How was the Indian Constitution made?

Having worked out what makes any constitution authoritative in principle, the chapter now turns to how the Indian Constitution itself was actually made, and asks how well it measures up against these very tests. Formally, the Constitution was drafted by a Constituent Assembly that had been elected for what was then still undivided India; it held its very first sitting on 9 December 1946, and after Partition reassembled as the Constituent Assembly for independent India on 14 August 1947, with its members chosen through indirect election under a scheme roughly following the British Cabinet Mission's plan. The five sections that follow trace, in turn, who actually sat in this Assembly, the deliberative spirit in which its members worked, the day-to-day pr …