Bajpai, Rochana (2002) Minority Rights in the Indian Constituent
Assembly Debates, 1946-1950. Working Paper. Queen Elizabeth
House Working Papers Series - QEHWPS30. This article analyses
the arguments advanced for and against minority rights in the
Indian Constituent Assembly. During the course of my analysis, I
show first, that arguments advocating and opposing different
kinds of minority provisions, advanced from diverse political
and ideological positions, employed a shared legitimating
vocabulary. The concepts of secularism, democracy, equality and
justice, and national unity and development defined this
legitimating vocabulary. Second, while it has generally been
assumed that the constitution-makers subscribed to a single
notion of secularism or democracy, my analysis shows that
different conceptions of these political ideals were at play in
arguments about minority rights in the Constituent Assembly.
Third, against dominant understandings of Indian political
discourse, this article emphasizes that diffe