India, Jan. 3 -- Independent India was not born into calm or cohesion. The Republic inherited from British rule a land scarred by Partition, communal violence, displacement, poverty, and institutional fragility. The nation was fragmented, its social fabric torn, its economy exhausted, and its political future uncertain. Few countries at independence faced such diversity of language, religion, caste, region, and historical memory - combined with such trauma. Yet it was precisely this heterogeneity, this expanse and complexity, that compelled India's founders to adopt not a majoritarian charter, but a deeply restrained Constitution - one that placed limits on power, elevated liberty, and treated dissent as a democratic necessity rather than...