The myth of Magna Carta as a constitutional antecedent in India

Research Project

The meaning and purpose of England’s most famous legal document, Magna Carta, has long out-lived that of its original drafters and signatories. Its enduring symbolism has transcended the original parchment it was written on over 800 years ago. At various times and at various points across the former British Empire and beyond, it has come to be the ultimate symbol of foundational constitutional principles. In his work on the legal, political and administrative background of Magna Carta, J.C. Holt argues its history can be divided into two:  the history of the document, and its repeated re-interpretation, but also the history of a political argument concerning the rights of a legal subject against  sovereign authority.

This project explores how the ‘myth of Magna Carta’ travelled to India and was reinterpreted by the British colonisers and by the Indian people in their struggle with Britain as a colonial authority. In particular, the project examines Queen Victoria’s 1858 Proclamation to the ‘Princes, Chiefs, and People of India’. This was considered by contemporaries to be ‘India’s Magna Carta’ and has recently been studied as a ‘constitutional antecedent’ to India’s modern constitutional history. Using case-law analysis, history of legal and political thought and media history, this project seeks to chart and understand how the Indian people understood and reinterpreted the meaning of Magna Carta for themselves, to fight for basic rights such as habeas corpus and unfulfilled promises of equality.