'Republic of Religion': How the Constituent Assembly debated religion

How did the Constituent Assembly debate the question of religion? Abhinav Chandrachud examines in his new book

In March 1947, [B R] Ambedkar prepared a draft on fundamental rights that was to be used as a template for drafting the Constitution. Importantly, that draft contained an ‘establishment clause’, akin to the one in the first amendment to the US Constitution. It said that ‘[t]he State shall not recognize any religion as State religion’. A draft prepared by K.T. Shah also said that the state would be ‘entirely a secular institution’, which would ‘maintain no official religion [or] established church’ and would ‘observe absolute neutrality in matters of religious belief, worship, or observance’. If these clauses found their