Remembering a Founding Mother

A new book by scholar Achyut Chetan, Founding Mothers of the Indian Republic, has brought back into focus the stellar contributions of the women members of the Constituent Assembly (CA). Although they were only 15 in number, the women members of the CA played an important role in shaping our Constitution. Each and every one of them was in the CA on their abilities and despite the challenges, made their voices heard, individually and collectively. In this column, I want to talk about one of the most distinguished of India’s founding mothers -- Hansa Mehta.

As Chetan points out, Hansa Mehta’s life itself is worthy of several tomes and her life before and after her work in the drafting of the Constitution is filled with a dazzling array of achievements. She was president of the All-India Women’s Congress, served as the Vice Chancellor of MS University in Baroda, wrote plays in Gujarati, translated French novels, and pioneered the creation of gender-sensitive curricula for schoolchildren.

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From the 1930s onwards, Hansa Mehta advocated the codification of Hindu law in an effort to ensure gender-justice for Hindu women. The Hindu Code Bill, initially drafted by B R Ambedkar and eventually passed by the Jawaharlal Nehru government in the 1950s, was the result of many years of campaigning by women such as Hansa Mehta across India, seeking to do away with the discriminatory practices in customary Hindu law that constrained their lives in myriad ways.

In the CA, Hansa Mehta was also on the Fundamental Rights sub-committee headed by J B Kriplani. This sub-committee drafted the first version of what is today Part III of the Constitution that guarantees the rights and freedoms of all Indians, and also Part IV which contains the Directive Principles of State Policy. In many ways, this document was ahead of its time in guaranteeing the right to education (which became a fundamental right only in 2009) and the right to vote to all adults above 21 (voting age is now 18, but it is still not a fundamental right).

Hansa Mehta, though, was not entirely happy with this report and the fundamental rights guaranteed -- two things that she expressly wanted included in the fundamental rights were rejected due to concerns raised by Muslim members of the CA, namely the abolition of “purdah” and a “common civil code”. While her intent behind these ideas -- of ensuring gender justice -- cannot be denied, the proposals themselves raised difficult questions of the rights of minorities in India that had to be set aside for a later date. As last year’s controversy over the “hijab ban” in Karnataka and the ongoing debate over the Uniform Civil Code show, these thorny issues are nowhere close to being resolved.

What is perhaps most remarkable about Hansa Mehta was that at the same time she was involved in helping draft India’s Constitution, she also took part in preparing the draft of what became the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. She was part of the UN Sub-Commission on the status of women, headed by Eleanor Roosevelt, a formidable feminist herself.

Hansa Mehta’s imprint on the UDHR starts from the opening words of the document -- “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights”. It sounds similar to the American Declaration of Independence, which begins “all men are created equal” and Roosevelt’s involvement suggests that that was certainly the inspiration. However, Hansa Mehta insisted that ‘men’ be replaced with ‘human beings’ to acknowledge the equality of the genders.

Even as India in 2023 attempts to be a vishvaguru on the basis of its economy, military might and influence in geopolitics, it is important to remember that back in 1948, when India had none of these, one Gujarati woman was teaching the world through the force of her moral arguments.

(Alok Prasanna Kumar, Co-founder, Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, uses his legal training to make the case that Harry Potter is science fiction and Star Wars is fantasy.)