Partition, independence, and the making of the Constitution

The final settlement came with the Mountbatten Plan of 3 June 1947. Lord Mountbatten, the last Viceroy, proposed the partition of India into two dominions, India and Pakistan, with the provinces of Punjab and Bengal divided between them, a referendum in the North-West Frontier Province, and the right of princely states to join either dominion or remain independent. The plan was accepted by the Congress and the Muslim League, and the Indian Independence Act, passed by the British Parliament in July 1947, set 15 August 1947 as the date of independence.

Partition brought one of the largest mass migrations in history, as millions of Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims crossed the new borders in both directions, and communal violence killed a large number of people whose exact toll is still disputed and cannot be stated as a single reliable figure. The Radcliffe Award, which drew the boundary lines, was announced after independence and surprised both sides. In the midst of this, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and V. P. Menon persuaded most princely states to join India, using a combination of negotiation and pressure, though Kashmir, Hyderabad, and Junagadh presented special problems that continued after independence.

India became independent at midnight on 14 to 15 August 1947, with Jawaharlal Nehru as the first Prime Minister. His speech, Tryst with Destiny, delivered to the Constituent Assembly on the night of independence, promised to redeem a pledge made long ago and to wipe out the tears of the poor. Muhammad Ali Jinnah became the first Governor-General of Pakistan. The two dominions began as members of the Commonwealth, and India became a republic only later.

The Constituent Assembly, which had begun work in December 1946 under the Cabinet Mission plan, continued after independence and adopted the Constitution on 26 November 1949, which came into force on 26 January 1950. The Constitution, drafted under the chairmanship of B. R. Ambedkar, made India a sovereign democratic republic with fundamental rights, universal adult suffrage, and a federal structure adapted from the 1935 Act. The freedom movement thus ended not only with flags and speeches, but with a written Constitution that remains the framework of Indian democracy today.