On a chilly and foggy January morning, after a protracted drive from Delhi throughout a freeway flanked by fields and roadside dhabas, I arrive at the 100-acre campus of O.P. Jindal Global University (JGU) in Sonepat, Haryana. I’m right here for a particular goal–to go to India’s first museum devoted to the Constitution. Just as this doc laying down guidelines of governance rests at the very core of the world’s largest democracy, the Constitution Museum and Rights and Freedoms Academy sits in a glass constructing spanning two flooring positioned in the coronary heart of the college. As a former lawyer, I studied the doc to perceive the rights and duties of the state and its residents, and as a scholar of historical past, I recall diving into the thought-process of our nation’s founding fathers in drafting the Indian Constitution, however to my shock, there may be a lot I don’t know past the academic realm.
Entrance of the museumO.P. Jindal Global University
Particularly pleasant is the story of famend calligrapher Prem Bihari Narayan Raizada’s quaint request upon being commissioned to write this vital doc by hand. As most artists are wont to do, he left his signature upon his work, and that’s how the phrase ‘Prem’, which by the way interprets to ‘love’ in Hindi, got here to be signed on each web page of the Constitution of India.
When scrolling by means of a digital archive recording the parliamentary debates from this time, I’m impressed to study that feminine contributors led dozens of debates in the three-year interval when many of their male counterparts by no means raised their voice even as soon as. My curiosity is additional piqued after I study that some of these women later recanted their participation from constitutional debates, claiming they have been wanted for extra vital duties like addressing the considerations of the newly-minted nation’s residents.
Inside view of the museumO.P. Jindal Global University
Every nook and cranny has golden nuggets of data to provide, and it’s clear that many visits are required to do justice to this establishment’s assortment. What higher approach then, to educate the contents and storied historical past of the world’s lengthiest Constitution, than to place it inside arm’s attain of young, brilliant minds for straightforward and common entry.
This interactive, digitally immersive museum, opened its doorways on the 75th anniversary of the adoption of the Constitution on November 26, 2024. It was the brainchild of founding Chancellor Naveen Jindal and Vice-Chancellor of the University, Professor (Dr.) C. Raj Kumar and its assortment has been curated by Anjchita B. Nair, founder of cultural organisation, Cultre.