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Indian Secularism and Its Critics:
Some Reflections
Thomas Pantham
Several critics of Indian secularism maintain that given the pervasive role of
religion in the lives of the Indian people, secularism, defined as the separation of
politics or the state from religion, is an intolerable,alien, modernist imposition on
the Indian society. This, I argue, is a misreading of the Indianconstitutionalvision,
which enjoins the state to be equallytolerantof all religions and which therefore
requires the state to steer clear of both theocracyor fundamentalism and the "wall
of separation" model of secularism. Regarding the dichotomy, which the critics
draw between Nehruvian secularism and Gandhian religiosity, I suggest that
what is distinctive to Indian secularism is the complementation or articulation
between the democratic state and the politics of satya and ahimsa,whereby the
relative autonomy of religion and politics from each other can be used for the
moral-politicalreconstructionof both the religious traditionsand the modem state.
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524 THE REVIEWOF POLITICS
I
II
Secularism (which is often translated as dharma-nirapeksata)
has its origins in Europe. When it was first used at the end of the
Thirty Years' War in Europe in 1648, "secularization"referred to
the transfer of the properties of the church to the princes. Similar
transfer of church properties to the state also formed a part of the
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INDIAN SECULARISM 525
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526 THE REVIEWOF POLITICS
!
III
Insteadof blindly copying Westernsecularism,the framers
of the IndianConstitution,as insightfullypointed out by P. K.
Tripathi,"contemplateda secularismwhich is the product of
India'ssocial experienceand genius."5The main articlesof the
Constitutionprovidingfor a "secularstate"may be brieflysum-
marizedas follows:
(1)All personshaveequalfreedomof conscienceand religion;
(2) No discriminationby the state against any citizen on
groundsof religion;
(3) No communalelectorates;
(4) The state has the power to regulate through law any
"economic,financialor othersecularactivity"whichmay
be associatedwith religiouspractice;
(5)Thestatehas the power to providefor "socialwelfareand
reform or the throwing open of Hindu religious insti-
tutions of a public characterto all classes and sections
of Hindus";
(6) Untouchabilitystandsoutlawedby Article17;
(7) Subjectto public order,moralityand health,every reli-
gious denominationhas the rightto establishand operate
institutionsfor religiousand charitablepurposes;
(8) All religious minoritieshave the right to establishand
administereducationalinstitutionsof their choice and
they cannotbe discriminatedagainstby the state in its
grantingof aid to educationalinstitutions;
5. P. K. Tripathi,"Secularism:ConstitutionalProvisionsand JudicialReview,"
in Secularism:Its ImplicationsforLawandLifein India,ed. G. S. Sharma(Bombay:N.
M. Tripathi Pvt. Ltd., 1966), p. 193. For two different treatments of the secular
characterof the Indian state, see D. E. Smith, Indiaas a SecularState (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1963)and V. P. Luthera,TheConceptof theSecularState
and India(Calcutta:Oxford University Press, 1965).
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INDIAN SECULARISM 527
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528 THE REVIEWOF POLITICS
I
IV
The most important contemporary challenge to Indian secu-
larism has been mounted by the forces of Hindu nationalism,
which, in its turn, has received strong criticism in the writings of
some very influential academic writers, notably Ashis Nandy, T.
N. Madan and Partha Chatterjee. Interestingly, they are also
severe critics of the theory and practice of the secular state in
India. How, then, is the relationship between politics and religion
addressed in their writings, which are critical of both secularism
and communalism?
Since the mid-1980s, the BharatiyaJanataParty (BJP)and the
"Sangh Parivar" have been insisting on a distinction between
their own "positive secularism" and the "pseudo-secularism" of
the Congress. According to them, "positive secularism," which
would mean "justice for all and discriminations against none,"
should replace the prevailing "pseudo-secularism," whereby the
word secularismis misused to denigrate the Hindu categories and
symbols of the majority community and to justify the pampering
of the minority communities.6
According to T. B. Hansen, the ideology of Hindutvaand "posi-
tive" or "true"secularismamounts to the principleof rule by Hindu
majoritarianism.He notes that it is a "peculiarco-articulation of
brahminicalideologies of purity, romanticistnotions of fullness and
authenticity,and quasi-fascistorganicismand celebrationof strength
and masculinity which characterizesthe RashtriyaSwayamesvak
Sangh (RSS)and its affiliatedorganizations."7
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INDIAN SECULARISM 529
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530 THE REVIEWOF POLITICS
lar state. He notes that the khaki shorts of the RSS cadres are
modeled on the uniform of the colonial police. According to him,
the ideology of Hindu nationalist revivalism or fundamentalism,
with its borrowing of the models of semitic religions and of the
modem Western nation-state, is "anotherform of Westernization"
in the sense that it seeks
9. Ibid.,p. 187.
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INDIAN SECULARISM 531
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532 THE REVIEWOF POLITICS
I I
ism and the present campaign of the Hindu right for setting up a
"positively" secular state have brought India to a "potentially
disastrous political impasse."15
According to Chatterjee, since its birth, the project of the
nation-state in India has been implicated "in a contradictory
movement with regard to the modernist mission of
secularization." One part of this nationalist-modernist project
was the secularization of the public-political sphere by separating
it from religion, while another part was reformist intervention of
the state in the socio-religious sphere mostly of the Hindus.
Describingthe contradictionbetween these two parts of the project
of modernist secularization, Chatterjee writes that the
interventionist violation, by the state, of secularism's principle of
the separation of state and religion "was justified by the desire to
secularize." Thus he notes that the temple-entry reforms or the
reform of the personal laws of the Hindus, which served the
"public interest" only of the majorityreligious community rather
than of all citizens, cannot claim to be based on nonreligious
grounds of justification. Chatterjee also points out that the
enormous powers vested in the Tamil Nadu Government's
Commissioner for Hindu Religious Endowments is in
contradiction with the secular principle of the separation of state
and religion. As another such anomaly or contradiction he
mentions the fact that the principle of the equality of religions is
compromised by the exclusion of persons professing certain
religions from the benefits of positive discrimination given to the
scheduled castes.
Turning to the recent shift in the ideological articulation of
Hindu nationalism, Chatterjee points out that its present
championing of "positive secularism" is meant not only to deflect
accusations of its being antisecular but also to rationalize, in a
sophisticated way, its campaign for intolerant interventions by a
modern, positively secular state against the religious, cultural or
ethnic minorities in the name of "national culture" and a
homogenized notion of citizenship. "In this role," writes
Chatterjee, "the Hindu right in fact seeks to project itself as a
principled modernist critic of Islamic or Sikh fundamentalism
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INDIAN SECULARISM 533
I
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534 THE REVIEWOF POLITICS
I
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INDIAN SECULARISM 535
in its own forums, those institutions must have the same degree
of publicity and representativeness that is demanded of all pub-
lic institutions having regulatory functions."19
V
Several critics of Indian secularism, especially Nandy and
Madan, maintain that given the pervasive role of religion in the
lives of the Indian people, secularism, defined as the separation
of politics or the state from religion, is an intolerable imposition,
by the modernist elite, of an alien ideology on the Indian society.
This seems to me to be a misreading of the Indian Constitutional
vision or framework of the relationship between religion and
politics. That framework or vision does not seem to me to be
envisaging any absolute or rigid separation of politics and state
from religion.
True, the atheists and agnostics, including Nehru at several
stages in the evolution of his thought, believed in the desirability
of a strict separation of religion from politics. But that was not the
view which the Constitution adopted. The Constitution did not
envisage the state institutions to be religious or antireligious;
ratherthey were to observe the principle ofsarvadharmasamabhava.
Acknowledging this, Nehru wrote in 1961:
stateinIndia.Itisperhaps
Wetalkaboutasecular notveryeasyeventofind
a good word in Hindifor"secular."Somepeoplethinkit meanssomething
opposed to religion.Thatobviouslyis not correct.... It is a state which
honoursall faithsequallyand gives themequalopportunities.2
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536 THE REVIEWOF POLITICS
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INDIAN SECULARISM 537
22. Baxi, "The 'Struggle' to Redefine Secularism," p. 28. See also Joseph
Tharamangalam,"IndianSocial Scientists and Critique of Secularism,"Economic
and PoliticalWeekly,4 March 1995;and Rajeev Bhargava, "Giving Secularism Its
Due," Economicand PoliticalWeekly,9 July 1994.
23. Akeel Bilgrami, "Two Concepts of Secularism:Reason, Modernity and
Archimedean Ideal," Economicand PoliticalWeekly,9 July 1994.
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538 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS
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INDIAN SECULARISM 539
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540 THE REVIEWOF POLITICS
28. In his earlierwritings, however, Nandy did recognize, and rightly so, that
Gandhi was "willing to criticize some traditions violently" and "to include in his
frameelements of modernityas criticalvectors."See, for instance,Nandy, "Cultural
Frames for TransformativePolitics," in PoliticalDiscourse,ed. B.Parekh and T.
Pantham (New Delhi: Sage, 1987),pp. 240-41.
29. See Partha Chatterjee, Nationalist Thoughtand the Colonial World:A
DerivativeDiscourse?(New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1986).
30. See ThomasPantham,"Postrelativismin EmancipatoryThought:Gandhi's
Swarajand Satyagraha,"in TheMultiverseof Democracy,ed. D. L. Sheth and Ashis
Nandy (New Delhi: Sage, 1996).
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