‘On the 26th of January 1950, we are going to enter into a life of contradictions. In politics we will have equality and in social and economic life we will have inequality’. B. R. Ambedkar’s famous last speech to the Constituent Assembly on 25 November 1949 still resonates within contemporary Indian constitutional law, and even more so his following interrogation: ‘how long shall we continue to live this life of contradictions?’ Prima facie societal, the contradiction is however also a temporal one, Indian constitutional law being founded on both the British traditional idea of ‘continuum’ and the American inspired revolutionary principles of ‘pursuance’ of a novel legal and social order. Two recent Indian Supreme Court decisions pertaining to the de-criminalisation of same sex relations (Navtej Singh Johar v. Union of India) and for the right of menstruating women to enter the Sabarimala Temple in Kerala (Indian Young Lawyers Association v. Union of India) offer through their differing and sometimes dissenting opinions a glimpse at those temporal contradictions. Through an analysis of both decisions and in particular that of Chandrachud J. and Malhotra J.’s judgements, this article seeks to highlight two radically differing conceptions of temporality applied to constitutional issues, which can themselves be linked back to the transposition of the legal positivist discourse in India within the colonial era: on the one hand, an attempt to continue Common law’s empirical-based tradition and on the other hand, an (apparently) a-historical perception of Law drawn from neo-Roman civilian legal discourse and later normative positivism. If both branches of legal reasoning aim at protecting minorities’ rights, the value they inscribe to History within the realm of Law cannot be further apart.

中文翻译：

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回到未来？印度宪法中的时间性与社会：第377节和Sabarimala判决以及法律推理的谱系详解

'1950年1月26日，我们将陷入矛盾的生活。在政治上，我们将拥有平等；在社会和经济生活中，我们将拥有不平等。安贝德卡（BR Ambedkar）于1949年11月25日在制宪会议上发表的著名演说，仍在当代印度宪法中引起共鸣，甚至在他随后的审问中也引起了共鸣：“我们将这种矛盾生活多久？” 从表面上看，这个矛盾也是暂时的，印度宪法是建立在英国传统的“连续统”思想和美国启发性的“追求”一种新型法律和社会秩序的革命性原则的基础上的。印度最高法院最近做出的两项关于将同性关系非刑事化的裁决（Navtej Singh Johar诉 印度联盟）和月经妇女进入喀拉拉邦Sabarimala庙的权利（印度青年律师协会诉印度联盟）通过他们有时甚至是不同意见的观点，瞥见了这些暂时的矛盾。通过对这两项决定的分析，特别是对钱德拉楚德·J和马尔霍特拉·J。的判决的分析，本文力求突出适用于宪法问题的两种截然不同的时间性观念，这些观念本身可以与法律的转换联系起来。殖民时代印度的实证主义话语：一方面，试图延续普通法的经验主义传统，另一方面，（显然）从新罗马民法话语中汲取的对法律的非历史性理解规范实证主义。