Swapnil is the Lead at Charkha (Centre for Constitutional Law) at Vidhi. His areas of specialisation are judicial review and constitutional interpretation, with a particular focus on Public Interest Litigation. He read law at the NLU, Jodhpur, and thereafter pursued the BCL and the DPhil at the University of Oxford. He has worked with leading academics on projects involving constitutional reform and democratic transitions, and has also assisted in drafting constitutions for various bodies. His academic writing spans both peer-reviewed journals and public-facing platforms, including a fortnightly column for Bar & Bench titled ‘Tryst with the Constitution’. Committed to constitutional literacy, he runs The Basic Structure, a widely read blog that simplifies constitutional law for general audiences. He also collaborates with students across universities to establish forums on constitutional law. He is also an Associate Fellow of the Royal Commonwealth Society, nominated in recognition of his work in the United Kingdom.
Q. What drew you towards constitutional law and, more specifically, public interest litigation during your formative years at NLU Jodhpur?
I would answer that in two parts — the personal and the intellectual.
The first one always makes for a good story. Interestingly, the first and only test in law school that I almost failed was in constitutional law. Having been an academically strong student in school, I remember feeling both dejected and confused about what had gone wrong. I approached my faculty, Prof. Aakanksha Kumar, who patiently walked me through my answers and explained what I had missed. It was in that conversation that the subject began to open up for me. She had a remarkable ability to translate constitutional theory into contemporary events, making the discipline come alive rather than remain abstract doctrine. I often say that my interest in constitutional law began not with a grand ideological moment, but with a teacher who was both intellectually rigorous and deeply kind.
In addition to Prof. Kumar, I had the privilege of being taught by and working closely with my guru Prof. I.P. Massey, an authority on administrative law. His knowledge of the subject, particularly, from a comparative lens, broadened my understanding of constitutionalism beyond India. That exposure deepened my engagement and interest in the subject.
The second reason was intellectual. Constitutional law offers a unique kind of intellectual stimulation. Its principles cut across all areas of law; no statute, executive action, or policy can exist immune from constitutional scrutiny. Its universality — coupled with its intimate connection to legal history, political theory, and institutional design, areas in which I take a deep interest — made it particularly compelling to me.
Q. Can you tell us about your journey from law school to becoming a Gopal Subramanium Scholar, and how your time at Oxford has influenced your thinking about Indian constitutional law?
The idea of pursuing higher studies abroad — let alone at Oxford — was never part of the plan in my early years of law school. Like many other students, by osmosis, I was gently but firmly channelled towards the conventional path: maintain good grades, secure corporate internships, and aim for a well-paying corporate job. For a significant period, that appeared to be the end goal in law school. However, to be more candid, Oxford also felt distant and unattainable, particularly given my background and the fact that no one in my family had pursued higher studies, much less outside India.
Alongside these conventional pursuits, however, I continued writing on constitutional law. That engagement gradually drew me closer to the subject in a way that other areas of law did not. I recall sitting in Professor I.P. Massey’s office during my fourth year, listening to him reminisce about being taught pure theory of law by Hans Kelsen at the University of Berkeley. Seeing my eyes twinkle, he encouraged me to apply for a master’s degree and seek a similarly rigorous intellectual experience. As anyone who knows Prof. Massey would say, you don’t ignore his advice, and rest was history.
Oxford was a magical place, not just for its dreaming spires, but for the intellectual environment it fostered. It expanded my understanding of constitutional law while also giving me the time and space to read beyond it — history, philosophy, literature — and to engage with scholars across disciplines. The city thrives on conversation. It is filled with individuals deeply immersed in their fields, yet always willing to discuss ideas with genuine curiosity.
Returning specifically to constitutional law, Oxford instilled in me a deeper appreciation for black-letter law and the discipline of grounding arguments firmly in constitutional text. It reinforced the need to be cautious about expansive, undefined powers which, although capable of producing desirable outcomes in particular cases, rest on wide discretion and may therefore invite misuse. Working with my supervisor Justice Catherine O’Regan was especially formative and cultivated an insistence on careful, structured reasoning — examining every argument advanced before a court, questioning settled assumptions, and ensuring that claims are supported by rigorous research. This approach shaped my doctoral work, which involved documenting every reported public interest litigation judgment delivered by the Supreme Court to ensure that my conclusions rested on an exhaustive study of the jurisdiction.
Being taught by scholars such as Professor Nick Barber, Professor Timothy Endicott, and Professor Paul Yowell further deepened my understanding of constitutional limits. Their scholarship encouraged a recognition that not every political or social question is amenable to judicial resolution. Law operates within institutional boundaries, and constitutional governance requires a measure of trust in the elected branches, alongside a commitment to comity and cooperation among the organs of the State. This perspective led me to examine doctrines such as the basic structure doctrine more critically — not to dismiss their historical significance, but to interrogate their constitutional foundations. It also prompted me to reflect on how certain pathbreaking judgments, despite their progressive outcomes, may remain doctrinally suspect.
Q. In your essay “Justice Pardiwala’s Opinion in Janhit Abhiyan v. UOI: Time to Revisit the Basic Structure Doctrine”, you take a critical stance regarding the expansion of the basic structure doctrine. Could you elaborate on what you see as the most problematic consequences of that expansion?
As I argue in my essay, the doctrine sits uneasily with the constitutional text. Article 368 does not contain any express substantive limitation on Parliament’s amending power, and the Constituent Assembly debates reflect a conscious decision not to incorporate such restrictions. In that sense, the doctrine cannot be readily reconciled with the text and, arguably, runs contrary to the framers’ express design. Second, in jurisdictions where similar mechanisms exist — most notably Germany — they are anchored in explicit constitutional provisions. The “eternity clause” in the German Basic Law provides a democratically enacted and textually grounded limitation on constitutional amendment. By contrast, in India, the limitation is judicially created. The absence of textual anchoring raises legitimate questions about democratic legitimacy and institutional competence. Third, and perhaps most importantly, the doctrine has never been defined with precision. While the Court has over time expanded the catalogue of “basic features,” it has not undertaken the equally necessary task of exhaustively defining these features or clarifying how conflicts between them are to be resolved. For instance, as I argue in the essay, what happens when two asserted basic features appear to pull in different directions? The absence of a structured methodology leaves significant discretion in the hands of the Court. A study of the doctrine’s application also reveals that it has been most successfully invoked in contexts involving judicial reform or perceived curbs on judicial power — a pattern that merits careful reflection. Fourth, there remain foundational concerns about the doctrine’s origin in Kesavananda Bharati — including the fragmented nature of the opinions and the difficulty in distilling a clear ratio amongst judges – which also raise foundational concerns.
That said, the doctrine has undeniably played a stabilising role in Indian constitutional history, particularly in keeping a check on a potential recurrence of the excesses witnessed during the Emergency of 1975–77. My argument is not that the doctrine must be discarded, but that it requires firmer constitutional grounding, clearer doctrinal contours, and a more transparent methodology if it is to continue to command legitimacy in the long term.
Q. As the Lead at Charkha, the Centre for Constitutional Law at Vidhi, what is your vision for its role in shaping constitutional discourse in India, and how do you see it bridging the gap between scholarship and policy reform?
Charkha is currently undergoing an important pivot at the moment. The Centre was established to undertake rigorous constitutional law research on questions of contemporary relevance — as well as on structural issues whose significance may not always be immediately visible but are foundational to the health of our constitutional democracy. With that objective, we have produced detailed reports on subjects such as the office of the Governor, elections and delimitation, and constitutional amendments. Recently, we also had the opportunity to brief the Joint Parliamentary Committee of the Lok Sabha examining the 130th Constitution Amendment Bill. The aspiration has always been to ensure that scholarship does not remain confined to academic circles but informs public reasoning and policy reform.
At the same time, Charkha’s founding vision went beyond elite constitutional discourse. It sought to bring the Constitution closer to the people in whose name it was enacted. One of the structural challenges we have identified in that goal is ‘language’ as much of constitutional discourse in India unfolds in English and is often embedded in technical legal vocabulary. As a result, large segments of the population remain distant from conversations about the Constitution that governs them. Our present focus is therefore on expanding serious constitutional engagement in Indian languages and presenting rigorous research in a manner that remains accessible without sacrificing analytical depth.
Over the past year, we have been working towards this goal. In November, we launched our Constitutional Catalogues — a series of multilingual publications in English, Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Tamil, and Kannada. These volumes document the diverse ways in which ordinary citizens engage with and keep the Constitution alive in different parts of the country. From constitutional kirtans in Maharashtra to Durga Puja pandals in Kolkata and Madhubani paintings in Bihar, the project highlights that constitutional culture already exists at the grassroots level, even if it does not always take the form of formal legal discourse. Our aim is to scale this initiative to cover all States and Union Territories and, eventually, all recognised languages.
In addition, we are instituting the Annual B.N. Rau Memorial Lecture to honour the Constitutional Adviser to the Constituent Assembly. The idea is to create a platform for serious constitutional reflection delivered in Indian languages. Each year, a distinguished scholar or jurist will deliver the lecture in a different Indian language, hosted in the region where that language is most widely spoken. We begin this year with Hindi, but the larger ambition is linguistic rotation and geographical spread.
As I often say, at its core, Charkha’s work is animated by the opening words of the Constitution — “We, the People.” Our effort is to democratise the conversation around the Constitution and meaningfully involve the very citizens for whom it was written.
*Views expressed are personal.
Constitutional Law Society 
Leave a comment