India, Feb. 16 -- Gujarat was once India's laboratory of hate and communal targeted violence. "Pehle Isai, fir Kasai (First, Christians, then Muslims)," a pamphlet discovered in the aftermath of incidents of violence and arson in the state had then declared. The rest, they say, is one of India's most terrible historical chapters.

New labs have emerged, challenging the Indian Constitution's simple yet demanding idea: that citizenship is not conditional upon faith, ethnicity, or political conformity.

Equality before the law, freedom of religion, and secular governance are the foundation of the republic. Today, two states - Uttarakhand and Assam - have emerged as particularly stark examples of how constitutional principles can be subverted...