Arghya Sengupta

On 2 October, the world will mark the 156th anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi’s birth. Gandhi, whose political baptism in South Africa was followed by his remarkable stewardship of the freedom movement in India, imagined a decolonised polity that was indigenous in its values, practices and governing systems. Yet, in the document that underpins the modern Indian state and its polity — the Constitution — that Indianness is missing. With some exceptions, this absence of indigeneity is the story of constitution-making in much of the Global South.