State as the only Sovereign entity with a single Government

India has a Union government in Delhi and twenty-eight state governments besides. That looks, on paper, like many governments and many powers. Yet political theory insists there is exactly one sovereign here, not twenty-nine. Understanding how that can be true — one sovereign State expressing itself through many governments — is the whole point of this topic.

In two minutes

Whatever the number of governments operating within it, a State possesses only one sovereignty; the various governments — union, state, local — are all agencies through which that single, undivided sovereign authority is exercised.

The rest of this chapter

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