The Variant Meanings of Secularism in India: Notes Toward Conceptual Clarifications

Abstract

Multiculturalism has a rather strange name in India. It is known as secularism and is a multifaceted expression, meaning different things to different people. Secularism seems incongruous in a land that is home to virtually all the major religions of the world. As a doctrine ad vocating the separation of church and state, it has little meaning in In dia. If it means equal respect for all religions, as the Indian state de fines it, then the term is incorrect. How, then, did this expression become a part of the political discourse in India? Until the early part of the twentieth century, secularism remained relatively obscure as a political concept in India. It gained prominence in the 1940s, after the Muslim League demanded a separate homeland for the Muslims. The League predicated its demand on religious and cultural grounds, arguing that as followers of Islam, Muslims consti tuted a separate nation and a different culture. It expressed misgivings about the fate of Muslims in a Hindu-dominated free India. As the League's movement gained strength, with the tacit patronage of the British, the Indian National Congress (Congress, henceforth) contested its claims by pointing out the syncretic religious traditions of India. It also decried what it considered to be an illegitimate abuse of religion in politics and accused the League of indulging in the politics of commu nalism. To distinguish itself from the politics of the Muslim League, the Congress affirmed its faith in secularism. It argued that unlike the communal League, it was wedded to secularism, by which it meant two things. First, it did not believe in misusing religion for ac