ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to analytically record the challenges India faced as she embarked on her democratic republican journey on independence by reviewing her democratic engagement with framing the constitution and the dynamics of political processes that came to life with institutions over decades. India's modern democratic experiment and consequent adaptations began with the period of renaissance beginning in Bengal in early nineteenth century. India's electoral system and the party system, which have been evolving with Indian democracy since the independence movement and particularly since independence, have both been impacting India's democratic upsurge and being impacted by it. In directing the Indian state not to discriminate against religious institutions and exclude them from public resources, the Indian adaptation seeks to subsume religion in its scheme of 'secularism', defined in Gandhian discourse as sarva dharma sambhav or treating all religions equal.
