Join us on 23 July, 11:30 AM for a book discussion around Aakash Singh Rathore's Ambedkar's Preamble. He will be in conversation with Poorna Ravishankar and Arvind Narrain from Alternative Law Forum.
The event will take place at Champaca Bangalore. Please RSVP here: you can choose to RSVP for free, or purchase a signed copy of the book along with the free RSVP.
Open to Bangalore only.
We also encourage you to pick up Becoming Babasaheb by Aakash Singh Rathore!
About the book:
On 26 January 1950, the Constitution of India was adopted formally and came into effect. Its preamble set out in brief the enlightened values it enshrined and hoped to engender. In a radical shift from mainstream constitutional history, this book establishes Dr B.R. Ambedkar’s irrefutable authorship of the preamble by uncovering the intellectual origins of its six most central concepts-justice, liberty, equality, fraternity, dignity, and nation.
Although Dr Ambedkar is universally regarded as the chief architect of the Constitution, the specifics of his role as chairman of the Drafting Committee are not widely discussed. Totally neglected is his almost single-handed authorship of the Constitution’s Preamble, which is frequently and mistakenly attributed to B.N. Rau rather than to Ambedkar.
This book establishes how and why the Preamble to the Constitution of India is essentially an Ambedkarite preamble. It is clear that its central concepts have their provenance in Ambedkar’s writings and speeches. Through six eponymous chapters, this book unfolds the story of the six constitutional concepts. In doing so, it spotlights fundamental facts about modern Indian history, as well as Ambedkar’s revolutionary political thought, hitherto ignored in conventional accounts.