The Cabinet Mission Plan and the Legislative Road to the Partition of India

• BILAL HASSAN

  Independent Scholar.

  Author

The British Cabinet Mission Plan of 1946 represents the pivotal failure of late colonial constitutionalism in India. Designed as a final, comprehensive blueprint for an undivided federal India, the Plan's complex and ambiguous three-tiered structure-comprising a weak Union, compulsory provincial Groupings, and autonomous Provinces-was intended to reconcile the centralising aspirations of the Indian National Congress with the secessionist demands of the All-India Muslim League. Far from achieving reconciliation, the Mission exposed the profound, structural incompatibility between competing nationalist visions and the debilitating fatigue of the imperial state. The Plan's procedural vagueness, particularly concerning the mandatory nature of the grouping scheme, allowed both major parties to adopt strategically rigid interpretations, leading to an irreparable breakdown of political trust. This constitutional rupture transitioned the debate from an abstract legal arrangement to a communal and territorial emergency, effectively validating the logic of separation as the only administratively viable solution for the retreating colonial power. The Plan's failure thus operated as the decisive constitutional prelude, transforming ideological conflict into the violent, geographically defined tragedy of Partition.

1. BILAL HASSAN, Independent Scholar.

   
   
   

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