The South Asian Studies Council presents
Gautam Bhatia, practicing lawyer based in New Delhi, India, and a legal scholar:
“The Indian Constitution: Conversations with Power.”
In 2025, the Indian Constitution turned seventy-five years old. Ever-enduring, ever-evolving, it has been a terrain of tumultuous debate and dissent: in the nation’s courtrooms, upon its streets, and in the halls of Parliament. This talk will bring a new lens towards examining the Constitution: as a document that creates, shapes, channels, and constrains power. I will argue that the Constitution has been a battleground upon which different visions of power have contested for supremacy. For the most part, this contest has been marked by a centralizing drift: that is, a drift towards a concentration of power within the union executive. Elements of this are embedded within the Constitution’s design, but the drift has also been accelerated, at crucial historical moments, by Supreme Court judgments. The talk will interrogate whether, and to what extent, emancipation is possible under the structures established by such a Constitution.
Gautam Bhatia is the author of a trilogy of books on the Indian Constitution: The Transformative Constitution, Unsealed Covers, and Conversations with Power. His scholarly work is informed by his involvement with contemporary Indian constitutional cases, such as the same-sex marriage case, the challenge to the removal of the State of Jammu and Kashmir’s autonomous status, the right to privacy case, and others. He is also a science fiction writer.