Hyderabad, Jan. 7 -- The protests in Jammu against the admission of Muslim students to the Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Institute of Medical Excellence (SMVDIME) in Jammu and Kashmir did not arise in a vacuum. They belong to a longer and troubling genealogy of movements in post-Independence India, where public institutions, whether for jobs, housing, education or anything, are repeatedly claimed as the preserve of a particular linguistic, regional, caste or religious group.

What has changed over time is not the impulse to exclude, but the idiom of exclusion. Where once the language was regional or linguistic, today it is increasingly civilisational and religious.

Understanding this trajectory is essential if the Indian State is to meaningfull...