The Pivot: India's Constituent Assembly in the Shadow of Partition

The Constituent Assembly that reconvened on July 14, 1947 was not the same body that had adjourned in May. Something fundamental had shifted—not in its composition, but in its purpose. Between those two sessions, the Mountbatten Plan had been announced and accepted. Partition was no longer a negotiating threat but a geographical certainty. The ambiguity that had characterized the Assembly's first year—the waiting, the deference to the Muslim League, the carefully worded resolutions designed to keep unity alive—had dissolved. What remained was the urgent work of building a state.

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