A Study of the First Amendment

I'm posting this interesting paper from Arudra Burra, a law student at Yale, on the history of the First Amendment to our Constitution. I have always been fascinated by that amendment, which was passed by the provisional parliament, which was the same body as the Constituent Assembly. The ostensible rationale for the amendment was the Patna High Court's decision interpreting Article 19 (1) (a) rather broadly. While the decision itself can be debated (it was overruled by the Supreme Court subsequently anyway), the First Amendment was an unfortunate precedent that paved the way for constitutional amendments in subsequent years to overcome inconvenient decisions. I welcome thoughts from my co-bloggers and readers on this paper.