New Delhi, July 6 -- The making of India's Constitution is usually told as the story of the few hundred prominent lawyers, politicians, and intellectuals who comprised the Constituent Assembly-the body tasked with drafting this historic document between 1946 and 1949. But a new book by scholars Rohit De and Ornit Shani, Assembling India's Constitution: A New Democratic History, argues this familiar account captures only part of the story. Drawing on a remarkable range of archival material, the book shows that constitution-making was not confined to the halls of the Constituent Assembly alone. It also played out in provincial legislatures, princely states, government offices, civic associations, and communities across India. Ordinary citizen...