Pluralist Agreement and Constitutional Transformation (PACT)

民主和多元主义今天正处于危机之中，因为威权主义将其控制范围扩大到曾经被誉为民主成功的国家。随着民粹主义领导人追求违反法治的分裂民族主义，宪法日益成为公民抗议国家暴力的凝聚点。与此同时，正在出现关于分裂社会中的制宪问题的新研究。然而，学者们主要关注来自全球北方（特别是美国，欧洲）的案例，以及开国元勋的角色，通常是特权男性。普通公民和边缘化群体集体请愿、辩论和抗议的做法在制定宪法以及随着时间的推移重新制定宪法方面的作用基本上仍然是不可见的。与此同时，宪法知识和参与在很大程度上仍然是学者和法律的专家的专利，与激发民众对宪法呼吁的暴力和排斥的生活经历相距甚远。PACT进入了这个漏洞。一个突破性的多学科研究合作PACT将创建一个先进的数字平台，使印度宪法（1950年），在全球南方最有影响力的，目前受到威胁的印度教权利之一。印度制宪会议（1946-49）是在英国统治下的权力转移、分治、印度教-穆斯林流血和历史上最大规模的大规模移民的背景下召开的。尽管存在这些艰巨的挑战，尽管来自不同宗教、种姓和语言群体的成员之间存在深刻分歧，但与其他许多人不同，它最终成功地就宪法文本达成了一致。正如最近抗议者阅读宪法序言的视觉图像所证明的那样，在我们接近印度独立75周年（2022年）之际，宪法继续在当代政治中占据突出地位。我们的研究将旨在从印度的例子中汲取有关宪法民主合法性的经验教训，同时分析其目前尚未实现的多元化潜力。PACT平台是一个免费、开放访问的数字数据库，将成为该项目的持久遗产，将把印度的辩论与美国建国的辩论联系起来，使研究人员和公众用户能够以新的方式访问和比较跨越国界的宪法辩论。PACT将产生大量关于印度宪法制定的新知识，首次将全体会议辩论与委员会讨论以及请愿、公众反应和这一时期更广泛的辩论联系起来。我们寻求揭开被遗忘的宪法权利的历史，带来贱民，穆斯林和妇女代表的边缘声音。我们将部署数字平台，以审查制宪会议程序和结果之间的关系，特别是在保护个人权利和宗教、种姓和部落等群体差异方面。与我们在印度的合作组织一起，PACT将利用我们的数字平台举办研讨会，以激活对宪法的参与，并为包括议员、律师、记者、教师和学生在内的不同公民了解权利的含义。我们将与创意艺术家合作，以连环画和短片的形式探索印度宪法的制定，以探索识字和数字访问有限的农村背景公民的宪法参与。这些也将成为在伦敦举行的总结性展览和会议的一部分，以在2025年（宪法75周年）推出PACT研究平台。因此，我们寻求履行澳大利亚人权委员会的使命，即展示人文和艺术在激活公民参与解决我们时代关键全球问题方面的中心地位。

Democracy and pluralism are in crisis today, as authoritarianism extends its grip over countries once celebrated as democratic successes. With populist leaders pursuing a divisive nationalism that violates the rule of law, constitutions have increasingly become rallying points in citizen protests against state violence. At the same time, new research is emerging on constitution-making in divided societies. However, scholars have mostly focussed on cases from the global North (notably the US, Europe), and on the role of founding fathers, often privileged men. The role of collective practices of petition, debate and protest by ordinary citizens and the marginalized in the making of constitutions, and their remaking over time, remains largely invisible. At the same time, constitutional knowledge and engagement remain largely the preserve of scholars and legal experts, at a distance from the lived experiences of violence and exclusion that animate popular appeals to constitutions. PACT steps into this breach. A ground-breaking multi-disciplinary research collaboration PACT will create an advanced digital platform on the making of the Indian constitution (1950), one of the most influential in the global South, currently under threat from the Hindu Right. The Indian Constituent Assembly (1946-49) met against the background of a transfer of power from British rule, Partition, Hindu-Muslim blood-shed, and the largest mass migration in history. Despite these formidable challenges, as well as deep disagreement among members from diverse religious, caste and linguistic groups, it came to successfully agree on a constitutional text, unlike many others. As recent visual images of protestors reading the constitutional preamble attest, the constitution continues to occupy a salient position in contemporary politics as we approach the 75th anniversary of Indian independence (2022). Our research will aim to draw lessons regarding the democratic legitimacy of constitutions from the Indian example, while analysing its unfulfilled potential for pluralism in the present. The PACT platform, a free, open-access digital database that will be a lasting legacy of the project, will link Indian debates to those on the American founding, enabling researchers as well as public users to access and compare constitutional debates across national boundaries in new ways. PACT will generate a wealth of new knowledge on constitution-making in India, contextualizing the plenary debates for the first time in relation to committee discussions as well as petitions, public responses and wider debate of the period. We seek to uncover forgotten histories of constitutional rights, bringing in marginal voices of representatives of Dalits, Muslim and women. We will deploy the digital platform to examine the relationship between procedures and outcomes in the Constituent Assembly, in particular with regard to the protection of individual rights and group difference along lines of religion, caste, and tribe. Together with our collaborating organization in India, PACT will conduct workshops using our digital platform to activate engagement with the constitution and to elicit meanings of rights for diverse citizens, including parliamentarians, lawyers, journalists, teachers and students. We will work with creative artists to explore story-telling in the form of comic strips and short films on the making of the Indian Constitution, to be deployed to explore constitutional engagement among citizens from rural backgrounds with limited literacy and digital access. These will also form part of the summative exhibition and conference in London to launch the PACT research platform in 2025 (75th anniversary of the constitution). We seek thereby to address the AHRC's mission of demonstrating the centrality of humanities and arts for activating civic engagement for tackling key global problems of our time.