This chapter explores attempts by Gandhi and the other key political figures of the twentieth century to forge viable constitutional arrangements in a society where divisions of caste and ethno-religious community were seen both as national essences and, simultaneously, as impediments to modern nationhood. The founders of the Indian Republic were notably ambivalent about caste. The 1950 Constitution's celebrated commitment to casteless egalitarianism was prefigured in one of the major documents of the nationalist freedom struggle, the Indian National Congress's 1931 Karachi Resolution. Nehru's secular vision of social modernity shaped the Constitution of independent India. Yet the other two traditions have retained considerable power as well: the Gandhian goal of a modified and purified caste system, and, against this, the Ambedkarite view, which has found its expression in the assertiveness of the militant Dalit movements. These complexities and contradictions were all carried forward into the social welfare policies of the newly independent Indian republic.