Epilogue

This epilogue highlights the three connected themes that emerge from the cases studied in this book: the process through which the Indian Constitution emerged as an organizational assumption and a background threat for the state; the greater acceptability of procedural over substantive challenges to government action; and the origins of constitutional consciousness among certain citizens. Constitutional law became the field in which citizens marked as deviant in the new order could recast themselves as virtuous constitutional actors. These citizens differed in the extent of their marginality. However, all their cases carved out rules and norms that benefited a larger populace. Regardless of the court's judgments, people created and disseminated their own meanings of the Constitution, which may even be a successful insurgent and displace the elite conception of the law.