'Not a single important issue that we have in the Indian democratic discourse, or around Indian constitutionalism that we have now, will be left the same if you start taking into account the positions taken by these women.' - Achyut Chetan, Shortlisted for the Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay NIF Book Prize 2023
The book begins with the momentous task of demolishing the prejudices attached with the phrase 'founding fathers' that has held an immense sway over constitutional interpretation. It shows that women members of the Indian Constituent Assembly had painstakingly co-authored a Constitution that embodied a moral imagination developed by years of feminist politics. It traces the genealogies of several constitutional provisions to argue that, without the intervention of these women members, the Constitution would have been a much lesser document of rights and statecraft than what it is. Situating these interventions in the larger trajectory of Indian feminism in which they are rooted, in the nationalist discourse with which they perpetually negotiated, and in the larger human rights discourse of the 1940s, the book shows that the women members of the Indian Constituent Assembly were much more than the 'founding mothers' of a republic.