Bharat’s geographies revered through the ages are more than just physical locations; they are legal re-creations of a society that viewed law not as mere command, but as a natural progression towards order, justice, and harmony with the cosmos. The pilgrim routes, temple corridors, tanks, ghats, mathas, and ritual landscapes collectively created an organic network of self-governing jurisdictions, not enforced by a king, but sustained by Dharm itself.

The‍‌‍‍‌ classical texts of the Manusmriti, Arthashastra, and Yajnavalkya Smriti did not use the language of ‘constitutions’ as in later times, but they were filled with networks of niyam (rules), ācāra (customary conduct), and maryādā/dharm that regulated social and sacred life very effectively. These texts concede that temples and religious institutions were run by community norms, acharyas and temple authorities, and that kings and state agencies were under the law, dharmic restraints. Instead of putting a modern constitutional label on them, it would be more accurate to see these as the first codes of dharm and statecraft whose rules and regulatory structures were, in their own way, doing most of the ordering functions of written constitutions that later came to be in the modern political ‍‌‍‍‌vocabulary.

The colonial legal system had an impact on this free rein. The post-colonial government, though it is constitutionally bound to safeguard religious freedom, has inherited and deepened the state control structures, turning religious institutions into administrative departments. The spiritual sovereignty of Kashi, Ujjain, Rameshwaram, Puri, and many other places was compromised under bureaucratic frameworks, which are foreign to India’s civilizational ethos.

The Dharmic Heritage Zone program is NDV’s attempt to restore this equilibrium, not by reverting to the past, but through the medium of law.

DHZ defines holy cities as not only the constitutionally protected ecological communities of a civilisation but also as those governed by the bodies that have their roots in the tradition but are still transparent and modern in nature. It is re-articulating an older Indian wisdom within the framework of contemporary constitutionalism rather than simply going back to the past.