CHENNAI: There are some political and cultural conversations that independent India has dealt with ever since 1947. Take linguistic diversity and the push for a national language that holds just as much relevance today as they did 75 years ago. Providing context to these topics and analysing what happened inside and outside the constituent assembly that influenced what would be discussed for decades to come is The Equal Project’s podcast Contested Nation, in collaboration with Suno India.
The endeavour furthers the mission that the collective has so far accomplished through heritage walks, workshops, research and courses. “The Equal Project focuses on constitutional history and awareness about the process by which the Indian Constitution was (created); what happened in those years between 1946 and 1950,” shares Shruti Viswanathan, founder and lawyer by profession.
Spilling diverse truths
Launched on August 15, the podcast’s first season currently has four episodes. All under an hour, they tackle issues of free speech, regulation of marriage and desire, citizenship and the constituent assembly of Pakistan. “Someone messaged me saying that they never knew a fundamental right to marry was discussed within the assembly, and how fascinating they found that.
We also did an episode on the constituent assembly of Pakistan (the assemblies also got divided when the countries did) that had a very different journey from that in India. I think, even from an international audience perspective, that was something that lots of people hadn’t engaged with,” Shruti says, adding that while there has been positive feedback so far, she accepts it with a pinch of salt.
The work on the podcast began sometime last August-September and relied on heavy research work, several drafts, revisions, fact checks, and review from editors at Suno India in terms of audio storytelling.
Apart from the inputs of the collective, the episodes also feature audio clips, snippets of speeches and invited guests to keep the listening experience dynamic.
“We look out to ensure there’s diversity of guests and their experiences. We want to ensure that a lot of practitioners and also those from non-academic backgrounds are talking to us about these issues. For the partition episode, we featured Ganeev Kaur Dhillon (one of the founding curators of the Partition Museum and lawyer), a lot of whose work has been around oral history. So we’re not just discussing case law or what experts have said but how these clauses play out in people’s everyday lives,” Shruti adds.
More to come
Upcoming episodes will be exploring the creation of the electoral roll and how Assam was a very contested state for citizenship, the constitutional journeys of the states (the journey of Aundh, the first constitutional republic of the subcontinent where the Gandhian constitution was implemented far before independence), the Manipur State Constitution Act and more, she informs.
Shruti hopes that listeners discover how complex the process of creating India was, and continues to be. “I hope that people take away that there are many shades of grey and that we’re still debating what the constituent assembly was debating — What does it mean to be Indian? What does India stand for? — And have appreciation for how so much diversity, many opinions and viewpoints have come together in the creation of India,” she says.