Hit Refresh: The Quest to Rediscover Microsoft's Soul and Imagine a Better Future for Everyone

by Satya Nadella

But are there differences between the American and the Indian experiences? I asked Indian constitutional scholar, Arun Thiruvengadam, this question. It turns out that, in the period just after Indian Independence from Great Britain in 1947, there was considerable resentment against the colonial government’s general misuse of criminal laws, including those that restricted free speech and those that enabled the colonial government to preventively detain Indians, often without showing any cause and on mere suspicion of antigovernment activity. So, as in the United States, the framers of India’s new constitution sought to provide guarantees against such misuse in the future, incorporating rights and provisions in their fundamental law to secure this result. However, because of complicated factors that scholars of Indian history are still unpacking, the constitutional provisions for individual liberties were not as strong or as expansive as was initially demanded. For a variety of reasons, search and seizure provisions were not seen as particularly important, and no analog to the U.S. Fourth Amendment was incorporated in the Indian bill of rights. Since then, as successive governments have continued to make use of the old colonial mechanisms, persons accused of political crimes have sought to employ arguments from U.S. Constitutional law, including the Fourth Amendment. These efforts have had mixed results.