publisher colophon


How did India's nationalist leaders overcome these hurdles? Ornit Shani's new book explores the means by which a group of administrators, constitutional lawyers, and politicians created India's democratic edifice. These people staffed or assisted in the work of the Constituent Assembly Secretariat (CAS), a critical postindependence body that oversaw the preparation of India's first draft electoral roll based on universal suffrage. The preparations that unfolded from 1947 to 1950 occurred as India confronted such fundamental tasks as how to define the criteria for citizenship and where to draw the borders of the state—when "'who is an Indian' was in question, and 'where is India' was in flux" (p. 129). [End Page 171]

Despite considerable scholarship on the evolution and consolidation of India's democracy, there has been until now no notable work on the monumental task that led to the forging of India's democratic constitution and the conduct of its first democratic election. Shani's contribution is not simply a tour d'horizon of the subject, but a veritable tour de force.




A nascent free press bolstered the CAS's efforts. Newspapers and CAS "press notes" were key in spreading the word about the creation of the new voter rolls. Press coverage made the process visible and helped to keep India's far-flung and not yet fully integrated territories "on the same page" about it (sometimes literally). This was particularly important in the nominally independent princely states, where few if any democratic reforms had taken place under British rule. Moreover, the Instrument of Accession that guided the merger of these states with independent India largely preserved [End Page 172] rulers' autonomy: They ceded control only of defense, foreign affairs, and communications. It was left to the new Indian state to persuade the erstwhile princes to treat their former subjects as citizens of India, with all the privileges that accompanied that status.

While Shani lauds the CAS, she does not overlook those who questioned the wisdom of adopting universal adult franchise at the outset. No less a figure than Rajendra Prasad, the Constituent Assembly's head and later India's first president, had misgivings. Speaking in October 1948, he worried that adult franchise might mean "putting educated and ignorant and honest and dishonest persons on the same footing" (106). He was hardly alone in this concern. Many educated Indians expressed skepticism about putting ballots in the hands of those whom they believed did not grasp the significance of democratic governance. Similar reservations were expressed about setting the voting age at 21 and thus asking young people to exercise mature judgment amid the "hectic days of electioneering" (107). All these doubts and more received an airing, yet the CAS moved forward with the broad extension of the franchise.

Were there any limits, then, to these attempts at inclusion? There were indeed exceptions, some distinctly antidemocratic, that affected an estimated 2.5 million Indians. Certain tribal areas in India's far northeast were excluded for a number of reasons. Indigenous people on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands off India's east coast were also left off the rolls, based on the assertion that they lacked the intellectual sophistication to vote.


These limits aside, Shani concludes that the "tenacity of inclusion" the CAS showed in preparing the rolls was "unsurpassed" (251). She correctly argues that the colossal task of gearing up for the exercise of universal adult franchise contributed to the political mobilization of India's vast potential electorate. Despite low levels of literacy, widespread poverty, and an entrenched caste system, Indians quickly came to grasp the significance of the ballot. As Shani notes, "Indians were voters before they became citizens" (251).


Similarly, Shani largely overlooks the exemplary role that Mohandas K. Gandhi's nonviolent civil-disobedience movement played in enabling large numbers of Indians to grasp the significance of civic action well before independence. At both elite and popular levels, Indians had been primed to seize the opportunity to participate in a free and fair election based on the universal adult franchise.



Sumit Ganguly

Sumit Ganguly is professor of political science at Indiana University–Bloomington. His most recent book (with William R. Thompson) is Ascending India and Its State Capacity: Extraction, Violence, and Legitimacy (2017).

Previous Article

Has Liberia Turned a Corner?

Next Article

Books Received

Additional Information

Print ISSN
Launched on MUSE
Open Access
Back To Top
