadows of the past.
Their work around Directive Principles, the inclusion of sex in non-discrimination clauses, opposition to military conscription, and a non-communal understanding of the Uniform Civil Code shows their expansive constitutional labour
V. Constitutional Morality and Radical Pedagogies.
Framers like Dikshayani Veludhyan envisioned a feminist, anti-caste, anti-class pedagogy of transformation. Education, to them, was not just technical literacy — but a moral awakening to constitutional values that could dismantle capitalism and caste hierarchies alike.
Our Collective Reading at our feminist leisure space, Extra Odinari
“To Ask for the Sun & Moon”
I. The Constitution as Absence
Many of us at Extra Odinari reflected on how the Constitution was a near-absent presence in our lives—read as rote in school, stripped of its lived meaning.
“Understanding its feminist voices, as someone said, felt like asking for the sun and moon.”
There was a deep sense of loss—a civic grief—about never having had a meaningful encounter with the text. Our educational spaces had failed to cultivate us as citizen-readers.
II. Fear and the Law
A persistent theme was fear. The Law, in its everyday application, seemed alien, punitive, and inaccessible—especially to women and gender non-conforming people. The specter of bureaucracy, victim-blaming, and moral policing haunted the Constitution’s promises.
We asked: How could one be moved by a text that had become a tool of our silencing?
III. Pedagogies of Power: Toward Constitutional Literacy
There was a collective yearning for new ways of engaging with the Constitution—through stories, comics, and creative expression.
We need a pedagogy not of the State, but of citizenship—where teaching law is not about technicalities but about building moral, political, and imaginative capacities.
“To learn the Constitution is to reclaim the right to imagine a just society. One that includes us—not as victims or exceptions, but as rightful architects.”
IV. Against Political Apathy: Reclaiming the Right to Be Political
Many shared the alienation produced by a school system that delegitimizes politics and upholds STEM success as the only viable future. The popular framing of politics as dirty, criminal, and distant feeds into a profound civic detachment—one that invisibilizes caste, gender, and class structures.
Yet, in our gathering, we remembered that the personal has always been political. We live at the intersection of these forces—feeling the weight of what is erased in the name of neutrality or apathy.
“The apolitical stance itself is a privilege—a refusal only afforded to those protected by caste and class.”
Conclusion: Toward a Radical Reading of Justice
Our conversation taught us that the Constitution is not merely a legal text but a living archive of feminist hope. The women who helped write it did so with fire, reason, and foresight. Their commitment to liberty, equality, and justice continues to illuminate what it means to be a citizen—especially a feminist one.
“When we read the Constitution through the eyes of our Founding Mothers, we are not merely reading the past—we are scripting the future.”
Author – Akankshya Mahapatra is a freelance writer and researcher with a Master’s in biotechnology. She is interested in exploring the intersections of gender, history & law while aiming to pursue a PhD in climate change & gender. She curates conversations at Safe Odisha For Her.
