Which of the following is NOT True of the 'Objectives Resolution'?
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 4
The correct answer is Option (4) → The ideas and provisions of the Constitution introduced in India could be derived from colonial past.
Option (1) It proclaimed India to be an ‘Independent Sovereign Republic’. Correct statement. Moved by Nehru on 13 December 1946, the Objectives Resolution proclaimed India to be an “Independent Sovereign Republic”.
Option (2) It guaranteed its citizens justice, equality and freedom. Correct statement. The same resolution guaranteed its citizens justice, equality and freedom, and promised adequate safeguards for minorities, backward and tribal areas, and Depressed and Other Backward Classes.
Option (3) Nehru located history of Constitution-making in India within a longer history of struggle for liberty and freedom. Correct statement. By referring to the American and French Revolutions in his speech, Nehru was locating the history of constitution-making in India within a longer history of struggle for liberty and freedom.
Option (4) The ideas and provisions of the Constitution introduced in India could be derived from colonial past. Incorrect statement. Nehru stressed the opposite: the ideals and provisions of the constitution could not be just derived from elsewhere – “We are not going just to copy” – and the system had to fit the temper of the Indian people.
NCERT (2026-27): “2. The Vision of the Constitution … On 13 December 1946, Jawaharlal Nehru introduced the ‘Objectives Resolution’ in the Constituent Assembly. It was a momentous resolution that outlined the defining ideals of the Constitution of Independent India, and provided the framework within which the work of constitution-making was to proceed. It proclaimed India to be an ‘Independent Sovereign Republic’, guaranteed its citizens justice, equality and freedom, and assured that ‘adequate safeguards shall be provided for minorities, backward and tribal areas, and Depressed and Other Backward Classes… 2. The Vision of the Constitution … In returning to the past and referring to the American and French Revolutions, Nehru was locating the history of constitution-making in India within a longer history of struggle for liberty and freedom. The momentous nature of the Indian project was emphasised by linking it to revolutionary moments in the past. But Nehru was not suggesting that those events were to provide any blueprint for the present; or that the ideas of those revolutions could be mechanically borrowed and applied in India. He did not define the specific form of democracy, and suggested that this had to be decided through deliberations. And he stressed that the ideals and provisions of the constitution introduced in India could not be just derived from elsewhere. ‘We are not going just to copy’, he said. The system of government established in India, he declared, had to ‘fit in with the temper of our people and be acceptable to them…” |