Partition's Constitution: Law, Violence, Nation

暴力，表现为战争、内乱、革命或殖民统治，往往先于新的法律秩序的建立。在印度，宪法的制定始于次大陆的暴力分裂，这场分裂导致1200万人流离失所，200万人死亡，75000名妇女被绑架和强奸。在1946年至1949年暴力事件的阴影下，制宪会议（Constituent Assembly）召开会议，起草印度的新宪法，尽管难民涌入位于德里的制宪会议议会厅附近的临时营地。尽管暴力和制宪在空间和时间上接近，但印度制宪的历史很少涉及分治。在典型的解释中，印度宪法（1950年）是民族主义斗争的目的论成果，在压倒性的共识中被采纳。虽然对辩论的粗略一瞥使人无法忽视其中的不和谐，但在格兰维尔·奥斯汀（Granville Austin）的《印度宪法：一个国家的基石》（the Indian Constitution：基石）中可以看到这种不加批判的庆祝，这本书自1966年出版以来一直是权威的政治史。奥斯汀称赞大会确保了一种“团结、理想主义和国家目标的氛围”，使决策能够通过妥协和共识来实现。然而，对印度建国的批判性描述强调了契约的不和谐和脆弱的本质，被遗忘的人物的作用，以及底层群体通过权利诉讼塑造宪政的作用。在最近的一篇文章中，印度建国的激进性被归因于三管齐下的宪法机构，包括编纂、中央集权的国家和建立民主政治的以个人为中心的代表制。如果我们按照乌代·梅塔的观点，把印度的建国时刻看作是“政治专制主义”的组成部分——社会和主权问题被排除在其他领域之外——那么就不可能从印度共和国的暴力起源中抽象出政治专制主义的宪法。正如Etienne Balibar提醒我们的那样，“如果暴力领域不是邪恶的帝国，政治就不会是nomos的帝国”。这个博士项目认为，一个关键的宪法历史必须问暴力和主权如何通过法律相互构成。它使用政治思想和宪法理论研究的方法来探索原始暴力，法律和主权之间的关系。印度宪法的文本没有明确涉及分治，因此，似乎“忘记”了这一事件。我的硕士论文读了制宪会议的辩论，认为这种失忆是欺骗性的，因为分治隐含地影响了对关键条款的决定，比如公民身份、少数民族政治代表和联邦结构。然而，议会似乎与分治保持距离，把这个问题留给了行政部门。如果考虑到两点，它的不愿意是很难理解的：第一，作为自决的宪法问题的分治的起源，第二，议会在这一时期作为立宪机构和临时立法机构的双重作用，其影响尚未加以审查。那么，人们如何理解这种宪法上的沉默呢？

Violence, manifested as war, civil strife, revolution, or colonial rule, often precedes the establishment of a new legal order. In India, constitution-making was inaugurated by the violent Partition of the subcontinent, which displaced 12 million people, left 2 million dead, and 75,000 women abducted and raped. In the shadow of this violence between 1946-1949, the Constituent Assembly met to write India's new constitution, even as refugees poured into makeshift camps within 'shouting distance' of its chambers in Delhi. Notwithstanding the spatial and temporal proximity between violence and constitution-making, histories of Indian constitution-making rarely engage with Partition. In the paradigmatic account, the Constitution of India (1950) is the teleological fruit of the nationalist struggle, adopted amidst overwhelming consensus. Although a cursory glance at the debates makes it impossible to ignore the dissonance within, such uncritical celebration is seen in Granville Austin's The Indian Constitution: Cornerstone of a Nation, the definitive political history since its publication in 1966. Austin lauds the Assembly for ensuring an 'atmosphere of unity, of idealism, and of national purpose' that enabled decision-making by accommodation and consensus. However, critical accounts of the Indian founding emphasise the discordant, fragile nature of the compact, the role of forgotten personalities, and the agency of subaltern groups in shaping constitutionalism through rights litigation. In a recent account, the radicalness of Indian founding is attributed to a three-pronged constitutional apparatus comprising codification, the centralised state, and individual centric representation that institute democratic politics. If we consider, with Uday Mehta, the founding moment as constitutive of the 'absolutism of the political' - within which the social and sovereign questions are subsumed to the exclusion of other domains - it is impossible to abstract the constitution of political absolutism from the violent origins of the Indian republic. As Etienne Balibar reminds us, '(t)he political would not be the empire of the nomos if the field of violence were not the empire of evil'. This doctoral project argues that a critical constitutional history must ask how violence and sovereignty constitute each other through law. It uses approaches in the study of political thought and constitutional theory to explore the relationship between originary violence, law, and sovereignty. The text of the Indian Constitution does not expressly engage with Partition, and so, appears to 'forget' the event. My Master's thesis read the Constituent Assembly debates to argue that such amnesia is deceptive, for Partition implicitly shaped decisions on crucial provisions, like citizenship, minority political representation, and the federal structure. Yet, the Assembly seemed to distance itself from Partition, leaving the matter with the executive. Its unwillingness is difficult to understand if one considers two points: first, the genesis of Partition as a constitutional problem of self-determination, and second, the Assembly's dual role as both constituent body and provisional legislature in this period, the implications of which have not been examined. How, then, does one understand this constitutional silence?