Is the Idea of India relevant without secularism ?

Meera Nanda
Aarhus , October 20, 2014

There is a reality of India, and then there is an “idea of India”, a carefully constructed romance
of India. There is a wide gap between the two.

The idea of India, or what Perry Anderson calls the Indian Ideology , celebrates India as a secular
state with a tolerant civic culture. The reality of India, however, is neither secular, nor
particularly tolerant. There is of course the colorful, vibrant religiosity of India which can win
the hearts of even the most hardened atheists. But there is a darker, resentful and intolerant
side to this religiosity as well, which shows up in all kinds of everyday prejudices and cruelties
and on occasion can be harnessed for murderous riots against Muslim and Christian minorities.
The electoral victory of the Hindu nationalist BJP, with Narendra Modi at the helm, has
emboldened the more militant elements of the party.

India presents us with a paradox. While it is officially a secular state, it offers its citizens neither
freedom from state interference in matters of faith (USA), nor a religiously neutral public
sphere (as in France). For a country that takes pride in its religious pluralism and its secular
constitution, its public sphere – the offices where the business of government is conducted
including even the courts and police offices, schools, hospitals, buses, bazzars, marketplaces,
roads, rivers, mountains —remain so saturated with Hindu symbols and rituals that an outsider
may be fooled into thinking she was in a nation of the Hindus, by the Hindus and for the Hindus.

The paradox is that the Hinduization of the public sphere has happened not in spite of the
secular state, but because of it: Hinduism has served as the political theology of the Indian
state; it is the language in which the state creates legitimacy for its laws and policies. This bias
for a sanskritized spiritual monist worldview has created a situation in which Hinduism is not
treated as one religion among others, but rather as the way of life of the entire nation. As Perry
Anderson put it recently, behind the secular façade of secular India, there hides a shadow
nation of Hindustan.

I will argue:
One that Indian secularism is in crisis: it has failed to lived up to its own promise of religious
freedom and equality

Two, the roots of the crisis have to sought in the “shadow nation of Hindustan”: To understand
the promise and failure of secularism in india, we have to examine how unacknowledged
assumption of Hinduism not as one religion among others, but as the culture of India.

Three, that it is the nationalization of Hinduism that is responsible for hinduization of the public
sphere. And a Hinduized public sphere is the breeding ground for the militant right wing Hindu
nationalism which targets Muslims and Christians as not real Indians, as outsiders and as
enemies.

**

The religious-cultural ambience of public spaces is more important in the everyday life of the
people than the lofty pronouncements in the halls of parliaments and courts. It is in the public
sphere that citizens interface with the agencies of the state and interact with each other. It is
through these everyday interactions that social identities and social imageries are formed.

The public sphere has moved to the center of the new conversation about the place of religion
in post-secular society started by the two leading social theorists of our time, Jurgen Habermas
and Charles Taylor. In two recent essays published in a 2011 book, The Power of Religion in the
Public Sphere, Habermas and Taylor have argued that any democratic multi-religious society in
the post-secular era must have two features: its public sphere must be equally accessible to all
citizens of whatever religion or no religion; and the state must be neutral between all
competing “comprehensive doctrines” or basic beliefs, be they religious or non-religious.

The second condition – that no particular religious outlook or worldview can enjoy a privileged
status – places a much heavier burden on a secular state than the common understanding of a
state that has no official religion per se. What this means is that while citizens of all religious
persuasions must have an equal access to the public sphere, the state cannot make a direct
appeal to any religious doctrine, theological concept, or even a secular worldview, to legitimize
and/or explain its policies: any kind of theology which is not equally meaningful to all its citizens
has no place in a secular society. The state must be equi-distant not just from religious
communities, but also from all comprehensive worldviews, religious or secular. [there are
differences with habermas more committed to maintaining a distinction between….

Going by these standards of secularity, I will argue that India has never been secular. Since the
very beginning after the Independence, the Indian state has openly conducted its business and
legitimized its policies in a distinctly Hindu ethos. Ironically, even the godless, a-dharmic
secularity is interpreted as a Hindu virtue: India is secular, it is claimed, because it is Hindu,
and therefore, when the functionaries of the state, in their official capacity, speak as Hindus
and celebrate Hindu symbols and rituals in the public sphere, they see no contradiction with
their roles as upholders of secular India. Hindu dharma simply encompasses Indian modernity
within itself.

This seamless fusion of the very idea of modern secular democratic India with Hinduism has the
blessing of the highest court of law in India. In a landmark judgment, S. R. Bommai v. Union of
India in 1994, the Supreme Court declared secularism to be a “part of the basic structure of the
Constitution and also the soul of the Constitution.” In another case, referred to as Hindutva
judgment in 1995, the Court declared Hinduism to be the “way of life” of all Indian people.
How can a supposedly secular society declare and celebrate the religion of the majority as the
way of life of the nation itself?

I want to explore the historical sources of the Indian paradox of a secular state with a non-
secular public sphere. I will argue that India became “modern” without undergoing a critical
scrutiny of its traditions: reform has meant a revival, not a critical revaluation of the nation’s
upper-caste, Brhaminical religious heritage. What is worse, scientific reason – the engine of the
Enlightenment – was disarmed of its critical potential by being re-interpreted as Vedic-Hindu in
spirit and content. If in China Mr. Science was always paired with Mr. Democracy, in India,
modern science was paired with the Vedas, scientists with ancient sages, scientific method with
yogic seeing. If the rallying cry of the May 4th generation was “down with Confucius”, the
rallying cry in India was “back to the Vedas.” There were, of course, seriously engaged voices
for radical enlightenment and anti-clericalism – but they were voices from the bottom of the
caste pyramid, they were voices of India’s untouchables.

The myth and the reality

I want to start by giving you a snippet of the reality of religious-cultural life in India today, six
months after the Hindu-Right was swept into power in the general elections. Here again, I will
follow Taylor’s essay, “A radical redefinition of secularism” from the book I mentioned a minute
ago.

Taylor argues that rather than fret over institutional and legal relations between state and
religions, we must ask what is secularism for? What are the social goods that secular states are
supposed to serve? The institutional arrangements will vary with different societies at different
times, we must first be clear on the goals of secularism.

Taylor lays out three goals of secularism which have the great virtue of corresponding with the
goals of the French Revolution on the one hand, and the goals stated by the Preamble to the
Constitution of India: these goals are Liberty, Equality and Fraternity between citizens with
diverse religious beliefs. [post-secular is not about keeping religion at bay, but rather about
managing diversity of beliefs….]

By Liberty he means that “no one must be forced in the domain of religious or basic belief.” This
is what Americans call “free exercise” of religion.

By Equality he means two things: One, “There must be equality between people of different
faiths or basic beliefs” and, two, “no one religious outlook or worldview can enjoy a privileged
status, let alone be adopted as the official view of the state.” In other words, not only citizens
with different faith traditions, or no faith tradition at all, enjoy equal rights as citizens, but their
worldviews are equal before the state. The second part of the equality goal – the equality of
worldviews – is going to be crucial for what I have to say and we will return to it later.

By Fraternity he means “ all spiritual families must be heard, included in the ongoing process of
determining what the society is about … and what regime of rights and privileges it is going to
institutionalize in order to ensure equality and liberty.” Fraternity, clearly, is possible only
where and when the equality conditions are met.

So let us see how India fares on these three goals which as I said, correspond exactly to the
goals that the Indian Constitution sets for itself.

 Religious liberty: does Indian society safe guard religious liberty of all its citizens? The
answer is no. Is Indian society Just two stories taken from the newspaper headlines in
the last 30 days should suffice:
1. Sept. 5, 2014, Indian Express: A day after they were arrested for converting to Islam,
four Dalits were “re-converted” to Hinduism by VHP and Bajrang Dal activists in a
ceremony at the Hanuman Temple here on Thursday.
Calling it “Ghar Vapasi”, the Hindu organisations also brought in over half-a-dozen
other Dalits who had expressed their willingness to embrace Islam, and subjected
them to a “purification” ceremony amid chanting of mantras by the temple priest.
In Chattisgarh, just last week, the elected member of Parliament organized and
presided over re-conversion of dalit Christians.
 “Freedom of Religion” laws
2. Christian man marrying a hindu woman – marriage annulled because the state law
denies inter-religious marriage. You have to firs convert … “Love Jihad”
 Equality of religious groups: do all citizens regardless of their religious beliefs enjoy equal
status as citizens?
Ghettos
Hindu names
 Equality and fraternity of all worldviews: Do all “spiritual families get a hearing,” to use
Taylor’s words?
RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat (August 17, 2014): "Hindustan is a Hindu nation...Hindutva is the
identity of our nation and it (Hinduism) can incorporate others (religions) in itself," he said.
this has the blessing of the supreme court’s Hindutva judgment in 1992

This is the reality. Yet, the idea of India as this great secular democracy has its champions:

e.g. Narendra Modi : “shared values of pluralism, tolerance and secularism. “

e.g. indian academic: either see the whole idea of separating religion and politics as western, or
those who want a high and sturdy wall. There is an emerging trend of contextual secularism
which is in close accord with Taylor’s views.

Indian Secularism

At this point, some of you may be puzzled: if I am going to argue that India fails on all counts of
secularity, how can I ask, as I do in my title, if “the idea of India even makes sense without
secularism”? so what is it: is secularism constitutive of India? Or secularism has never worked
and is meaningless?

My answer is: secularism is both. Modern Indian democracy had to be secular, and yet, how
secularism has been understood and institutionalized has turned the idea upon its head: rather
than create a religiously neutral space where all faith-traditions could be heard, the discourse
of secularism has turned majority religion into national culture.

Let me explain by what I mean when I say that modern, democratic India makes no sense
without secularism.

Secularism is indeed constitutive of modern India: a democratic society that promises equal
rights to all regardless of caste, class, gender and creed could not have come into existence on
the basis of Hindu dharma which legitimizes a caste hierarchy. When India chose democracy at
the time of Independence, it had no choice but to be secular in the sense of turning its back on
Manusmriti. The other compulsion was reassuring the minorities – especially the Muslims who
had chosen to stay back in India after the partition – that they will not live at the mercy of the
majority Hindus. The Constitution has a “Noah’s ark” quality to it in the sense it wants to take
everyone along. Thus if India was to be a liberal democratic state, with many diverse religious
traditions, it had to find non-religious , this-worldly sources of legitimation: Democracy and
secularism were co joined twins born together at the moment of the birth of free India.
It is for these reasons that India, one of the most god-minded country in the world, gave itself a
godless Constitution. India remains the only country in South Asia which has no official religion.
Its Constitution makes no reference to any higher power to justify its provisions, it invokes no
god for blessings and nor does it make any reference to raj-dharma or Ram rajya.

So what happened? Why is it that the institutional arrangements between the Indian state and
India’s many religions are failing to deliver liberty, equality and fraternity? Without going into
the nitty-gritty of Constitutional law, and without boring you with the twist and turns of
intellectual debates that have raged over the suitability of the Western idea of secularism, I
want to point to some feature of the Constitution which make India a secular state of a very
peculiar kind.

Here are some notable features of the Indian Constitution which are relevant for understanding
secularism.

1. The Consititution is completely god-less. It invokes no god, no scriptures, no divine

sanction whatsoever. The state itself proclaims no official religion.

2. It disestablishes untouchability by legal fiat.

3. The Article 25 promises all persons freedom of belief and religious practices, including
rituals many of which are of public nature (religious procession, fire ceremonies etc.)
But this freedom is not absolute: the state reserves the right to “regulate and restrict”
any aspect of a religious practice that clashes with the fundamental rights of equality
regardless of caste, class or creed. It places a special burden on the Hindu community
be demanding that Hindu temples have to allow “all classes and sections of Hindus.” In
addition, the state reserves the right to regulate all secular aspects – finances, land-
ownership – of religious traditions.

4. Not just individuals, but religious communities are also promised religious liberties.
Articles 26 and 30 confer the right on all religious denominations to establish and
manage their own schools and colleges which can receive sate-aid and offer religious
instruction.

Let me pause here and take a stock of these two articles. Some things stand out:

One: The secular intent of the Constitution is clear: traditional religions have the
freedom to exist, but they have to reform and curtail those aspects which conflict with
the limits set by the Constitution. It is for this reason that the Indian Constitution has
been called “ a charter for reform” especially of Hinduism. Likewise, the multiculturalist,
pluralistic intent is clear: all religious communities are invited to the table, so to speak,
to partake of the state largesse.

Two: there is no wall of separation. the state has the right to interfere in all religions,
both in order to reform them, where needed, and in order to celebrate them; and ALL
religions have an equal claim on resources of the state and tax-payers money for
purposes of running religious schools, paying for pilgrimages, repair and upkeep of
temples, building tourist facilities around places of worship, etc. There is in other words,
no inviolable public-private divide. Religion is not put away in some space marked
“private” where the state cannot reach; and in so far as religions have a public presence,
they are all considered worthy of support and celebration by the agencies of the state.

This hybrid-secularism which does not lay down strict boundaries but allows state
intervention in the affairs of religion when it is needed, and state celebration of religions
when it is called for, has been defended most forcefully by Rajeev Bhargava. the world-
renowned Indian political philosopher. According to Bhargava, Indian secularism is an
example of “contextual, ethically sensitive, politically negotiated arrangement” which is
trying to balance the competing goals of religious liberty and equality of citizenship and
equality of diverse religious traditions. Bhargava, like Taylor, sees secularism not as a
matter of invioalbe timeless first principles, but as a pragmatic and constantly evolving
relationship that best serves certain essential goals of a liberal multicultural society. It is
OK for the state, Bhargava suggests, to be opportunistic – hostile at times, and deeply
respectful and welcoming at other times – depending upon what strategy best serves
the principles of equal citizenship which also respects cultural differences. Bhargava
calls this a secularism of “principled distance” and holds it as an example from which the
West could learn as it begins to manage the presence of large non-Christian immigrant
populations.

The problem is that the “principled distance” has been deployed in the most
unprincipled manner in India and has ended up making a mockery of the principles
themselves. Article 25 which allows state intervention in the name of reform has
opened the door to endless litigation where unelected judges indulge in their own
religious musings and decide what is essential to faith and deserves the protection, and
what is inessential and can be banned. Article 26, which allows public funds for religious
purposes has prepared the ground for what I have called the “State-temple-Corporate
complex,” which is using the neo-liberal public private partnerships to “modernize”
temples, ashrams, priest craft, pilgrimages and religious schools and colleges and build
hugely profitable tourist circuits. The net result is that all the three parties are making a
 lot of money while entrenching a ritualistic, superstitious and consumerist Hindu
religiosity more deeply into the pores of the Indian society.

Let me give you an example of the kind of problems thrown up by this great Indian
innovation of “contextual secularism.” Just this month, India celebrated the festival of
Dussehra. [kullu dussehra, a unique tradition]. Just two days before the festival, the
high court of the state banned animal sacrifice on the grounds of preventing cruelty to
animals and on the grounds of scientific rationalism. At the same time, the chief
minister of the state announced a multi-million rupees grant for the festivities, which
included salaries and travel allowance for the oracles who supposedly commune with
gods. This ham-handed intervention in the religious traditions has served no purpose
but to bring out Hindu nationalist charge of the state – which is dishing out huge sums
of money for the festival – to be “anti-Hindu.” In fact, this decision is even more
dangerous as it set the precedent for banning animal sacrifice for Muslims, which the
Hindus will now demand in the spirit of “equal treatment.”

5. There is one final article of the Constitution that is relevant to our understanding of
secularism. Article 51 a (h).

Hinduism as political theology of the secular nation-state Habermas

Habermas has argued quite persuasively against modern states using theological concepts to bolster
their legitimacy. [quote] “in a liberal democracy, the state has lost its religious aura... democratic
legitimacy is the only one available today.. the idea of replacing or complementing it with some “deeper
grounding” of the constitution amounts to obscurantism” (p.24).

This is the crux of the problem: The Indian state has never refrained from seeking a “religious aura” and
it has never ceased from looking for “deeper grounding” of its laws in the logic and vocabulary of
Hinduism. This is the shadow nation – the stan of the Hindus – that lurks behind secular India.

It is the historical legacy of colonialism that the Indian renaissance of the 19 th and early 20th century was
in fact a Hindu revival. The centrality of Hindu imaginary to the Indian awakening can become clearer in
contrast with the Chinese awakening: When the Chinese intellectuals began to ask why China had fallen
behind the West, what was holding it back?, they pointed the finger at the timeworn traditions, the
hierarchy and obedience bred by the Confuscian culture. When the Indian intellectuals began to ask why
India had fallen behind? What was holding it back?, they pointed the finger not at the traditional order
but at the degeneration of the traditional order brought about by outsiders. Unlike the Chinese, it
wasn’t the hierarchies and the obedience bred by Manusmriti, Bhagwat Gita and the whole slew of
dharmashastras that they held responsible for India’s backwardness; rather they claimed that it is the
decline of the Golden Age of the Vedas that is the problem.

Two questions followed:

Who brought about this decline: Muslims.

What to do about it? If decline of the Vedas was the problem, the solution was obvious: recover,
restore the spirit of the Vedic golden age. India was to modernize not by laying a new foundation, but
by restoring the India’s ancient spirit. India’s modernization was not envisaged as an evolutionary
progress toward a new society based upon social efficiency, but rather a regeneration of a purified
Hindu society based upon a spiritual revival [Heimsath p.25.] Prophets facing backward …

[Caveats:

One: it is not that there were no radical voices asking to tear down the edifice and build again. But they
were a minority.]

Evolution of the public sphere has been studied quite extensively. India’s best-known historians
including Tanika Sarkar and Partha Chatterjee have shown how the true essence of India got defined in
spiritual terms, and how defending this spiritual nation became the central theme of Indian renaissance.
This is not the place to explore this work, but I will very quickly look at how the idea of secularism itself
was interpreted as an expression of Hindu spirituality – or to use Habermas’s terms, how secularism was
theologized, how it was given a religious aura.

If you look at the Constituent assembly debates and the writings of the fathers of nation, including of
course the writings of Gandhi, it become clear that they understood secularism simply as an expression
of an idealized understanding of Hindu dharma. The reformatory impulse of the Constitution was given a
second place to understanding secularism simply as a sign of “generosity” and “tolerance” of traditional
Hinduism.

Take for example Gandhi: he is held as the apostle of religious tolerance which goes by the Sanskrit
phrase of sarava dharma sambhav. What is less well-known is that Gandhi was firmly opposed to
religious conversions – indeed, today’s anti-conversion laws can look at Gandhi as their inspiration.
Gandhi arrived at both his religious tolerance and his intolerance of convesions through his reading of
the Bhagwat Gita. He interpreted Krishna’s teaching to do one’s caste duty to mean that one must live
by the light of the religion one is born into: He condemned any interference in matters of religion,
whether by a modernizing state, or by Christian missionaries seeking converts as a violation of a
person’s dharma which he or she is born to fulfill. Likewise, S. Radhakrishna gave a ringing defense of
secularism as an extension of Hindu dharma in the Constituent assembly debates: constitutional
protections to the minorities was not a matter of the rights of the minorities as equal citizens, but rather
an example of Hindu tolerance of different paths to the same spiritual truths as found in the Vedas. On
this view, which found overwhelming support in the CA, the best way for the Indian state to promote
secularism was to promote spiritualism which was declared not Hindu per se, but as “religion itself,” a
universal value. There were suggestions to provide “spiritual training” to all citizens which still live on in
projects to teach mediation and yoga in schools.

This conflation of the idea of secularism with Hindu spiritualism has continued to play into the hands of
the religious right. The idea of Hindu tolerance itself has become the source of intolerance: Hinduism is
declared superior to all monotheistic religions because it tolerates may paths to the ultimate truth
which is seen as contained in the Vedas. It is this thinking that lies behind the Superme Courts Hindutva
judgment I mentioned earlier that declared that refreences to Hindu state in elections speeches are in
fact secular because “secularism in the Constitution is merle the affirmation and continuation of the
tolerant and secularist orientation of the hindu way of life.” It is this logic that allows narender modi to
declare that India shares the secularist values with the US.

Voices of radical enlightenment

But I don’t want to leave you with an impression that the idea of India as a spiritual nation was shared
by all. There were voices of radical enlightenment, as Jonathan Israel has defined them in his
monumental work. There were Indian voices who resolutely rejected any compromise with the
traditional order, who to use Israel’s words, “philosophical reason as the only guide to human life,
sought to base theories of society on principles of equality and who separated philosophy, science and
morality entirely from theology, grounding morality on secular reason alone.” (p 21).

Not surprisingly, these uncompromising voices for freeing the political from theological reason and
setting it on a new foundation, came from those who had experienced the injustices and humiliations of
a caste society. It was the dalit and shudra intellectuals, most notably, Ambedkar and Periyar who were
uncompromising in their opposition to the kind of soft-hindutva, Gandhian idea of secularism: far from
seeking legitimation in the Hindu shastras, they insisted upon putting the shastras under the critical
scrutiny of reason whose modern paradigm is that of science.

Science too was absorbed back into the Vedas: Mr. Science did not walk hand in hand with Mr.
Democracy, but with Mother Vedas.

Conclusion: I have tried to present to you a picture of the state of India’s secularism. The perspective I
have taken in paining this picture is that of post-secular theories of secularism being developed
following the interventions by Jurgen Habermas and Charles Taylor. I have found this perspective very
fruitful in my own evolution when it comes to the secularism debate in India. There are many problems
that remain, especially the place of science and the distinction between scientific and religious
worldviews: can they, should they, be treated as equals in a post-secular society. That is in fact the boen
of contention between Habermas and Taylor and the debate is going to continue.

Many issues remain. But I hope I have conveyed to you a fair sense of the triumphs and the tragedies of
India’s secularism .

Thank you for your attention.

What is post-secular? A post-secular society is the one that adjusts to the continued existence of
religious communities in an increasingly secularized environment.” Comes after the end of the
secularization thesis that religions will disappear as societies become modern…

Description of modern societies as post-secular refers to a change in consciousness …that religion is here
to stay, and that religious citizens have a right to bring their faith in the public sphere and that