Granville Seward Austin (1927 – 6 July 2014) was an American historian of the
Indian Constitution
The Constitution of India (IAST: ) is the supreme law of India. The document lays down the framework that demarcates fundamental political code, structure, procedures, powers, and duties of government institutions and sets out fundamental ri ...
.
Education
Austin received most of his early education at Norwich, Vermont, USA. Austin graduated from Dartmouth College with a BA in American Literature. He then earned a doctorate in Modern Indian History from Oxford University.
Career
He worked as a journalist/photographer and later served with the U. S. Information Service, Department of State, Department of Health, Education and Welfare, and on the staff of a U. S. senator. He has held fellowships or grants from St. Antony's College, Oxford, the Ford Foundation, the Fulbright Program, the American Institute of Indian Studies, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation, and the Institute of Current World Affairs.
Austin was the author of two seminal political histories of the constitution of India, ''The Indian Constitution: Cornerstone of a Nation'' and ''Working a Democratic Constitution: The Indian Experience''.
He died on 6 July 2014
Awards
In 2011, in recognition for his writing on the framing and working of the Indian Constitution, Granville Austin was awarded a
Padma Shri
Padma Shri ( IAST: ''padma śrī''), also spelled Padma Shree, is the fourth-highest civilian award of the Republic of India, after the Bharat Ratna, the Padma Vibhushan and the Padma Bhushan. Instituted on 2 January 1954, the award is conf ...
award, the fourth highest civilian honor of the
Republic of India.
of the Ministry of Human Resource Development of the Government of India has selected ''The Indian Constitution: Cornerstone of a Nation'' for translation into Indian languages. The book has already been published in
Telugu
Telugu may refer to:
* Telugu language, a major Dravidian language of India
*Telugu people, an ethno-linguistic group of India
* Telugu script, used to write the Telugu language
** Telugu (Unicode block), a block of Telugu characters in Unicode
S ...
,
Marathi
Marathi may refer to:
*Marathi people, an Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group of Maharashtra, India
*Marathi language, the Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Marathi people
*Palaiosouda, also known as Marathi, a small island in Greece
See also
*
* ...
,
Punjabi,
Odia,
Hindi
Hindi ( Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been ...
and
Malayalam
Malayalam (; , ) is a Dravidian languages, Dravidian language spoken in the Indian state of Kerala and the union territories of Lakshadweep and Puducherry (union territory), Puducherry (Mahé district) by the Malayali people. It is one of 2 ...
languages.
Bibliography
*''The Indian Constitution: Cornerstone of a Nation''
*''Working a Democratic Constitution: The Indian Experience''
*''Retrieving Times'' (White River Press, 2008)
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Austin, Granville
1927 births
2014 deaths
Recipients of the Padma Shri in literature & education
American historians