How three years of Modi have taken us back to the 1940s

We're being forced to debate the Idea of India in the streets, our kitchens, on restaurant menus...

Flashback to 1950: After three years of care, consideration, erudition, eloquence, conflict, and consensus, the Constituent Assembly has hammered out a national document spelling out an inclusive, pluralistic vision of India. We celebrate this Constitution on January 26, 1950, our first Republic Day. The monster job of governing India takes shape slowly and painfully — through poverty, famine, rioting, war, and strangulating red tape, through losses, blunders, and heartbreak — but we are on our way. Fresh from the extraordinary traumas of colonialism, we have committed to life as a sovereign, democratic (and, later, secular) republic, pledged to justice, liberty,