This introductory essay shows how this volume pays close attention to the global context of South Asia’s freedom in the mid-1940s, particularly with an eye to the under-appreciated, if not altogether forgotten, political alternatives to the nation-state, in the form of regional and global anticolonial federations, that have been deemed feasible and attractive at certain key moments of contemporary history. Alongside rethinking the nation, the volume revisits partition as a failure of federation and its long aftermath. Several essays assess the role of partition in shaping democracy and authoritarianism in South Asia, including the making of the Indian Constitution and its states of exception.