Work in Progress
Arghya Sengupta | 26 November 2024 | The Telegraph
The Indian Constitution completes 75 years today. There was a time when it didn’t look as if it would come into being. The Muslim League had refused to join in its deliberations, holding out for a separate state of Pakistan. The Cabinet Mission plan’s main proposals on how to group states in a future Indian Union had spectacularly collapsed. The Congress rejected it as communal; the League resorted to direct action on the streets and stayed away from the Constituent Assembly.
In the aftermath of this bloody episode, the Constitution, with its solemn promises of justice, liberty, equality and fraternity, came into existence. In some part, it was a riposte to the Muslim League — it had missed out on India’s grand constitutional experiment. In equal part, it was a benchmark for fairness for independent India’s newly-elected leaders. Sixty-five million Muslims may have gone to Pakistan, but 35 million Muslims remained. How would they be treated in independent India?…