The following are different positions about reading and understanding Constituent Assembly debates.

1. Common people are too busy in earning livelihood and meeting different pressures of life. They can’t understand the legal language of these debates.
2. The conditions and challenges today are different from the time when the Constitution was made. To read the ideas of Constitution makers and use them for our new times is trying to bring past in the present.
3. Our ways of understanding the world and the present challenges have not changed totally. Constituent Assembly debates can provide us reasons why certain practises are important. In a period when constitutional practises are being challenged, not knowing the reasons can destroy them.

Which of these statements argues that Constituent Assembly debates are relevant even today? Which statement says that they are not relevant?

(a) Common people are too busy in earning livelihood and meeting different pressures of life. They can't understand the legal language of these debates.

(b) The conditions and challenges today are different from the time when the Constitution was made. To read the ideas of Constitution makers and use them for our new times is trying to bring past in the present

(c) Our ways of understanding the world and the present challenges have not changed totally. Constituent Assembly debates can provide us reasons why certain practises are important. In a period when constitutional practises are being challenged, not knowing the reasons can destroy them.

With which of these positions do you agree and why?

Understanding of secularism.

Articles $370$ and $371$

Explain the difference between the Indian Constitution and western ideas in the light of

Affirmative action.

Universal adult franchise

Which of the following principles of secularism are adopted in the Constitution of India?

This discussion was taking place in a class. Read the various arguments and state which of these you agree with and why.

Jayesh: I still think that our Constitution is only a borrowed document.

Saba: Do you mean to say that there is nothing Indian in it? But is there such a thing as Indian and western in the case of values and ideas? Take equality between men and women. What is Western about it? And even if it is, should we reject it only because it is Western?

Jayesh: What I mean is that after fighting for independence from the British, did we not adopt their system of Parliamentary Government?

Neha: You forget that when we fought the British, we were not against the British as such, we were against the principle of colonialism. That has nothing to do with adopting a system of government that we wanted, wherever it came from.