“The Constitution, it may be mistakenly believed, represents a break with India’s colonial past. What is perhaps true is that it could have been a point of departure from colonial priorities and practice. But the pragmatism that characterized executive decision-making and functioning, and the continuity that dogged the legal and judicial system, turned the Constitution on its head, entrenching distortions that stayed with the system through what should have been an era of change. It should have been plain, we may think, that rights of the people and wrongs of the government ought to be consonant with the expectations that the freedom struggle fostered in us; but when it is the letter of the law interpreted through the lens of precedent set by colonial courts which determines the course that is set for us, there is evidence that the relevant past of the freedom struggle has been wilfully relegated to a zone that is ruled by amnesia. And with that historical background absent from the understanding and interpretation of the Constitution, it is no surprise that “the institutions under the Constitution were looked upon as a continuation of the colonial system of administration”(p. 22).