Sixteen Stormy Days

Tripurdaman Singh is a British Academy postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London. Born in 1988 in Agra, Uttar Pradesh, Tripurdaman read politics and international studies at the University of Warwick, and subsequently earned an MPhil in modern South Asian studies and a PhD in history from the University of Cambridge.
Tripurdaman is a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society and has been the recipient of a fellowship award from the Indian Council of Historical Research. His previous book, Imperial Sovereignty and Local Politics, was published by Cambridge University Press. He tweets @tripurdaman

Sixteen Stormy Days narrates the riveting story of the First Amendment to the Constitution of India-one of the pivotal events in Indian political and constitutional history, and its first great battle of ideas. Passed in June 1951 in the face of tremendous opposition within and outside Parliament, the subject of some of independent India's fiercest parliamentary debates, the First Amendment drastically curbed freedom of speech; enabled caste-based reservation by restricting freedom against discrimination; circumscribed the right to property and validated abolition of the zamindari system; and fashioned a special schedule of unconstitutional laws immune to judicial challenge.Enacted months before India's inaugural election, the amendment represents the most profound changes that the Constitution has ever seen. Faced with an expansively liberal Constitution that stood in the way of nearly every major socio-economic plan in the Congress party's manifesto, a judiciary vigorously upholding civil liberties, and a press fiercely resisting his attempt to control public discourse, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru reasserted executive supremacy, creating the constitutional architecture for repression and coercion.
What extraordinary set of events led the prime minister-who had championed the Constitution when it was passed in 1950 after three years of deliberation-to radically amend it after a mere sixteen days of debate in 1951?
Drawing on parliamentary debates, press reports, judicial pronouncements, official correspondence and existing scholarship, Sixteen Stormy Days challenges conventional wisdom on iconic figures such as Jawaharlal Nehru, B.R. Ambedkar, Rajendra Prasad, Sardar Patel and Shyama Prasad Mookerji, and lays bare the vast gulf between the liberal promise of India's Constitution and the authoritarian impulses of her first government.

The gulf between the idyllic portrayals of the early years of Independence and the awkward realities of politics has been lucidly documented by Tripurdaman Singh in this book. This isn't revisionist history but a clear snapshot of the first tensions between constitutional values and political priorities. Nehru emerges not as a villain but as a hard-nosed politician. A must-readOver the years, amending independent India's Constitution (of January 1950), with its glamorous chapter on fundamental rights, has become a favourite pastime for all national governments. Written in eloquent prose, this book tells us, for the rst time, the detailed story of when, why and how it all started-with the Constitution (First Amendment) Act of June 1951- and also about the distinguished men and women of the time who resisted its passage, through India's provisional parliament, strictly on principle. is well-researched treatise is a must-read-since it will change quite fundamentally glori ed and exaggerated notions of India's constitutional history. Reading through its pages will also help us better understand some of the advantages (as well as some of the perils) of super-majoritarian governments at the CentreThis book is dynamite. It will shock those who take a rosy view of the Constitution and the freedoms it grants to Indian citizens. e author shows with impressive historical scholarship that the original 1949 Constitution was subverted fteen months after its adoption by none other than the rst prime minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru. e First Amendment, passed by the same body that had formulated the Constitution, abridged the fundamental rights by qualifying them in favour of the State. is story, so far untold, should lead to a serious re-examination of the history and contents of the Constitution. It should inspire a movement for going back to the original Constitution, purging it of later distortions