In India, Parliament is the supreme law-making body. With the exceptions of items reserved unto the people — by the virtue of Fundamental Rights — and items reserved unto the States by the virtue of the Seventh Schedule of the Constitution, Parliament can make laws on virtually any subject within India’s territory, and, in exceptional cases, extra-territorially.
The Preamble lists the objectives of the Constitution to secure for all citizens justice, liberty, equality, and fraternity. Undeterred by India’s deep-seated inequalities and factionalism before and at the time of Independence, the framers of the Constitution undertook a leap of faith and envisioned a liberal, more egalitarian nation-state in the post-colonial world.
