When India Wrote Its Final Lines
A brief account of the Constitution’s closing stage—and its unresolved tensions.
Between October 1949 and January 1950, the Constituent Assembly stepped into its final act—not to “wrap up” a document nearly three years in making, but to decide the kind of country India would become. In those last weeks, the biggest questions weren’t about commas or clauses. They were about first principles: Would the Constitution begin with God—or with the people? Should it commit India to an economic ideology forever? Could a democracy survive without fraternity in a society built on hierarchy? And when the time came to sign, would the Assembly leave the nation with unity—or unresolved doubt?
