The idea of academé is not merely one of settlement of contentions; it is in fact and more importantly, to describe the truthfulness of what exists. The challenge of “what should happen and how” hides in it, a deeper challenge about our understanding of “what is happening around us”. Each one of us may have interesting recipes for the future of Indian polity, but a sensible measure of their strength lies only in their interconnectedness with the truths of our present political existence and in their capability to respond to the misjudgments of past. The present is born out of the past in the same manner as the future would be born through the present. Answers to questions therefore, we think, concerning the past, present and future of constitutional essentialism in India and the promise which it holds for sustainable political development cannot be explored in an empty space ambivalent to the burdens of history. They have to be located instead in a broad framework of political organisation which is accommodative of their interaction with each other. This research may be understood as a statement of a collective effort in this direction to reassess the place of ‘basic structure doctrine’ in the landscape of Indian polity…