Neha Ummareddy received her MS Dual Degree in Exact Humanities (EH). Her research work was supervised by Dr. Aniket Alam . Here’s a summary of Neha Ummareddy’s thesis Identities in Preambles and their Impact on Nation-States:
“We, the people” is the most popular phrase from constitutions. Constitutional preambles play a significant role in establishing national identity. In spite of the fact that the number of countries including preamble as part of their constitutions has been on a rise, preambles have received scant attention in academia. Most constitutional studies either completely leave out preambles or study an individual preamble in isolated space. Also, the comparative studies of the preambles are difficult to achieve because of the diverse backgrounds nations emerge from. This thesis focuses on studying preambles across the world under a single umbrella. We propose a meta-structure for preambles to facilitate their studies that encompass spatial and temporal differences. The proposed meta-structure is built on the foundations of the elements constituting a nation-state as well as the active preambles of the world. As part of the meta-structure, we present seven categories – ‘People’, ‘State’, ‘Obligations’, ‘Aspirations’, ‘Principles’, ‘Source of Sovereignty’ and ‘Constitution Adoption Event’. One of the most important functions of a preamble is to establish the collective identity of a nation. Nations establish a politically functional identity of people prior to detailing the clauses of state functioning as part of their constitutions. We dwell deeper into the ‘People’ category, which refers to the identity elements in preambles. This study presents various categories which are instrumental in establishing collective identity in preambles. Further, we study the thread connecting preamble, conflict, and identity. Our study shows that the way preambles imagine and narrate identity can turn preambles into instruments of national consolidation or arenas of conflict. Finally, we show that the meta-structure can be used to understand the impact of the preamble on external aspects. We ride on the proposed meta-structure to study the correlation between the progress of a nation and its preamble. We present a statistical study between various indicators that reflect the growth of a nation and the presence or absence of various elements in preambles. We use the study to present an analysis of the impact of meta-categories of preambles on various growth indicators in economic, social, and infrastructural domains.