Class 12 History Chapter 12 Framing the Constitution NCERT Solutions in English

Q. What were the ideals expressed in the Objectives Resolution?

Answer:
1. An Independent Sovereign Republic. The Objectives Resolution, introduced by Nehru on 13 December 1946, proclaimed India an “Independent Sovereign Republic” that would guarantee its citizens justice, equality and freedom.
2. Safeguards for minorities and the oppressed. The Resolution promised “adequate safeguards … for minorities, backward and tribal areas, and Depressed and Other Backward Classes.”
3. A place in world history, but no copying. Nehru’s speech placed India alongside the American, French and Russian Revolutions, yet insisted “we are not going just to copy … whatever system of government we may establish here must fit in with the temper of our people.”
4. Democracy taken for granted. Though the word “democratic” did not appear in the text, Nehru argued India’s whole past was witness to its commitment to democratic institutions, so the Resolution had already given democracy’s content.
Conclusion. The Resolution outlined the defining ideals of the Constitution and provided the framework within which the work of constitution-making was to proceed.

Q. How was the term minority defined by different groups?

Answer:
1. A religious definition. For members such as B. Pocker Bahadur, minority meant a religious community, especially Muslims, who needed a political voice through separate electorates.
2. An economic definition. Socialist leader N.G. Ranga turned this on its head: “the real minorities are the masses of this country … There is no elementary education even among these people”: economic and educational deprivation, not religion, was the real measure.
3. A structural, not numerical, definition. Tribal representative Jaipal Singh argued tribals, though not a numerical minority, urgently needed protection because of continuous exploitation and dispossession.
4. A caste-social definition. J. Nagappa and K.J. Khanderkar pointed out the Depressed Castes were 20-25 per cent of the population, marginalised not by numbers but by systematic social exclusion.
Conclusion. “Minority” was never one fixed category in the Assembly; it was repeatedly redefined along lines of religion, class, numbers and social exclusion.

Q. What were the arguments in favour of greater power to the provinces?

Answer:
1. Warning against an overburdened Centre. K. Santhanam argued the proposed distribution would weaken, not strengthen, the Centre: “there is almost an obsession that by adding all kinds of powers to the Centre we can make it strong.”
2. The danger of fiscal strain. He warned the fiscal terms would leave states unable to fund education, sanitation or roads.
3. A prediction of revolt. Santhanam predicted that unless the balance was revisited, provinces would eventually “rise in revolt against the Centre.”
4. The pre-Partition commitment. This demand also drew on the pre-Partition Congress promise of considerable provincial autonomy, made to reassure the Muslim League.
Conclusion. This position stayed a minority view: Ambedkar, Gopalaswami Ayyangar and Balakrishna Sharma cited post-Partition security concerns to carry the Assembly toward a strong Centre instead.

Q. Why did Mahatma Gandhi think Hindustani should be the national language?

Answer:
1. Genuinely composite and widely understood. Gandhiji saw Hindustani, a blend of Hindi and Urdu, as a popular, composite language enriched by many cultures.
2. A means of unity. He believed it could unify Hindus and Muslims, north and south, even as Hindi and Urdu were steadily pulling apart from the late nineteenth century.
3. Neither over-Sanskritised nor over-Persianised. Shortly before his death Gandhiji said this Hindustani “should be neither Sanskritised Hindi nor Persianised Urdu but a happy combination of both.”
4. Open to regional words. He also held it should freely admit words from different regional languages; confining oneself to only Hindi or only Urdu would be, in his words, “a crime against intelligence and the spirit of patriotism.”
Conclusion. Gandhiji’s broad vision was ultimately narrowed by the Language Committee into a single official language, Hindi, a different outcome from what he had originally imagined.

Q. What historical forces shaped the vision of the Constitution?

Answer:
1. The legacy of the national movement. The Constituent Assembly inherited from the national movement a habit of open public debate; 82 per cent of its members were from the Congress, though the party itself held views ranging from socialist to pro-landlord.
2. Partition’s violence and the refugee crisis. Across the debates from December 1946 to November 1949, the severe violence of Partition, millions of refugees, and the uncertain future of the princely states remained a constant backdrop, pushing security and unity concerns into nearly every major decision.
3. The history of global revolutions. Nehru’s Objectives Resolution placed India within the broad history of the American, French and Russian Revolutions, while insisting on a distinctly Indian synthesis, liberal democracy fused with socialist economic justice.
4. The tradition of social-reform movements. The chapter links the Assembly’s ideals to the nineteenth-century campaigns against child marriage and for widow remarriage, Swami Vivekananda’s reform of Hinduism, Jyotiba Phule’s work among the depressed castes, and Communists and Socialists organising workers and peasants: democracy, equality and justice had become associated with these social struggles. The Assembly was expected to express the aspirations of those who had taken part in the movement for independence.
5. Earlier constitutional experiments. As the demand for representation grew, the British had passed a series of Acts (1909, 1919 and 1935) that gradually enlarged Indian participation in provincial governments; under the 1935 Act the provincial executive became almost entirely responsible to the legislature, and in the 1937 elections the Congress came to power in eight out of the 11 provinces. But these Acts were enacted by the colonial government, not debated by Indians, and even in 1935 only 10 to 15 per cent of adults could vote, so the Assembly’s vision of an independent, sovereign Republic marked a break as well as a continuity.
6. Communal anxieties. The shadow of communal violence is visible across the debates on separate electorates, the language question, and the division of power between Centre and states.
Conclusion. The Constitution was, therefore, the product of neither a single ideology nor a copied foreign model, but a document forged at the meeting point of the national movement’s legacy, an immediate political crisis, and a wider global intellectual history.

Q. Discuss the different arguments made in favour of protection of the oppressed groups.

Answer:
1. Religious minorities: the separate-electorate demand, and its rejection. B. Pocker Bahadur argued only separate electorates could give Muslims a meaningful voice. Patel and Pant opposed this forcefully: Patel said the British had “left the mischief behind”, and Pant called separate electorates “suicidal to the minorities”; Muslim members such as Begum Aizaz Rasul agreed. Result: separate electorates were dropped.
2. Tribals: the demand for reserved seats. Jaipal Singh did not ask for separate electorates, but argued reserved legislative seats were essential, given the tribals’ history of continuous exploitation and dispossession.
3. The Depressed Castes: social versus political protection. Ambedkar’s earlier demand for separate electorates was dropped after Partition; J. Nagappa and K.J. Khanderkar stressed that the real problem was social exclusion. The Assembly chose the abolition of untouchability, temple entry, and reserved seats and jobs.
4. The economically deprived: Ranga’s redefinition. N.G. Ranga argued legal rights alone were meaningless without economic “props” and a “ladder”; for him the real minorities were defined by poverty and lack of education, not religion.
5. Women: equality, not privilege. Hansa Mehta of Bombay demanded justice for women, not reserved seats or separate electorates: social, economic and political justice, and the equality that alone can be the basis of mutual respect.
Conclusion. “Protection” therefore took a different shape for each group, from political separation to reserved seats to social reform, and the Assembly ultimately chose inclusion over separation in nearly every case.

Q. What connection did some of the members of the Constituent Assembly make between the political situation of the time and the need for a strong Centre?

Answer:
1. Partition as a “settled fact.” Nehru stated openly that Partition was “a settled fact,” and that a weak central authority risked failing to keep peace, coordinate national matters, or represent India abroad.
2. Ambedkar’s direct argument. Ambedkar said he wanted a Centre “much stronger than the Centre we had created under the Government of India Act of 1935,” given the post-Partition situation.
3. Economic and security reasoning. Gopalaswami Ayyangar and Balakrishna Sharma argued only a strong Centre could plan economic development, mobilise resources, run the administration, and defend against both communal violence and foreign threats.
4. The reversal of the provincial-autonomy pledge. The pre-Partition Congress commitment to provincial autonomy had been a deliberate concession to reassure the Muslim League; once Partition removed that political pressure, most nationalists shifted decisively toward centralisation.
5. A dissenting but minority voice. K. Santhanam warned that excessive centralisation would weaken the states and could lead to revolt, but the majority prioritised security concerns.
Conclusion. The immediate post-Partition political situation of violence and uncertainty thus tilted the Constitution directly toward the Centre, through the three-list system, Article 356, and fiscal centralisation.

Q. How did the Constituent Assembly seek to resolve the language controversy?

Answer:
1. The starting position. The Congress had accepted Hindustani as the national language since the 1930s, in line with Gandhiji’s inclusive, composite Hindi-Urdu vision.
2. Dhulekar’s aggressive demand. In one of the Assembly’s earliest sessions, R.V. Dhulekar demanded that members who did not know Hindustani were not fit to remain in the Assembly; Nehru had to intervene to restore order.
3. The south’s objection. G. Durgabai warned this felt like “effectively preventing the natural influence of other powerful languages of India”; Shankarrao Deo and T.A. Ramalingam Chettiar also counselled restraint.
4. The Language Committee’s compromise formula. Eventually the Language Committee proposed that Hindi in the Devanagari script become the official (not national) language, with English continuing for official use for the next 15 years.
5. A mixed reaction. On 13 September 1949, Dhulekar found even the word “official” inadequate, but accepted it as “a consummation of a historic process,” showing the compromise satisfied no side fully but was a workable middle ground.
Conclusion. Gandhiji’s broad vision of Hindustani was thus reworked into a narrower official Hindi and a 15-year continuation of English, and each province was allowed to choose a regional language for official work within the province.

Q. On a present-day political map of India, indicate the different languages spoken in each state and mark out the one that is designated as the language for official communication. Compare the present map with a map of the early 1950s. What differences do you notice? Do the differences say something about the relationship between language and the organisation of the states?

Answer (approach):
Present-day map: for each state, write the main languages spoken and underline the language used there for official communication (use an atlas or official state lists).
Early 1950s map: compare it with a map of India in the early 1950s and note which state boundaries and names have changed.
What to conclude: link the changes to what the chapter says about language: the Assembly debated the language question for three years; the Language Committee made Hindi in the Devanagari script the official language, kept English for fifteen years, and allowed each province to choose a regional language for official work within the province. Discuss whether the later map shows states organised more closely around the languages people speak.

Q. Choose any one important constitutional change that has happened in recent years. Find out why the change was made, what different arguments were put forward for the change, and the historical background to the change. If you can, try and look at the Constitutional Assembly Debates to see how the issue was discussed at that time. Write about your findings.

Answer (approach for this project):
Pick one recent amendment and collect three things: why it was made, the arguments for and against it, and its historical background.
Go back to the Assembly: if the issue touches a theme from this chapter (minority rights, reserved seats, Centre-state powers, language), see how members argued it in the Constituent Assembly Debates, as the chapter does with separate electorates, the strong Centre and the language question.
Write your findings, noting where the recent change continues or departs from the positions taken in the Assembly.

Q. Compare the Constitution of America, France or South Africa with the Indian Constitution, focusing on any two of the following themes: secularism, minority rights, relations between the Centre and the states. Find out how these differences and similarities are linked to the histories of the regions.

Answer (approach for this project):
Choose one country and two themes and read the relevant parts of both constitutions.
Use the chapter for the Indian side: Indian secularism keeps a “judicious distance” between State and religion rather than an absolute separation (Articles 25-28, 29-30, 14, 16, 17); separate electorates were rejected and reserved seats adopted; and the Constitution shows a distinct bias towards the Union over the states (three lists, Article 356, fiscal federalism).
Link each difference to history: for India, the chapter itself explains how Partition violence pushed the Assembly towards a strong Centre and away from separate electorates. Look for similar historical reasons in the country you choose.

Q. Look again at Chapter 11. Discuss how the political situation of the time may have shaped the nature of the debates within the Constituent Assembly.

Answer: The Assembly met at an exceptionally tumultuous time. The Great Calcutta Killings of August 1946 began a year of almost continuous rioting across northern and eastern India, ending in the massacres that accompanied the transfer of populations at Partition; millions of refugees were on the move, and the status of the princely states was still ambiguous. As the chapter asks, the debates inside the Assembly could not remain insulated from what was happening outside. This situation shaped them in several ways: (i) Partition made most nationalists fervently opposed to separate electorates, which Patel called a “poison” that had led to the partition of the country; (ii) the riots and violence led many members to demand a strong Centre that could stop the communal frenzy, and the Congress dropped its earlier promise of wide provincial autonomy; (iii) communal conflict had made language a matter of religious identity, so the language debate became bitter; (iv) with the British still in India, members such as Somnath Lahiri felt the Assembly was working under British pressure; and (v) the fear of divided loyalties made leaders like Pant insist that every individual be moulded into a citizen loyal to the State.

Q. What explanation does Jawaharlal Nehru give for not using the term “democratic” in the Objectives Resolution in Source 1?

Answer: Nehru said the word was left out because it was obvious that the word “republic” contains it, and they did not want to use unnecessary and redundant words. He admitted that a republic may conceivably not be democratic, but “the whole of our past is witness to this fact that we stand for democratic institutions”; India was aiming at “democracy and nothing less than a democracy”. Instead of the word, the Resolution had given “the content of democracy”, and even the content of economic democracy, which was more than using the word. What shape that democracy would take was for the House to decide.

Q. Why does the speaker in Source 2 think that the Constituent Assembly was under the shadow of British guns?

Answer: The speaker, the Communist member Somnath Lahiri, felt that the imposition was “here right now”. In the winter of 1946-47 the British were still in India: the interim administration headed by Nehru could only operate under the directions of the Viceroy and the British Government in London. The British Plan made any future constitution dependent on a treaty satisfactory to the British, and for every little difference Indians would have to run to the Federal Court, to England or to Prime Minister Attlee. The British Army and Britain’s economic and financial stranglehold meant that the final power was still in British hands, and Attlee had even threatened division. So the Assembly was British-made, “working the British plans as the British should like it to be worked out”. Lahiri therefore urged that independence be declared here and now.

Q. What were the ideas outlined by Jawaharlal Nehru in his speech on the Objectives Resolution?

Answer: Introducing the Objectives Resolution on 13 December 1946, Nehru: (i) proclaimed India an “Independent Sovereign Republic” that would guarantee its citizens justice, equality and freedom, with “adequate safeguards” for minorities, backward and tribal areas, and Depressed and Other Backward Classes; (ii) placed the Indian experiment in the long history of struggles for liberty, recalling the American and French Revolutions and the Russian Revolution, from which India would learn, seeking their success and avoiding their failures; (iii) insisted “We are not going just to copy”: the system of government had to “fit in with the temper of our people and be acceptable to them”; (iv) said India stood for democracy, “nothing less than a democracy”, and that the Resolution gave the content of democracy, and of economic democracy, though the House would decide its form; (v) declared that he stood for Socialism; and (vi) said the Assembly drew its strength from the people and must fulfil “the passions that lie in the hearts of the masses”. In short, the Constitution was to fuse the liberal ideas of democracy with the socialist idea of economic justice, re-worked for the Indian context.

Q. Read Sources 3 and 4. What are the different arguments being put forward against separate electorates?

Answer: Sardar Patel (Source 3): the agitation for separate electorates had already turned India into a divided nation; no free country has separate electorates; if they were persisted in even after the division of the country, “woe betide the country”; the British had introduced them for their own easy administration and “left the mischief behind”, which Indians should not perpetuate; giving them up was for the good of the minorities too. G.B. Pant (Source 4): separate electorates would be “suicidal to the minorities” and do them tremendous harm; isolated for ever, they could never convert themselves into a majority, and frustration would cripple them; they could never become an integral part of a great nation and guide its destinies; segregated in an air-tight compartment they would have to rely on others “even for the air they breath”; and minorities returned by separate electorates “can never have any effective voice”.

Q. How does G. B. Pant define the attributes of a loyal citizen?

Answer: For Pant, a loyal citizen (i) trains himself in the art of self-discipline; (ii) cares less for himself and more for others; (iii) has no divided loyalty: all loyalties must be exclusively centred round the State; and (iv) does not create rival loyalties or care nothing for larger interests, because then “democracy is doomed”. He also asked people to stop the habit of “thinking always in terms of communities and never in terms of citizens”, since “it is the citizen that must count”.

Q. How is the notion of minority defined by Ranga?

Answer: N.G. Ranga defined minority in economic terms. The real minorities, he said, were not the Hindus in the so-called Pakistan provinces, the Sikhs or even the Muslims, but “the masses of this country”: people so depressed, oppressed and suppressed that they could not take advantage of ordinary civil rights. They included tribal people whose lands were snatched by merchants who turned them into bond-slaves, and villagers exploited by the money-lender, the landlord (zamindar) and the malguzar, with no elementary education. These real minorities needed protection, “props” and “a ladder”, and for that “we will need much more than this Resolution”.

Q. What were the different arguments that Jaipal Singh put forward in demanding protective measures for the tribals?

Answer: (i) His people had been “disgracefully treated, neglected for the last 6,000 years”; their whole history was one of continuous exploitation and dispossession by the non-aboriginals of India. (ii) Tribes were not a numerical minority, but they needed protection, because they had been dispossessed of the land they had settled, deprived of their forests and pastures, and forced to move in search of new homes. (iii) The rest of society saw them as primitive and backward and had spurned them, so the emotional and physical distance between tribals and others had to be broken: “you have got to mix with us. We are willing to mix with you”. (iv) He did not ask for separate electorates, but held that reservation of seats in the legislature was essential so that tribals could represent themselves; it would compel others to hear the voice of tribals and come near them. He took Nehru at his word that independent India would offer equality of opportunity.

Q. What different arguments were put forward by those advocating a strong Centre?

Answer: (i) Nehru wrote that now that Partition was a settled fact, a weak central authority would be “incapable of ensuring peace, of coordinating vital matters of common concern and of speaking effectively for the whole country in the international sphere”. (ii) Ambedkar wanted “a strong and united Centre”, much stronger than the one created under the Government of India Act of 1935. (iii) Recalling the riots and violence ripping the nation apart, many members said the Centre’s powers had to be greatly strengthened to stop the communal frenzy; Gopalaswami Ayyangar declared that “the Centre should be made as strong as possible”. (iv) Balakrishna Sharma of the United Provinces argued that only a strong Centre could plan for the well-being of the country, mobilise the available economic resources, establish a proper administration, and defend the country against foreign aggression. (v) After Partition, the earlier political pressure for a decentralised structure, meant to reassure the Muslim League, was no longer there; a unitary system imposed by the colonial government was already in place; and centralisation was now seen as necessary to forestall chaos and to plan the country’s economic development.