In a foreword to political scientist Subhash Kashyap’s book Jawaharlal Nehru and the Constitution, the then Speaker of the Lok Sabha Dr. Bal Ram Jakhar lamented that “it is unfortunate that not much has been written about the role of Nehru in the making and working of the Constitution.” He had expressed hope that the book would alter that position. Yet, the absence of Nehru’s name during the celebrations marking seventy-five years of the Constitution earlier this year suggests that little has changed.

Incidentally, this piece appears a day before Nehru’s birth anniversary. The title of this series of column - Tryst with the Constitution - is also consciously inspired by his iconic “Tryst with Destiny” speech. It is, therefore, an appropriate moment to reflect on Nehru’s role in the making of the Constitution. His contribution spanned three foundational dimensions of the constitutional project: the demand for a Constituent Assembly, the procedural and administrative arrangements that enabled its functioning and the philosophical authorship that shaped its moral vocabulary through the Preamble.

The idea of a Constitution framed by Indians themselves originated well before independence. Motilal Nehru, as leader of the Swaraj Party, had in 1924 introduced a resolution in the Central Legislative Assembly urging the convening of a representative conference to recommend a constitutional scheme for India. Three years later, at the Bombay session of the Indian National Congress, he moved a resolution calling on the Congress Working Committee to frame a Constitution for India in consultation with elected representatives, resulting in the Nehru Report.

Jawaharlal Nehru transformed this aspiration into a political principle. In an article for The Daily Herald (London) dated October 2, 1933, he wrote,

“a political solution of the struggle can only come when the Indian people can settle their own Constitution in a popularly elected Constituent Assembly.”

The Congress formally adopted this demand at its meeting in 1934, rejecting the British White Paper and calling for a Constituent Assembly based on adult suffrage.

For Nehru, the distinction between the colonial legislatures and the assembly he envisaged was fundamental. The former were, in his words, “sham and lifeless things imposed by an alien authority,” deriving their authority from imperial grant. The Constituent Assembly, by contrast, was to draw its sanction directly from the people and not from colonial power, and was, therefore, capable of truly representing them.

Mahatma Gandhi, who had initially viewed the proposal with caution, later conceded its force. Writing in Harijan on November 25, 1939, he noted that Nehru had “compelled [him] to study the implications of a Constituent Assembly,” and that “hard facts had made him a convert and, for that reason, perhaps more enthusiastic than Jawaharlal himself.”

By the time the Cabinet Mission Plan of 1946 accepted the principle of an Assembly, the demand had become a settled part of India’s political vocabulary, due to the efforts of Nehru and his colleagues.

As head of the interim government from September 1946, Nehru oversaw the transition from colonial administration to constituent authority. Even before the Assembly convened, he chaired the Committee of Experts constituted on July 8, 1946 to prepare materials and draft proposals for the Assembly. The committee included Asaf Ali, N Gopalaswamy Ayyangar, KT Shah, K Santhanam, Humayun Kabir, DR Gadgil and KM Munshi. In its deliberations, Nehru stated unambiguously that although the Assembly would come into being under procedures set out by the Cabinet Mission and the Viceroy, once convened, “it will be a sovereign body and shall act as such except in so far as its members are morally committed…”

That principle was tested almost immediately. When Lord Wavell insisted that since the Assembly was being created under British authority, he should appoint the presiding chairman for its inaugural session, Nehru objected. He argued that the Assembly, being sovereign, must elect its own presiding officer and summon itself without the Viceroy’s intervention. The eventual compromise - an invitation issued by the Secretary of the Assembly rather than by the Viceroy - preserved its autonomy in form and substance.

Nehru also discussed with HVR Iyengar and BN Rau the organisational details necessary for the Assembly’s functioning: staffing of the Secretariat, circulation of background papers, mode of selecting provisional chairman and its powers. Correspondences between Iyengar and Rau with Nehru respectively highlight the instrumental role played by him in setting up the procedure and mechanism of the Assembly.

Beyond procedural design, Nehru also chaired one of the two principal committees of the Constituent Assembly - the Union Constitution Committee, established on June 6, 1947. The other - the Provincial Constitution Committee - was chaired by Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. Together, these committees were tasked with laying down the structural principles of the Constitution - the distribution of powers, the relationship between the Union and the provinces and the basic framework of representative government. Their recommendations formed the constitutional foundations which the Drafting Committee would later translate into legal text.

The Union Constitution Committee’s work under Nehru was particularly significant. The Committee resolved that the Constitution would establish a federal government with a strong Centre; legislative powers would be distributed across three lists, with residuary powers vested in the Union. On July 12, 1947, it proposed the amendment procedure that later found expression in Article 368. The Committee also addressed questions of citizenship, the executive, Parliament and the judiciary, fundamental to the Constitution.

In his concluding address to the Assembly, Dr Rajendra Prasad summarised this phase with precision:

“The method which the Constituent Assembly adopted in connection with the Constitution was first to lay down its ‘terms of reference’ in the form of an Objective Resolution moved by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru in an inspiring speech and which constitutes now the Preamble to our Constitution. It then proceeded to appoint a number of committees to deal with different aspects of the constitutional problem…Several of these had as their Chairman either Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru or Sardar Patel, to whom thus goes the credit for the fundamentals of our Constitution.”

That assessment captures the dual character of Nehru’s work - conceptual and organisational - and situates it within the Assembly’s collective enterprise.

The most enduring expression of Nehru’s constitutional vision lies in the Objective Resolution he introduced on December 13m 1946. The Resolution articulated the philosophical framework of the Constitution. It declared India to be an independent sovereign republic and laid down the objectives that would guide the new State - the assurance of justice, liberty, equality and fraternity. It affirmed that sovereignty rested with the people of India and that all powers and authorities of government would be derived from them. These principles were not intended as rhetorical aspirations; they served as the Assembly’s “terms of reference” for drafting the Constitution and were subsequently transformed, almost verbatim, into its Preamble.

Alladi Krishnaswami Ayyar, in his Comments and Suggestions on the Draft Constitution, explicitly recognised that the Preamble reflected the language and spirit of the Objective Resolution. The same view was later affirmed by Dr Rajendra Prasad in his concluding address to the Assembly. This continuity is further confirmed by Dr BR Ambedkar’s letter transmitting the Draft Constitution to Dr Prasad, where he noted that the words “independent republic” had been replaced with “sovereign republic,” and that the concept of fraternity had been elaborated to include “fraternal concord and goodwill.” He added that “in other respects, the Committee has tried to embody in the Preamble the spirit, as far as possible, the language of the Objective Resolution.”

On another plane, the symbolism of the Resolution merits equal attention. Drafted personally by Nehru, it drew upon both world history and India’s own republican traditions. In introducing it, he compared the solemnity of the Assembly’s commitment to the Oath of the Tennis Court during the French Revolution - a pledge by representatives to frame a constitution for their nation. Yet, he reminded the Assembly that the republican spirit was not foreign to India’s own history. He observed,

“We cannot say that the republican tradition is foreign to the genius of this country. We have had it from the beginning of our history.”

Through references to Panini, Megasthenes, Kautilya, the Buddha and classical Sanskrit texts, Nehru situated India’s constitutional experiment within a longer civilisational continuum.

In later years, the enduring relevance of the Preamble affirmed the force of Nehru’s constitutional vision. In the early years of independence, courts frequently relied on his speeches to interpret the Preamble and the scope of constitutional amendment. The landmark decision in Kesavananda Bharati v. State of Kerala, which articulated the basic structure doctrine, cited Nehru alongside Patel and Ambedkar in elucidating the Constitution’s essential features. Chief Justice SM Sikri, writing for the majority, described Nehru and Ambedkar as the “chief architects of the Constitution,” underscoring the continuing influence of Nehru’s thought on the interpretation of the constitutional text.

In April 1955, Jawaharlal Nehru described himself as “one of those humble individuals who had something to do with the making of the Constitution.” Yet his contributions - alongside those of Sardar Patel - are seldom remembered in conversations on the Constitution.

The Constitution of India was, and remains, a collective enterprise. Ambedkar’s analytical rigour, Patel’s integrative skill, Prasad’s steady stewardship, Rau’s constitutional and administrative insight and Nehru’s administrative and philosophical labour together gave the republic its constitutional form. As India celebrates seventy-five years of that achievement, the occasion invites remembrance of all who shaped it. To recognise Nehru’s place in that collaboration is neither to revise authorship nor to alter credit; it is to restore proportion to the narrative of India’s constitutional beginnings.

Swapnil Tripathi leads Charkha, the Constitutional Law Centre at the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy.

Views are personal.