Undermining the Idea of India

A searing manifesto for troubled times in India.

“India is improbable. By any measure of logic or reason, it should not be. Not in this form. And yet it is.”

With this provocation, Justice Gautam Patel of the Bombay High Court sketches the exoskeleton of this improbability—the “Constitutional” idea of India. Justice Patel argues that the devolution of power is necessary for the survival of any liberal democracy, maintaining the idea that “the right to choose one’s own government is the ri...