BPSC 69th CCE Prelims General Studies · Question 104 of 144

Correct — B, United States of America. Part III of our Constitution is modelled on the United States Bill of Rights — the first ten amendments to the American Constitution, proposed by the First Congress on 25 September 1789 and ratified on 15 December 1791 (US National Archives). What was borrowed is not a list of nice sentiments; it is a specific constitutional device: a written catalogue of rights placed above ordinary legislation, and a court empowered to strike down a law that violates it. Article 13(2) carries exactly that device — 'The State shall not make any law which takes away or abridges the rights conferred by this Part and any law made in contravention of this clause shall, to the extent of the contravention, be void.' The textual echoes are close enough to trace one by one. Article 20(3), 'No person accused of any offence shall be compelled to be a witness against himself', is the American Fifth Amendment privilege; the Supreme Court itself noted in Kesavananda Bharati that this privilege 'is recognized by our Constitution as a fundamental right'. Article 14's second limb, 'the equal protection of the laws', is the phrase of the US Fourteenth Amendment of 1868. Article 20(2) is the double-jeopardy bar. The strongest proof that the drafters worked from the American model is where they edited it: they began with 'without due process of law', and after B.N. Rau's discussion in America with Justice Frankfurter — who thought judicial review under that clause undemocratic and an unfair burden on judges — the Drafting Committee substituted 'except according to procedure established by law' in Article 21, a phrase taken from Article 31 of Japan's Constitution. You only rewrite the draft you started from.

• (a)Ireland — Ireland is the sharpest trap on the paper because its contribution sits in the very next Part of the same Constitution. The Irish Constitution of 1937 supplied the Directive Principles of State Policy, Part IV, Articles 36 to 51. Article 37 tells you they are the opposite of a Fundamental Right: 'The provisions contained in this Part shall not be enforceable by any court, but the principles therein laid down are nevertheless fundamental in the governance of the country.' Non-justiciable directions to the State are not rights.
• (c)United Kingdom — Britain gave us a great deal — the parliamentary executive, single citizenship, the rule of law, and the five prerogative writs named by their English titles in Article 32(2): habeas corpus, mandamus, prohibition, quo warranto and certiorari. But Britain could not supply the idea itself. It has no single written constitution and its Parliament is legally sovereign, so no British court can void an Act of Parliament for violating a fundamental right. India's writs are English; the entrenched right they enforce is not.
• (d)Canada — Canada supplied the structural, not the rights, half of the borrowing list: a federation described as a Union of States rather than a compact of states, with a strong Centre, residuary legislative power vested in the Union, Governors appointed by the Centre, and the advisory jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. Note the chronology too — Canada's own Charter of Rights and Freedoms arrived only in 1982, more than three decades after our Part III was written.

The framers wrote very little of the Indian Constitution from nothing. Roughly two-thirds of its text descends from the Government of India Act, 1935, and the remainder draws consciously on constitutions the Constituent Assembly studied — a practice Dr B. R. Ambedkar defended on the ground that after a century of constitution-making worldwide there was nothing shameful in learning from experience. The conventional 'borrowed features' table therefore credits the USA with the Fundamental Rights, judicial review, the independence of the judiciary and the impeachment of the President; Ireland with the Directive Principles; Britain with the parliamentary system and the writs; Canada with a strong-Centre federation; Australia with the Concurrent List; Japan with 'procedure established by law'; and the USSR with the Fundamental Duties added in 1976. Part III itself runs from Article 12 to Article 35, groups the rights under six heads after the right to property was moved out in 1978, and is made real by two enforcement articles — Article 32 in the Supreme Court and Article 226 in the High Courts.

Read the stem's own word: 'idea'. The question is not asking who first wrote a charter of liberties — Magna Carta 1215 and the English Bill of Rights 1689 are both older — but who first put an enforceable list of rights inside a written constitution that binds the legislature, with courts able to strike down laws that breach it. That is America: the Bill of Rights of 1791 plus judicial review as asserted in Marbury v. Madison (1803). Now eliminate. Britain fails on a single test — Parliament is sovereign there, so a statute cannot be void for violating a right, however English the names of our writs may be. Canada is the federalism entry and its own rights charter postdates ours by thirty-two years. Ireland is the one that costs marks, because a half-remembered table puts Ireland next to something rights-shaped; the discriminating fact is justiciability. A Fundamental Right can be enforced by moving a court under Article 32; a Directive Principle expressly cannot be enforced by any court under Article 37. When an option set pairs the USA with Ireland, the examiner is testing precisely that boundary, and nothing else on the card matters as much.

• The US Bill of Rights is the first ten amendments to the American Constitution: twelve were proposed by the First Congress on 25 September 1789 and ten were ratified on 15 December 1791 (US National Archives).
• Part III spans Articles 12 to 35. Article 13(2) voids any law that 'takes away or abridges' a right conferred by the Part, and Articles 32 and 226 give the Supreme Court and the High Courts the writ power to enforce them.
• Ireland's contribution is Part IV. Article 37: the Directive Principles 'shall not be enforceable by any court, but the principles therein laid down are nevertheless fundamental in the governance of the country'.
• Article 32(2) names five writs — habeas corpus, mandamus, prohibition, quo warranto and certiorari — all English prerogative writs, which is why the United Kingdom feels like a plausible source and is not one.
• The one clause consciously not taken from America: Article 21 reads 'procedure established by law', substituted for 'due process of law' after B.N. Rau met Justice Frankfurter, and lifted from Article 31 of the Japanese Constitution — a sequence recorded in the Kesavananda Bharati judgment citing Shiva Rao's 'The Framing of India's Constitution', pp. 232-235.
• The right to property left Part III by the Constitution (Forty-fourth Amendment) Act, 1978; it now survives as a constitutional but not fundamental right in Article 300A.

• Answering 'Ireland' because the borrowed-features table has been memorised as a list of countries rather than as a list of features — Ireland gave the Directive Principles, not the Fundamental Rights
• Answering 'United Kingdom' because Article 32's writs carry English names; the writs are English, the entrenched justiciable right they protect is American
• Assuming Article 21 is American too — 'due process' was deliberately dropped and replaced with Japan's 'procedure established by law'

BPSC asks the borrowed-features table straight — a one-line 'from which country' recall, or a two-column match of feature against country, with the answer decided by a single pairing. UPSC has largely stopped asking the source country and now tests the consequence instead: whether a provision is justiciable, which Part or Schedule houses it, or whether the Constitution actually uses a phrase a candidate assumes it does. Learn the table the BPSC way and the reasoning the UPSC way, because both appear.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Directive Principles of State Policy in the Indian Constitution were inspired by the Constitution of which country?

  • (a)United States of America
  • (b)Ireland
  • (c)Australia
  • (d)Japan

  Answer(b) Ireland — the Irish Constitution of 1937 supplied Part IV, which Article 37 declares unenforceable by any court yet fundamental in the governance of the country.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The expression 'procedure established by law' in Article 21 of the Constitution of India was borrowed from the Constitution of :

  • (a)The United States of America
  • (b)Canada
  • (c)Japan
  • (d)Australia

  Answer(c) Japan — Article 31 of the Japanese Constitution; the Drafting Committee dropped the American 'due process of law' after B.N. Rau's discussion with Justice Frankfurter.