The transnational legal literature has often approached secularism as a normative doctrine that organizes institutions regulating religion in public life. Scholarship on India is not an exception. Considerable ink has been spent on a normative and historical assessment of the content of secularism under the Indian constitution. The very prospect of separating religion and state in a deeply diverse and religious society makes this scholarly treatment both exciting and challenging. Add to this the range of recognition that the Indian Constitution grants organized religion: it safeguards individual religious freedom, while at the same time granting protection and autonomy to religious denominations and institutions in their affairs.1 It mandates state intervention in favour of religious reform, particularly the access of historically excluded groups and castes to places of worship.2 Constitutional jurisprudence has consistently – but not without occasional apprehension – maintained the ‘personal law system’ that governs the family laws of different religious communities.