This is Philosophy Bytes with me David Edmonds and me Nigel Warburton.

Philosophy Bites is available at www.filosophybytes.com.

The Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi talks about decolonising India.

This includes its constitution which came into effect in 1950, three years after India gained independence from Britain.

But what does this project, the decolonising of the Constitution, actually amount to?

Are criticisms of the Constitution well-founded, or are there other factors at play?

Born in India, Turin Ketan is now professor of law at the London School of Economics.

Taran Katan, welcome to Philosophy Vites.

Thank you for having me.

The topic we're going to talk about today is decolonising constitutions.

What exactly are we talking about and where are we talking about?

So Nigel, this is an argument that's raising its head in many countries, which used to be

colonies of European powers, are mainly interested in India, but it's also been argued in South

Africa.

And the main argument is this, that the Indian and the South African

constitutions are colonial and therefore they ought to be replaced. So there are two elements

to that. The first is that they're colonial. What evidence is there in those two cases that they are

colonial?

So the Indian constitution was made drafted by Indians, entirely by Indians.

The South African constitution was drafted entirely by South Africans.

So the claim is an indirect one that the framers of these constitutions,

although they were respectively Indians and South Africans,

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