ABSTRACT
By 1949, the Constituent Assembly meeting in New Delhi had devised a blueprint for post-colonial governance that, simultaneously and paradoxically, both circumscribed the power of the state to act, and mapped out a strongly interventionist role for the state in society. Promulgated on 26 January 1950, henceforth Republic Day, the new Constitution limited the despotism of the state by adumbrating a raft of Fundamental Rights possessed by the citizenry, the most revolutionary of which, arguably, was the right to vote. Even in its devolved incarnation, the British Raj had been a fixture. Now Indians had a choice. If they didn’t like what their government was doing, they could vote it out. And, in the event, that was increasingly what they did. Parliamentary democracy flourished, putting power, as never before, into the hands of ordinary people. On the one hand, this made religious management a riskier undertaking, since it was a matter on which crucial votes could turn; on the other hand, it made religious formations a potential source of electoral support, one that India’s new breed of democratic rulers would find difficult to ignore.
