Key Points
When the whole nation is submerged in a patriotic mood on the Independence Day, few know that India actually did not get complete independence, or Poorna Swaraj, as was the goal of the Indian National Congress, on August 15, 1947..
Instead of Poorna Swaraj, India got the dominion status which did not mean an independent country as most of us believe India to have become in 1947..
Interestingly, the Congress had been against the dominion status yet accepted it, ostensibly because it was to lead to complete independence later but also because the dominion status could have helped the first government, which was not directly elected, take hold of society and economy with the help of prevailing British laws which gave it more power of people...
However, Rohit De, a historian at Yale University, has argued that another reason could be the Congress leaders wanted to use "an inherently flexible, centralized, and authoritarian constitutional framework" of the British Raj to take control of the society and economy before the Indian constitution came in force in 1950...
"In stark contrast to their first experience in elected government in 1936, when the Congress Party released political prisoners, restored civil liberties, and repealed draconian legislations, the Congress-led government of 1947 arrested political workers from the right and left, extended wartime emergency measures, and reenacted preventive detention laws," De writes...
