Faculty Seminar | Liberty After Freedom: A History of Article 21, Due Process and the Constitution of India
March 9, 2022
The faculty seminar was held on March 9, 2022.
Speaker
Rohan J Alva, Counsel, Supreme Court of India
Abstract
The talk is based on Rohan J Alva’s recent book, Liberty After Freedom, which explores the origins of what is today considered the most important fundamental right in the Indian Constitution – the right to life and personal liberty guaranteed by Article 21. This is the article that in recent years made the right to privacy as well as the decriminalization of homosexuality possible. Without a doubt, Article 21 has had the most outsized influence on the progressive development of rights in India.
But the story of how this important right was birthed is deeply controversial and its passage in the Constituent Assembly divided opinion like no other feature of the Constitution. Liberty After Freedom explores the intellectual beginnings of this paramount fundamental right in an attempt to decode and unravel the controversies which raged at the time the Constitution was being crafted.