‘India’s Founding Moment, The Constitution of A Most Surprising Democracy’ by Madhav Khosla: A Book Review

Abstract

India’s Founding Moment, a book by political theorist and legal scholar Madhav Khosla, is a significant contribution towards understanding the birth of modern India and the historical moment at which the Indian democracy was founded. Many works have been written about imperial ideology. Khosla’s focus is how those who were colonized responded to that ideology. Khosla counters the narrative that India’s founding moment was historically insignificant and instead argues that it was a “paradigmatic democratic experience of the twentieth century”. Instead of using the imperial ideology of political absolutism that the British had offered, Khosla argues that India’s leaders chose to create a “self-sustaining democratic politics” through political education. Based on a meticulous study of works of Indian scholars, he is able to give us a number of insights into how India addressed “The Indian Problem” of self-government and democratization.

Keywords: Book Review, India, Political Theorist, Madhav Khosla, Modern India, History, Democracy, Imperial Ideology, Colonized, political absolutism, British, self-government, democratization