India's handwritten constitution is kept in a nitrogen-filled case in New Delhi
The world's longest constitution for a sovereign nation was written out by hand, each page decorated by artists from Shantiniketan, and signed by assembly members in both Hindi and English. The original is preserved in nitrogen at the Parliament Library, and the date it took effect, 26 January 1950, is celebrated every year as Republic Day.
Drafting took the Constituent Assembly just under three years. Elected indirectly by provincial legislators, it started with 389 members and shrank to 299 after partition, first meeting on 9 December 1946 while the Muslim League stayed away. Jawaharlal Nehru's Objectives Resolution of December 1946 later became the preamble. The civil servant B. N. Rau prepared an initial draft of 243 articles, which a seven-member drafting committee chaired by B. R. Ambedkar reworked; in the end the assembly handled 2,473 of the 7,635 amendments proposed.
Ambedkar carried much of the load. A committee colleague, T. T. Krishnamachari, told the assembly that resignations, a death, absences abroad and ill health had left the drafting largely to him. Ambedkar himself, in his closing speech of 25 November 1949, shared the credit with Rau and especially with the chief draftsman, S. N. Mukherjee, whose clarity he said had saved years of work. The assembly adopted the text the next day, now marked as Constitution Day, and it took full effect two months later, ending India's status as a British dominion.
Its roots are partly colonial. The Government of India Act 1935, largely drafted by Samuel Hoare, supplied the basic framework, and other British acts contributed features. To make the new order self-standing, the framers repealed earlier British statutes, including the Indian Independence Act 1947. The document proclaims India a sovereign, socialist, secular and democratic republic, though socialist and secular were only added to the preamble by the 42nd amendment in 1976. The assembly's members included Sarojini Naidu, Hansa Mehta and Amrit Kaur among its women.
At adoption it had 395 articles in 22 parts with 8 schedules, and among constitutions still in force only Alabama's runs longer than its roughly 145,000 words. By September 2023 it had been amended 106 times. Parliament can amend any part, but in the Kesavananda Bharati case the Supreme Court held that certain core features form a basic structure that can never be removed.
Source: Constitution of India
