“Dividing the Nation into Patricians and Plebeians”

Abstract This article foregrounds the role of the Pakistan National Congress (PNC) in constitution making in the newly independent “two-wing” state of Pakistan in the aftermath of decolonization. The PNC was a small breakaway group of the Indian National Congress that became the political opposition in the first Constituent Assembly of Pakistan, and represented the Hindu minority in the largest province of East Bengal. Contrary to conventional scholarship that focuses narrowly on the PNC's secularizing agenda against an emerging Islamic state, this article argues that the PNC's constitution-making goals embraced a much broader framework of decolonizing the process of state making. This aimed at resisting the entrenchment of a colonial-era Muslim League ruling clique that could dominate East Bengal from its powerbases in West Pakistan. At the heart of the PNC's decolonizing politics was a federalizing agenda that would ensure both East Bengal's representative majority at the center and its provincial autonomy.