What are the pros and cons of having a hand of the lawyers of British era (like Ambedkar, Gandhi, Nehru, Patel, etc) in making our constitution? PS - Role of Gandhi (indirect)

I think the question doesn't reflect the glorious way in which the Constitution of India was written. I have a detailed chapter on this here: https://balajiviswanathan.quora.com/Chapter-2-Making-of-the-Indian-Constitution. The Constitution is not a rule book, nor is it a bunch of laws. It is a collection of principles and frameworks that would guide the leaders of the country. It reflects the visions and aspirations of the people who built the country. It specifies the limits of the powers of limits of government's power and guarantees the rights of the people. The UK doesn't even have a written Constitution. Thus, you can be sure that we didn't take anything from them. Our There were 100s of people involved in writing the Constitution as a part of the Constituent Assembly - businessmen, farmers, professors, lawyers, politicians, priests and bureaucrats. Among the world bodies that wrote a Constitution, we were among the first to involve the women. The discussions happened over a period of 3 years over which they elaborately discussed each rule and saw which of them would fit the future of India. It was not a mere copy of any existing rulebook. The Assembly invited suggestions from all over India and 100s of groups were involved in providing the ideas. The popular ideas were debated and voted upon. Btw.. here are the members of the drafting committee who finally wrote the constitution: BR Ambedkar - educated in the US, not in UK. Gopalaswami Ayyangar - Civil servant, not a lawyer TT Krishnamachari - A professor of economics, not a lawyer Alladi Krishnaswamy Iyer - lawyer educated in India. K. M. Munshi - renowned education advocate who founded Bharatiya Vidhya Bhavan B. N. Rau - a lawyer educated in UK, but he was also a civil servant Muhammed Saadulah - a lawyer educated in India. In short, it was not a rule book and it was not merely created by lawyers. More importantly it was not inspired from Britain. It is sad that instead of learning about one of the most glorious chapters in Indian history, we are just throwing out random assertions about our constitution. The best way to understand the Constitution is by reading it. Find out which article doesn't make sense for us and let us debate on that. Saying that the whole constitution is irrelevant because it had lawyers in the committee, will not be taken seriously.

Constitution of India is one of the most robust and time tested documents we have in India. Just to quote its uniqueness, Zulfakar Ali Bhutto in his book "If I Am Assassinated" has mentioned that only thing which is preventing division of India is its constitution. Constitution is a legal document, you can't hire doctors,engineers, social workers or freedom fighters to make it although they can provide inputs. They needed to make it idiot proof. Options were to use the lawyers available in our country or outsource the work so may be because of cost reasons they went for Indian lawyers although they were trained and were accustomed to the same system. :) Indian Judiciary: Its slow and was adopted from British system but we should also know that British Judiciary System at that time was one of the best. When you are trying to create a system you try to take the best and customize it. You can't create a new system and go for hit and trial which can have humongous impact on general population. Indian judiciary at that time time was good but it was not improved on timely basis. Every system needs improvement. Just for an example, Courts used to close those days for summer vacations. Why they need it now when all courts and offices have ACs? http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/half-a-century-later-supreme-court-cuts-its-summer-break/. Making of constitution: Its true that these lawyers came from the same system but they also used the law for the cause of independence. They followed this system because it was important but they also opposed many laws because it was not suitable for India. Constitution was not written in few months but it took years.  Each and every word of this document was discussed and modified to suit the requirement of India. Moreover whole constitution is written to cover and defend the preamble which is heart and soul of this document. Word & Spirit: People who made the constitution were very different from the people who are following now. They followed it in words and in spirit but now it is being followed in words. People more then often work to find the loop holes in its words. So if you are asking cons then I don't have any because judging by the options available at that time this was the best.

(1) Our options were limited. Though our country had quite a few legal traditions: Vedic, Shariah, or in rural Tamil Nadu and Kerala the nAttAmai system; these were all thought to be lacking in some ways to conceive a "sovereign, secular, socialist" democracy. Besides, the English system was thought to be able to absorb elements from all of the above traditions which were otherwise thought to be incohesive and conflicting among themselves. Moreover, such traditions were thought to be related less to society and more to spirituality. In particular, none of these traditions were really befitting the prevalent conception of justice and equality at the time. It would be wrong to say that the constitution has completely abandoned these systems because it has incorporated significant elements from them (e.g. panchayat raj). (2) Not just the English system. Elements of other foreign systems were also examined and added, particularly from America, Germany and Ireland as these were thought to be really advanced as legal systems at the time. All of  these have been continuously adopted and moulded to suit our very Indian needs. (3) They did not make many rules. It is hard to dispute that certain provisions could be described as rules (e.g. Fundamental Rights) but even they are looked more upon as principles which could conflict with one another. The ubiquitous 'basic structure' doctrine from the Kesavananda Bharti case showcases how doctrines in the interpretation of the Constitution can arise from the judiciary.  If you are interested in this, Ronald Dworkin offers a good discussion between rules and principles. (4) Many Acts from the colonial era still remain has nothing to do with the constitution. Many laws concerning (e.g. right of assembly) are still present from the colonial era when they were enacted to suppress sedition against the then government. Until very recently, plays to be performed had to be cleared by the Commissioner before they could be performed. This was struck down by way of a judicial remedy. It is true, however, that the responsibility to repeal these laws remains with the executive (i.e. the government). But as it is it not within their interests to do so, as with the previous ruling class, and because there is no significant campaign towards that end (except maybe a few lawyers and judges) they really have no incentive to do so.