Abstract
Constitutional identity is easiest to identify when it has already been credentialed: by a constitutional text, constituent authorisation, or judicial recognition. What remains visible when those markers are absent? Through a historically grounded study of the ‘Little Kingdom’ of Pudukkottai, a princely state in colonial South India, this article examines whether constitutional identity can be recovered from the small-c life of a polity whose opportunities for formal constitution-making were structurally foreclosed. Pudukkottai had no big-C moment. Its constitutional life, if it had one, must be reconstructed from less authoritative materials. The article argues that the absence of a constitutional text or founding moment does not necessarily foreclose the emergence of constitutional identity. Drawing on arguments about kingship from a consequential sedition trial, representative institutions, administrative reforms, and contestation over the limits of accountability and monarchical authority, it reconstructs competing constitutional trajectories within Pudukkottai’s legal and institutional life.
These materials sustain two rival readings: one in which constitutional identity emerges through accretive institutional and social practices and another in which colonial suzerainty precludes its emergence. Drawing on Ruth Chang’s account of hard choices, the article shows how legal and constitutional historians may confront competing interpretations that remain answerable to reasoned judgement without being conclusively ranked as better, worse, or equal. Recovering constitutional identity under such material and normative constraints broadens the horizons of Indian constitutional historiography and extends the explanatory reach of constitutional theory.
Recommended Citation
Gururagavendran, Bharath
(2024)
"Recovering Constitutional Identity in Colonial South India: Sedition, Sovereignty, and Small-C Constitutionalism in Pudukkottai,"
National Law School Journal: Vol. 18:
Iss.
2, Article 5.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.55496/HTPN6949
Available at:
https://repository.nls.ac.in/nlsj/vol18/iss2/5
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.55496/HTPN6949
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