instead of rejecting earlier texts as “imperial” and therefore contaminated, it recognizes the active participation of several members of the future constituent assembly in the drafting and reception of these earlier documents. The members of the constituent assembly and their advisors did not operate behind a veil of ignorance but carried a certain conception of the constitutional order in their mind.21 Several historical constitutions refer to ‘duties’ as a juridical concept. However, the nature of duties and their significance in these documents varies greatly. The section below discusses the place of duties in Indian historical constitutions in a chronological order. While some readers may anticipate some of these historical constitutions that emphasise duties, all readers will be surprised by the absence of a reference to or a weak reliance on duties as a key constitutional instrument. 1. All India Hindu Mahasabha Constitution, 1944 In 1944, the All India Hindu Mahasabha adopted the Constitution of the Hindustan Free State.22 At that time, the All India Hindu Mahasabha was led by Vinayak Savarkar and the constitutional document itself was drafted by D.V. Gokhale, Laxman Bhopatkar, K.V. Kelkar and M.R. Dharmadhere, with a foreword by N.C. Kelkar. The Mahasabha was composed by Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya, Swami Shraddhanand, Shankaracharya Dr Kurtkoti, N.C.Kelkar, Lala Lajpat Rai, Raja Narendranath, Ramanand Chatterjee, Vijayaraghavacharya, Bhai Parmanand, Bhikustootama, Veer Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, Dr B.S.Moonje, Dr Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, Dr N.B.Khare, N.C.Chatterjee, Prof V.G.Deshpande, N.N.Banerjee, Vikram Savarkar and Balarao Savarkar. The Mahasabha was motivated by ideals of Hindutva, and this Constitution developed on Savarkar’s speech in 1939 about the future Constitution of India.23 Significantly, the Constitution includes chapters on fundamental rights of citizens and extensively provides for executive, legislature and judicial institutions at the federal and provincial levels. However, duties are conspicuously absent. The strain of contemporary debate in Indian politics that emphasises constitutional fundamental duties as a reversion to Hindu moral and political values, finds no support in the All India Hindu Mahasabha Constitution, 1944. 2. Gandhian Constitution of Free India, 1946 The second dominant strain of contemporary Indian political debates on fundamental duties claims to elevate a Gandhian approach to political and civic life. M.K. Gandhi Rohit De, ‘Constitutional Antecedents’, in Madhav Khosla, Pratap Bhanu Mehta, Sujit Choudhry (eds), Oxford Handbook of the Indian Constitution (Oxford University Press, 2016). 22 https://archive.org/details/the-constitution-of-hindusthan-free-state-act/page/n5/ mode/2up?view=theater 23 Vikram Sampath, Savarkar: A Contested Legacy (Penguin Random House, 2021) 270. 21 26 Journal of the National Human Rights Commission, Vol. 22, 2023