Pluralist Agreement and Constitutional Transformation (PACT)

如今，随着威权主义扩大对曾经被誉为民主成功的国家的控制，民主和多元化正处于危机之中。随着民粹主义领导人追求一种违反法治的分裂民族主义，宪法越来越多地成为公民抗议国家暴力的集结点。与此同时，关于分裂社会中的宪法制定的新研究正在涌现。然而，学者们主要关注来自全球北方(尤其是美国和欧洲)的案例，以及开国元勋的角色，他们往往是特权人士。普通公民和边缘化群体的请愿、辩论和抗议集体做法在制定宪法和随着时间的推移重新制定宪法方面的作用在很大程度上仍然是看不见的。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专家的专属领域，与引发民众对宪法的呼吁的暴力和排斥的亲身经历相去甚远。PACT填补了这一漏洞。一项突破性的多学科研究合作协议将在制定印度宪法(1950)方面创建一个先进的数字平台。印度宪法是全球南方最有影响力的宪法之一，目前正受到印度教右翼的威胁。印度制宪会议(1946-49)是在英国统治下的权力移交、分治、印度教-穆斯林流血事件和历史上最大规模的大规模移民的背景下举行的。尽管面临这些艰巨的挑战，而且来自不同宗教、种姓和语言群体的成员之间存在严重分歧，但与许多其他国家不同的是，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，在我们即将迎来印度独立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吸取有关宪法民主合法性的教训，同时分析其在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，它将把印度的辩论与关于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国界的宪法辩论。该协定将产生丰富的关于印度制宪的新知识，首次将与委员会讨论以及请愿书、公众反应和这一时期的更广泛辩论有关的全体辩论纳入背景。我们试图揭开宪法权利被遗忘的历史，引入达利特人、穆斯林和妇女代表的边缘声音。我们将部署数字平台，审查制宪会议的程序和结果之间的关系，特别是在保护个人权利和宗教、种姓和部落方面的群体差异方面。PACT将与我们在印度的合作组织一起，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引出权利的含义。我们将与创意艺术家合作，探索以连环画和短片的形式讲述印度宪法的故事，以探索来自识字和数字途径有限的农村背景的公民参与宪法的问题。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)启动PACT研究平台。因此，我们寻求履行AHRC的使命，即展示人文和艺术在激活公民参与解决我们时代的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.