The challenges of managing religious diversity in India

Abstract

This chapter discusses four ways of understanding the political management of religious diversity in India. It assesses the efforts of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government to implement new policies and practices to improve the social and economic conditions of religious minorities after 9/11 and the Gujarat pogroms of 2002. These efforts were directed at all religious minorities, but especially Muslims, who were identified as suffering a serious development deficit. The chapter describes the historical institutionalism and path dependence theory that holds particular policies and choices made at a critical juncture can have a persistent. The highly normative analyses by proponents of state secularism and anti-secularists have produced an equally profound counter-reaction. The paradox of managing religious diversity in India is that of a secular polity governed by a political party committed to establishing a Hindu state and the primacy of Hindu values. Finally, the chapter focuses on the constitutional framing of religious minorities and is institutionally path dependent.