Secularism In India Research Articles

Indian Secularism (review)

Reviewed by: Indian Secularism Manu Bhagavan Indian Secularism. By Shabnum Tejani. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008. Contemporary world events, from the rise of Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, to the dominance of the religious right in U.S. politics, from the pogrom against Muslims in the western Indian state of Gujarat in 2002 to the attacks on Shias in Pakistan, all seem to point out the need for a deep rooted intellectual re-engagement with the idea of secularism. In this light, Shabnum Tejani's book is a welcome and timely intervention, and the secularism she excavates emerging in the late colonial Indian context should give us pause. Tejani traces the evolution of the emergence of the secular principle in India in the mid-twentieth century, and finds that it is intricately inter-related with emerging notions of nationalism and communalism, the latter a distinctly South Asian term for divisive, communitarian politics. Indian Secularism is divided into three sections of two chapters each, respectively focusing on narratives of nationalism, communalism, and secularism. The chapters in the first section are geographically grounded in the western Indian state of Maharashtra in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries and largely revolve around the famed "extremist" (Hindu) nationalist Bal Gangadhar Tilak. Tejani walks us through the well-worn terrain of the cow protection, Ganapati festivals, and swadeshi movements, yet tries to reveal new features of these familiar areas by casting them through the light of the non-Brahman movement. Where the anti-colonial cow and Ganapati causes are often understood in stark, binary Hindu-Muslim terms, Tejani shades them with the nuance of caste, arguing that peoples from varying backgrounds used high-caste idioms to create a shared Hindu public space, though "lower" caste groups did so for economic and migratory related reasons. Such solidarities raised tensions with other communities, notably Muslims, manifesting in issues related to "music before mosques" and the heretofore inter-religious celebration of Muharram. Tilak distilled the "pride" produced by these Hinduizing campaigns to articulate a "new patriotism" that equated "Hindu" with "Indian." In her second section, Tejani is concerned with over-arching constitutional reform from 1909 until 1932, and with the Khilafat and Non-Cooperation movements circa 1920. The book's third chapter zeroes in on the Morley-Minto reforms and locates the birth of the concept of "the minority," or rather the re-birth of this idea. Contrasting the 1909 product with debates beginning in 1906, Tejani concludes that the reforms' ultimate introduction of separate electorates represented a pivotal turn; whereas at the outset different interests were all seen as competing and legitimate, and therefore in parity with one another, 1909 equated minority Muslim interests with their numerical strength. Correspondingly, the idea of "communal" representation became associated with separateness, and thus was born the negative conception of the "communal Muslim." Tejani then turns our attention to Khilafat, with a focus on the province of Sind. Her primary claim is that Khilafat opened up prospects for an incorporationist politics in which the Muslim identity was deeply intertwined with Indian nationalism. But Khilafat proved to be a conglomeration of competing agendas that eventually fell apart. The result was to reinforce divisional, communal, identitarian politics, noticeably manifest in the debate over the 1928 Nehru Report, which considered a host of constitutional questions, including the possibility of doing away with separate electorates. The third and final section of the book again looks at a debate over separate electorates, this time in 1932 over the "Depressed Classes question" and its resolution in the Poona Pact and in the proto-constitution rendered by the 1935 Government of India Act. With this as backdrop, the book concludes by examining debates over secularism in post-Independence India's Constituent Assembly. Most of the discussion in this section centers around the problem of representation: should there be reservations for communities in a unified, general electorate, or should there by separate electorates for varying communities (208)? What were the distinctions, if any, in the needs of caste and religious groups, and in what ways, with what meanings, were majorities and minorities defined (244). Without question, there is much that is fascinating and new in Tejani's research...

Authoring (in)Authenticity, Regulating Religious Tolerance

This article explores the politicization of `conversion' discourses in contemporary India, focusing on the rising popularity of anti-conversion legislation at the individual state level. While `Freedom of Religion' bills contend to represent the power of the Hindu nationalist cause, these pieces of legislation reflect both the political mobility of Hindutva as a symbolic discourse and the practical limits of its enforcement value within Indian law. This resurgence, however, highlights the enduring nature of questions regarding the quality of `conversion' as a `right' of individuals and communities, as well as reigniting the ongoing battle over the line between `conversion' and `propagation'. Ultimately, I argue that, while the politics of conversion continue to represent a decisive point of reference in debates over the quality and substance of religious freedom as a discernible right of Indian democracy and citizenship, the widespread negative consequences of this legislation's enforcement remain to be seen. Moreover, the role of gender in these debates cannot be ignored; indeed, the politics of gender play a decisive role in the manner in which the anti-conversion debates have unfolded. Consequently, the gulf between the unsecular nature of the legislation in theory and its questionable impact in practice indicates that the project of Indian secularism is negotiating religious intolerance rather than succumbing fully to the politics of Hindutva.

The Crisis of Secularism in India – Edited by Anuradha Dingwaney Needham and Rajeswari Sunder Rajan

The Crisis of Secularism in India – Edited by Anuradha Dingwaney Needham and Rajeswari Sunder Rajan

Book Review: "The Crisis of Secularism in India"

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La spécificité de la laïcité à l'indienne

Contemporary discussions of secularism in India have been constrained by the tradition-modern(western) dichotomy. For some, secu~larism is originally a Christian doctrine adapted to modern western condi~tions, and means the strict separation of church and state. It is also predominantly a single-value doctrine, motivated either by liberty (as in the United states) or equality of citizenship (as in France) more suited to single~religion societies than to the socio-cultural context of India where it is more appropriate to rely on resources of multiple and indigenous religious tradi~tions for the sake of quite different values of peace and toleration. Others argue that India has the civilizational resource from which to retrieve its own conception of secularism captured best by the phrase 'sarva dharma samb~hava' (equal respect for all religions). I argue instead that India has worked out a distinctive conception of the secular that was at once Indian and modern. This remains a practical conception rather than a coherent doctrine or theory, and can thus be called Indian secularism only by extension. This conception builds on traditional resources as well as on the legacy of the British colonial state but innovatively transforms them. Many distinctive fea~tures characterize it. First, it deals simultaneously with inter-religious and intra-religious domination. Second, it has an explicit multi-value character. Third, it rejects strict separation. Separation does not mean exclusion or strict neutrality but what I call principled distance. Fourth, it implies neither respectful indifference nor active hostility but respectful transformation of religion. In short, secularism inherits the tradition of religious reform that began in India both prior to the advent of colonial modernity and because of a critical engagement with it. Finally, Indian secularism is an ethically~sensi~tive practical settlement and less a scientific, rationalist doctrine worked out by ideologues and implemented by political agents.

Political Management of Islamic Fundamentalism

This article attempts to explain why and how the Indian state has been successful in managing the militant form of Islamic fundamentalism in India, despite favourable internal and external conditions for such militancy. Internally, it includes such factors as the relative material and cultural deprivation of Indian Muslims, the context of Hindutava and the communal riots, and externally, the Islamic radical movements abroad. Varied literatures have emphasized these factors for the growth of Islamic fundamentalism and Islamic militancy across the Muslim world. However, India has not witnessed large-scale Islamic militancy, despite the growth in Islamic fundamentalist organizations. The article offers a theoretical perspective that takes into consideration the interplay of the nation-building process, the constitutional framework of minority rights, the doctrine of Indian secularism, and the democratic political process. This interplay explains the absence of large-scale militancy and violence, either on the part of Islamic fundamentalist groups/institutions or the Muslim population in India.

Sites of Conflict in the Indian Secular State: Secularism, Caste and Religious Conversion

When the British left India in 1947, two new nations were created. The division of the Indian subcontinent into India and Pakistan and again later in 1955, with the division of East Pakistan, which in 1971 became Bangladesh, resulted in mass migrations of people among the new nations. Since then, Pakistan has struggled to define itself as an Islamic republic. In contrast, India currently defines itself constitu tionally as a secular republic. Nonetheless, with a population that is over 80 percent but also includes the world's second largest Muslim population (e.g. more Muslims currently live in India than in all Middle Eastern countries combined), the role of religion in political and public life has been central, and conflicts among religious groups continue in many areas. One of the main sites for religious conflict in modern India involves the issue of religious conversion. Debates about religious conversion have often centered on the issue of caste identity. Conversion from one religious tradition or identity to another indicate a change in caste status and, if so, what kind? Furthermore, what should the role of the self-described secular government be in deciding issues of caste affiliation vis-a-vis the legality or illegality of conversion? And most important, what is the government's responsibility in determining the always thorny issue of definitions: who counts as a Hindu, who counts as a non-Hindu, who should receive affirmative action benefits from the government, and who, due to religious conversion or to loss of caste status should lose affirmative action, economic, or maintenance privileges? This essay explores important historical issues relevant to the ongoing debates about Hinduism, caste, and religious conversion

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

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

Contesting secularism in colonial and postcolonial north India between the 1930 and 1950s

This article re-positions debates about the apparent ‘crisis’ of Indian secularism in relation to political events in the important phase of state transformation between the 1930s and 1950s. By looking at how the meaning of secularism was contested by political actors themselves in Uttar Pradesh, it argues that the ideological ambiguity of Indian secularism was the product of political debates and conflicts in these critical years. It suggests further that, in the decades spanning Indian independence, the real scope and limits of secularism within the polity were determined in local and provincial contexts, as much as on the national stage. In these years, political leaders attempted to define the relationship between religious tradition and ‘scientific development’ by reference to specifically Indian, as well as European philosophies, traditions and histories. In particular, the many Uttar Pradesh Congress visions of Indian secularism, represented by a palimpsest of ideological positions, could not have been exclusively shaped by an overarching modernist nationalist ideology (as many scholars suggest). Much more important was the need for political leaderships to manage a rapidly changing political context, and an unprecedented expansion of demand for state power and resources in the new Indian democracy.

Sociology of Christianity, Conversion and Secularism in India: Some Reflections

Sociology of Christianity, Conversion and Secularism in India: Some Reflections

Indian democracy: meanings and practices

Introduction - Rajendra Vora and Suhas Palshikar PART ONE: REAPPROPRIATING MEANINGS Issues before Indian Democracy: An Overview - Rajni Kothari The Crisis of Political Authority - D L Sheth What Is Happening inside Indian Democracy? - Javeed Alam Theorising Indian Democracy - Manoranjan Mohanty Whose Democracy Are We Talking About? Hegemony and Democracy in India - Suhas Palshikar Understanding Indian Politics: Are We Asking the Right Questions? - Jayant Lele The Ethical Insufficiency of Egoism and Altruism: India in Transition - Rajeev Bhargava PART TWO: PRACTICES: EXPANDING SPACES Understanding Indian Secularism: Learning from Its Recent Critics - Thomas Pantham New Dalit Politics - Gopal Guru Decline of Caste Majoritarianism in Indian Politics - Rajendra Vora Rise of the BJP and Decline of the Congress: An Appraisal - V B Singh Predicament of the Left - Sandeep Pendse Increasing Fluidity in Electoral Contest: Is This Mere Anti-Incumbency? - Sanjay Kumar Social Movements in Crisis? - Rajeshwari Deshpande Struggle against Damsor Struggle for Water? Environmental Movements and the State - Gail Omvedt Index

Future of secularism in India

The question of future of secularism in India is very important particularly at this juncture. Secularism was never meant to be the indifference to religion by our leaders and freedom fighters, who realised that India is a highly religious country. That is why even the most orthodox Hindus and Muslims accepted it as a viable ideology for India. But after independence Indian secularism followed a tortuous course and religious fundamentalism has grown dangerously in the last few decades. The Bhartiya Janta Party and the Sangh Parivar, in particular, are likely to intensify the Hindutva agenda in the future. In these political circumstances the future of secularism does not seem to be bright in the short run. But in the long run, India’s bewildering culture of pluralism, dating back many centuries, economic progress in the future and the well-established Indian democracy are factors that point to a more stable and secular polity.

State and religious diversity: reflections on post‐1947 India

This article critically reviews the assumptions underlying state secularism in India since 1947 against the policies of different regimes in managing religious diversity. It reflects on how the construction of secularism was adapted to Indian conditions in ways which enabled it to coalesce with existing traditions of statecraft and the religious ideals of Mohandas K. Gandhi, on the one hand, and the modernist outlook of Jawaharlal Nehru, on the other. This fine balance, it is suggested, was seriously compromised by post‐1947 Congress governments. Since the 1980s state secularism has also been under attack by the political forces mobilised by Hindutva and ‘anti‐secularists’ who draw their inspiration from neo‐Gandhism and post‐colonial theory. Despite the critiques offered by these two schools of thought, a general assessment of the post‐1947 experience, this article argues, suggests that Nehru’s ideals offer the most promising prospectus of building democracy in a religiously diverse society such as India. More broadly the Indian experience offers interesting lessons about the current debate on the place of organised religions in public life.

Spectral Secularism: Religion, Politics and Democracy in India

Everyone invokes secularism in India. So the spectrum of secularism is very large. However, it is rather the spectral ideas of “majority” (hindus) and “minorities” (Muslims, Christians) conceived in demographic (rather than political) terms which characterizes the discussion of this question. The insistence of Hindu nationalists on emphasizing that they are the majority tend to blur the difference between Hindu identity and Indian identity, coextensive with the territory of India. This concept, moreover, serves them in their legitimating of the democratic system insofar as the arithmetical rule is a first principle of this political regime. In the name of a secularism founded on the idea of the greater number (and also the supposed ideal of immemorial Hindu tolerance) India must be governed in accordance with demographic fact defined in religious terms. One of the paradoxical consequence of this “majoritarianism” is the development of “majority minority complex” of the Hindus and the increasing hate and violence (against Muslims and Christians). Today, the Hindu nationalism programme effectively dominates public debate. Its partisans has succeeded in discriminating between “friends” and “foes”, those inside and those outside, those whom one holds dear and those whom one pillories on the basis of a real or imaginary menace weighing upon autochthony, culture, religion and race, and the national (state) sovereignty.

The Secular and the sacred: nation, religion and politics

Religion and politics in American democracy, Horst Mewes religion and politics in the United States, Corwin Smidt, Lyman Kellstedt, John Green, James Guth religion and Laiecite in a Jacobin republic - the case of France, William Safran the significance of religion in British politics, Josephine E. Squires religion, national identity and the conflict in Northern Ireland, Adrian Guelke chutch and state after transition to democracy - the case of Spain, Victor Urrutia Abaigar Poland's transition to a democratic republic - the taming of the sacred?, Ray Taras Greece - a problematic secular state, Adamantia Pollis religion and collective identity - the ethnopolitical barriers to democratization in the Balkans, Steven Majstorovic religion, politics and democracy in Turkey, Joseph S. Szyliowicz religion and state in Israel - another round of an ancient conflict among the Jews, Ira Sharkansky secularism in India - accepted principle, contentious interpretation, Swarna Rajagopalan.

The Crisis of Indian Secularism

After fifty years of independence India maintains a constitutional commitment to secularism. However, the practice of secularism in India is now increasingly under attack. In the quest for electoral advantage, the once-dominant Congress Party, made a series of choices that compromised India's secular ethos. These choices enabled the explicitly anti-secular Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to dramatically expand its political base through the pursuit of a blatantly anti-secular and majoritarian political agenda. In recent years, as a direct consequence of the BJP's rhetoric and policies, a range of religious minorities have been subjected to discrimination and violence. Despite this adverse trend it is still too early to ring the death-knell of Indian secularism. The growing electoral strength of hitherto disenfranchised groups, the existence of institutions committed to secularism and the continuing secular constitutional dispensation offer some hope for sustaining the secular order in India.

India's secularism in comparative perspective

This review assesses whether Gary Jeffrey Jacobson's The Wheel of Law resolves the two major dilemmas besetting Indian secularism: first, how to reconcile the paradox of transforming formal equality into substantive equality for groups and individuals while also allowing religious freedom; and, no less importantly, with whom lies final authority for transforming religious practices. This review essay argues that the crisis of secularism, linked intimately with democracy and manifested in the rise of religious majoritarian (Hindu) nationalism, can be resolved only by confronting the question of power – in this case, the authority to alter religious practices.

BELIEVING AND BELONGING: SECULARISM AND RELIGION IN INDIA

On the front lines of the world's conflicts, amid the noxious fumes of ancient hatreds, men and women gather in cratered roads and sniper alleys, and embrace. It was always Ormus Cama's hope that it might be possible for human beings -- for himself -- to transcend the frontier of skin, not to cross the colour line but to rub it out. (1) Introduction: The nation and its discontents During the last few months, India has been in the news for all the wrong reasons. The world has witnessed with horror another outbreak of violence and brutality between members of different religious communities in the state of Gujarat, the same state from which the apostle of non-violence, Mahatma Gandhi, came. Neighbours have turned into fanatics; the home has turned from a place of refuge to a killing field; carefully fostered relationships and shared joys and sorrows have evaporated in a frenzy of bloodshed and hatred. Pent-up hatred has burst from behind the facade of civility, revealing the frightening face behind the mask. The iron under the velvet has been exposed. This reality is all the more disturbing and troubling because India has been a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic and multi-religious land for more than three millennia. Indeed, India has been described as a laboratory of dialogue, where people of different religious persuasions and faiths have lived and worked side by side for generations. This is not to deny the reality that there have been clashes and violence down the ages. There have been very violent episodes, not only in the past but also in recent history. For example, the partition of the country about fifty years ago led to one of the great human tragedies after the end of the second world war. What sears the imagination are the pictures of burnt-out shops and homes, bodies lying twisted grotesquely, hands reaching out for help from relief camps, and the shallow proclamations of those in power who cynically play about with human lives, indifferent to the cost of human tragedy. (2) The churches in India, which comprise the ancient Orthodox churches, the Catholic church, various Protestant denominations and a wide range of Pentecostal churches, are left bewildered and forlorn as they wonder how best to carry out their calling to be active and committed peace-makers in the present context. What does the proclamation of the gospel of reconciliation and peace mean in such a context? How can the churches co-operate in helping in relief and rebuilding measures? How can the churches display charity while speaking the truth in love to power? The discourse on secularism The reality of life in India has led to a flurry of analysis of the nation, religion and the life of the religious communities in Indian society at the turn of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century. (3) The investigation and exploration of secularism in India has led to significantly different ways in which secularism is understood from how it is normally understood in the West. In the West, secularism has been understood to incorporate (more or less) the following elements: * the attempt to separate religion and religious authorities from the structures of the state, including politics; * the sphere of religion being recognized as essentially a private matter; * the recognition of the reality of the declining importance of religion in public, civil and social life. (4) Such an understanding led to the existence of a division between religion and the state, and the separation of national identity from religious affiliations of any kind...Secularization not only polarizes national and religious identity; it also privatizes belief and renders it subordinate to the claims of reason, logic, and evidence, all of which are hence identified with the administrative rationality of the state and its institutions. (5) If this is the classical understanding, then we need to note that, Indians are sometimes scolded for misunderstanding secularism. …

Congress Radicals and Hindu Militancy: Sampurnanand and Purushottam Das Tandon in the Politics of the United Provinces, 1930–1947

A recent trend in the historiography of north India has involved analyses of ‘Hindu nationalist’ motifs and ideologies within both mainstream nationalist discourses and subaltern politics. A dense corpus of work has attempted to provide historical explanations for the rise of Hindutva in the subcontinent, and a great deal of debate has surrounded the implications of this development for the fate of secularism in India. Some of this research has examined the wider implications of Hindutva for the Indian state, democracy and civil society and in the process has highlighted, to some degree, the relationship between Hindu nationalism and ‘mainstream’ Indian nationalism. Necessarily, this has involved discussion of the ways in which the Congress, as the predominant vehicle of ‘secular nationalism’ in India, has attempted to contest or accommodate the forces of Hindu nationalist revival and Hindutva. By far the most interesting and illuminating aspect of this research has been the suggestion that Hindu nationalism, operating as an ideology, has manifested itself not only in the institutions of the right-wing Sangh Parivar but has been accommodated, often paradoxically, within political parties and civil institutions hitherto associated with the forces of secularism. An investigation of this phenomenon opens up new possibilities for research into the nature of Hindu nationalism itself, and presents new questions about the ambivalent place of religious politics in institutions such as the Indian National Congress.

The conceptual vocabularies of secularism and minority rights in India

Secularism, one of the main political ideologies of the post-colonial state in India, has been at the centre of scholarly and political debates in recent times. This article seeks to illuminate some aspects of the career of secularism in India through an analysis of two landmark parliamentary debates on minority rights: the Constituent Assembly debates (1946-1949) and the Shah Bano debate (1986). My analysis attempts, first, to challenge a contrast commonly made by both advocates and critics of secularism in India, between a Western model of secularism, identified with separation of state and religion, and an Indian model, based on equal respect for all religions. Secondly, I critically examine the dominant view that the Shah Bano case constituted a watershed with regard to the career of secularism in India. I attempt to delineate the changes in the constellation of concepts associated with secularism that contribute to this impression while arguing that the ideological shift in the Shah Bano case is less radical than is commonly supposed.