Religious Pluralism and the Role of the State

Abstract

This chapter tests the theoretical solution worked out in the previous chapter in relation to Indian religious pluralism. After considering some relevant features of religious pluralism in the Indian context, the chapter presents two of the most influential theories that have tried to accommodate it (Rajeev Bhargava’s and Neera Chandhoke’s). These views, despite their merits in trying to defend a specifically Indian understanding of secularism, are quite demanding and criticizable. The notion of equality they employ is too substantive. Indeed, this egalitarian impulse pushes the role of the state well beyond what PT liberalism requires. The problem is that the effects of the expansion of the state’s powers have not always been conducive to social peace. Thus, the constraints imposed by PT liberalism to the exercise of state power are particularly required in this discourse on secularism.