This Independence Day, NL Hafta’s Abhinandan Sekhri, Manisha Pande, Raman Kirpal and Rinchen Norbu are joined by historian and author Sam Dalrymple.  

The discussion began with the question: Was the India we inherited inevitable, or could history have taken a very different course?

Sam argued that the political map of South Asia was never predetermined. Sam pointed to the Cabinet Mission Plan of 1946, which could have created a federation comprising India, Pakistan and Bangladesh within a single political framework.

He added, “I think that the best example of that is the plan in 1946, which both the Congress and the Muslim League very nearly adhered to, which would've created a kind of a superstructure that included both India and Pakistan and Bangladesh into essentially a single nation. The model was Great Britain.” 

Reflecting on Ladakh’s constitutional position, Rinchen argued that Ladakhis had little agency in the events surrounding Article 370 because the region was then under Dogra rule. 

He recalled that in 1947–48, a delegation of Ladakhi civil society leaders met Jawaharlal Nehru when discussions around a possible plebiscite were underway.

“A delegation of Ladakhi civil society members had gone to meet Nehru... and said that if a plebiscite happened, we as Ladakhis – particularly Ladakhi Buddhists – wanted to stay with India,” he added. 

This led to a broader discussion on special constitutional arrangements in Ladakh, the Northeast, Kashmir and the hill states. The panel argued that India’s diversity makes it difficult to impose a single model of governance, law or social practice across every region.

Abhinandan pointed out that the debate over a Uniform Civil Code is often reduced to a Hindu-Muslim binary, even though India’s regional and tribal communities have their own customs and legal traditions.

The panel also revisited the decision to reorganise Indian states along linguistic lines. While Abhinandan raised the possibility that a different arrangement could have reduced regional tensions, Dalrymple identified linguistic federalism as one of independent India’s major achievements.

He contrasted India’s approach with Pakistan’s attempt to impose Urdu across a linguistically diverse population – an approach that contributed to Bengali and Balochi alienation.

“The ability to fuse those together, I think, is one of India’s greatest achievements,” Sam remarked. 

He also argued that Indian federalism allowed people to retain multiple identities at once. A person could be Tamil and Indian, Punjabi and Indian, Bengali and Indian, without having to choose one identity over the other.

All this and more.