Thanks to the chatter on X, I found my way to Sharjeel’s interview. It is a thoughtful interview, if anyone cares to read it. I do not agree with everything he says, but he raises substantial questions about our postcolonial constitutional culture and the Indian state’s practice of secularism, both of which have histories extending well before Independence. What struck me particularly was the discussion of decentralisation. Anyone familiar with Indian constitutional history will know that Partition fundamentally altered the negotiations over the distribution of power. Once accommodating the Muslim League ceased to be a consideration, the preference for a powerful Centre became explicit. I hate to sound like a schoolma’am, but some of today’s constitutional gatekeepers might be startled to discover the United Bengal proposal associated with Suhrawardy, Sarat Chandra Bose and Abul Hashim, including the agreement signed by Bose and Hashim in May 1947. Yes, an undivided, independent Bengal was once a serious political proposition. The Constitution we know emerged from competing proposals, contested settlements and possibilities that were ultimately abandoned and it does a disservice to critical thinking to be oblivious to that history. Multiple visions of India preceded the Constituent Assembly and contended within it. Reading those arguments does not oblige us to endorse every alternative. It might, however, discourage the rather tedious habit of treating the eventual settlement as the only arrangement anyone could legitimately have imagined.