Indian Secularism and Its Critics - Pantham

Indian Secularism and Its Critics: Some Reflections
Author(s): Thomas Pantham

Source: The Review of Politics, Vol. 59, No. 3, Non-Western Political Thought (Summer, 1997),
pp. 523-540
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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.
Secularismis one of the deeply problematicissues in contempo-

rary Indian political discourse.1The participantsin this discourse
include the Parliament,politicalparties,journalists,academics and,
in a special way, the judiciary.They espouse a variety of positions,
ranging from antisecularistmanifestoes to campaigns for positive
secularism. This discourse does call for an ethico-political assess-
ment. Unfortunately such an assessment is not available in the
writings of Indiansocial and politicaltheorists.Some of them in fact
are engaged in advocating models or conceptions of state-religion
relationshipsthat are clouded in ethico-politicalincoherence.They
are a source of confusion or misguidance.
A previous version of this paper was presented to the seminar on "Fifty

Years of Independence," Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, 24-26
September 1996. An earlier version formed my presidential address to the 11th
conference of the GujaratRajyashastraMandal at Smt. Gandhi Arts and Science
College, Bhavnagar,on 20 May 1996.
1. See Upendra Baxi, "The 'Struggle' for the Redefinition of Secularism in
India," Social Action 44 (January-March 1994); Amartya Sen, "The Threats to
SecularIndia,"SocialScientist21 (March-April1993);and RajniKothari,"Pluralism
and Secularism: Lessons of Ayodhya," Economicand Political Weekly,19-26
December 1992.
524 THE REVIEWOF POLITICS
I
What then are the ethicallyor, rather,ethico-politicallyincoher-

ent untenablemodels of state-religionrelationshipthat are being
or
advocated in and for India today? How do they compare with, or
depart from, the constitutional vision? Is the latter altogether
flawless or does it call for some contemporaryrevisions?If it does in
fact need to be amended and if the ethico-politicalincoherenciesof
the presently availablereformulationsare to be avoided, how may
we proceed? This last question may be formulated somewhat
differently as: What kind of relationshipbetween the state and the
religions of the citizens of India can claim ethico-political justi-
fiability or soundness in its favor-some form of secularrelationship
or some form of antisecularor desecularizedrelationship?
I have used the expression "some form of" advisedly because
both secular and nonsecular states assume different forms in
different contexts.2 For instance, secularism in the West is usu-
ally taken to be emphasizing the separationof state and religion,
whereas Indian secularism stresses the equal tolerance of all
religions (sarvadharmasamabhava),even though it also upholds a
certain differentiation or relative separation of the political and
religious spheres. I shall return to these specificities of Indian
secularism later on.
A satisfactory answer to the aforementioned set of questions
would require a large-scale study. As a step in that direction, I
shall, in the present exercise, try to indicate some of the ways in
which those questions are addressed, explicitly or implicitly, in
the contemporary discourse on secularism in India. But first, I
must turn to a brief consideration of the different meanings of
"secularism" as it is used in the West and in India.
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
2. For a convenient classification, see S. K. Mitra, "Desecularising the State:

Religion and Politics in India after Independence," Comparative Studiesin Society
and History(1991).
INDIAN SECULARISM 525
achievements of the FrenchRevolution. Later,in England, George

Holyoake used the term "secularism" to refer to the rationalist
movement of protest which he led in 1851.
In its pursuit of the project of Enlightenment and Progress
through the replacement of the mythical and religious view of
the world with the scientific and technological-industrial ap-
proach, Europe brought about a differentiationor separationof the
political sphere from the religious sphere. This process by which
"sectors of society and culture are removed from the domination
of religious institutions and symbols" came to be variously re-
ferred to as the "secularization"or desacralization of the world.3
In addition to this idea of (1) the separationof religion and politics,
"secularism-secularization" also means (2) the diminution of the
role of religion; (3) this-worldly orientationratherthan orientation
towards the supernatural; (4) the replacement of the "sacred" or
"mysterious" conception of the world with the view that the
world or society is something that can be rationallymanipulatedor
sociallyengineered; and (5) a view of religious beliefs and institutions
as human constructionsand responsibilitiesrather than as divinely
ordained mysteries.4
While these are the meanings of "secularism"in the West, its
use in India is accompanied by a significant variation. In fact,
because of the variant or sui generisnature of Indian secularism,
the Preamble of the Indian Constitution did not contain the word
secularas a signification of the state until it was done so by a 1976
amendment. It must, however, be noted that the original consti-
tution did contain several provisions, which left no one in doubt
about the secular(i.e., nontheocratic and noncommunal) charac-
ter of the Indian state and which, in 1973, made the full bench of
the Supreme Court to rule that "secularism" is a constitutive
feature of the basicstructureof the constitution.
In the West, as I noted above, secularism usually refers to the
state's separation from, or indifference toward, religion. Hence,
the Western antonym of "secular" is "religious." In India, by
contrast, it is "communal" that is the antonym of "secular."This
is so because given the pervasive religiosity of the people and the
3. See P. L. Berger,TheSocialRealityofReligion(London:Allen Lane,1973),p. 113.

4. See Baxi, "The'Struggle'for the Redefinition of Secularismin India,"p. 17.
!
pluralismof religions,an ethico-politicallyappropriatepattern

of relationshipbetween religion and state had to be one that
stressedthe equalrespectof all religions,ratherthanthe erection
of any insurmountable"wall of separation"between the state
and religion.
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).
(9) No citizen can be discriminated against on grounds of

religion for employment or office under the state as well
as for admission into educational institutions maintained
or aided by state funds;
(10) Public revenues are not to be used to promote any reli-
gion. However, specified amounts of money from the
Consolidated Fund of the States of Kerala and Tamil
Nadu are to be paid annually to their Devasom Funds for
the maintenance of Hindu temples and shrines which
have been transferred to them from the state of
Travancore-Cochin;
(11) No religious instruction is to be provided in educational
institutions which are wholly maintained out of state
funds, with the exception of those state-run educational
institutions,whose founding endowments or trusts require
such instruction to be provided in them. Moreover, no
person attending any educational institution "recognized"
or "aided" by the state can be required to take part in any
religious instruction or worship that may be conducted
in it unless she/he or her/his guardian has given con-
sent to it.
(12) By a Constitutional amendment in 1976, all citizens are
enjoined to consider it their fundamental duty to "pre-
serve the rich heritage of our composite culture."
This constitutional framework is premised on the liberal-

secular ideal of the freedom, equality and fraternity of all its
citizens. It is from the perspective of such a moral-political phi-
losophy that the constitution provides for certain state interven-
tions againstsuch religiously sanctioned social evils as sati,devadasi
system, polygamy, child marriage, untouchability, etc. The justi-
fication for such a reformist intervention by the state rests on a
differentiation or relative separation of the political and religious
spheres. Such a relative separation of the religious and the secu-
lar-political is clearly seen in articles 25 and 26 of the constitu-
tion, which give to all persons equal "freedom of conscience and
the right freely to profess, practice and propagate religion" and
which, at the same time, empower the state to make any law for
the sake of "publicorder, morality and health"and for "regulating
or restricting any economic, financial, political or other secular
I
activity which may be associated with religious practice." This

secularism is indeed not blind to, or acquiescent in, the social
evils and discriminations that are perpetrated in the name of
religion. At the same time, it is also not antireligious; it gives to
all its citizens justiciable equal freedom of conscience and reli-
gion. The state, in other words, is required to give, subject to the
requirements of public order, morality and health, equal respect
to the religious forms of individual or social life, which some or
all of its citizens may pursue from time to time.
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
6. See Nana Deshmukh, Our SecularismNeedsRethinking(Delhi: Deendayal

Research Institute, 1990).
7. T. B. Hansen, "Globalisation and Nationalist Imaginations: Hindutva's
Promise of Equality Through Difference," Economicand Politicalweekly,9 March
The ideology of "positive secularism" is also subjected to

serious criticism in the writings of ParthaChatterjee,T. N. Madan
and Ashis Nandy, who, as I mentioned above, are also critics of
secularism. I now turn to their writings.
According to Nandy, Nehruvian secularism, which sepa-
rates state and religion, and which has been imposed on the
Indian people, is part of a larger, modern, Western package of
scientific growth, nation-building, national security and devel-
opment. These constitute a "modern demonology, a tantrawith a
built-in code of violence." Whereas secularism demands of the
members of religious communities to dilute their faith so that
they can be truly integrated into the nation-state, it "guarantees
no protection to them against the sufferings inflicted by the state
itself" in the name of its "secular,scientific, amoral" ideology of
nation-building, security, development, etc.. As a handy adjunctto
these "legitimatingcore concepts,"secularismhelps the state-elites
to legitimize themselvesas the sole arbitersamong traditionalcommu-

nities, to claim for themselves a monopoly on religious and ethnic
toleranceand on politicalrationality.To acceptthe ideology of secular-
ism is to accept the ideologies of progress and modernity as the new
justificationsof domination, and the use of violence to achieve and
sustain the ideologies as the new opiates of the masses.8
According to Nandy, this modern Western rational-scien-

tific secularism, which Nehru sought to impose on the Indian
society, has failed either to eliminate religion from politics or to
promote greater religious tolerance. Hence, it can "no longer
pretend to guide moral or political action." Nandy therefore has
no hesitation in calling himself an antisecularist.
By so criticizingsecularism,Nandy does not mean to privilege
the communalist ideology of either the majority or minority reli-
gious communities. To the contrary,these communalist ideologies
are, in his view, the pathological by-products of modernity; they
are the dialectical "other"or counter-players of modernity's secu-
1996,p. 608. For a criticalreview of the literatureon the ideology of Hindu

nationalism, see Thomas Pantham, PoliticalTheoriesand SocialReconstruction: A
CriticalSurveyof the Literatureon India(New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1995).
8. Ashis Nandy, "The Politics of Secularism and the Recovery of Religious
Tolerance,"Alternatives(1988), p. 192.
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
to decontaminateHinduism of its folk elements, turn it into a classical

Vedantic faith, and then give it additional teeth with the help of
Western technology and secular statecraft, so that the Hindus can
take on, and ultimately defeat, all their external and internal en-
emies, if necessary, by liquidating all forms of ethnic plurality-
first within Hinduism and then within India, to equal Western Man
as a new iibemerschen.9
Crucial to Nandy's analysis is a distinction he makes between

two conceptions of religion, namely, (1) religions as tolerant and
accommodative faiths or folk ways of life and (2) religions as
politically constructed monolithic, communalist ideologies of
sectarianism and intolerance. The former, he says, character-
ized the premodern and preliberal way of life in India, whereas
the latter is a product of modernity's nationalism, statecraft,
and developmentalism.
The next move in Nandy's argument is to suggest that it is
the very package of modern nationalism and its statecraft and
scientific developmentalism which generate and nourish reli-
gious communalisms, which the state elites combat by resorting
to the use of the ideology of the secular or nonreligious nation-
state. This counterposing of the tyranny of the modern secular
state and the violence of modern communal organizations is, in
Nandy's view, nothing but the internal dialectics of modernity's
nation-state paradigm.
By this reasoning, both communalism, be it the majoritarian
or the minoritarian variety, and the secular state stand con-
demned as the perverse gifts or, rather,the inevitable products of
Western modernity. In Nandy's view, the ethico-politically ap-
propriate alternative to them lies in the nonmodern, presecular
conception of religions as accommodative, tolerant faiths or ways
9. Ibid.,p. 187.
of life as was practiced, in exemplary manner, by Asoka, Akbar

and Gandhi. They, he reminds us, derived their religious tolerance
not from secularpolitics but from Buddhism, Islam and Hinduism,
respectively. "Gandhi's religious tolerance," he writes, "came
from his antisecularism,which in turn came from his unconditional
rejection of modernity."10Accordingly, Nandy writes: "As far as
public morality goes, statecraft in India may have something to
learn from Hinduism, Islam or Sikhism; but Hinduism, Islam,
and Sikhism have very little to learn from the Constitution or
from state secular practices."1
Like Nandy, T. N. Madan maintains that religious zealots,
who contribute to fundamentalism or fanaticism by reducing
religion to mere political bickering, are provoked to do so by the
secularists who deny the very legitimacy of religion in social
life.12According to him, because it denies the immense importance
of religion in the lives of the peoples of South Asia, secularism is
in this region an impossible credo, an impracticable basis for
state action and an impotent remedy against fundamentalism or
fanaticism. Ruling out the establishment of a Hindu state as an
utterly unworkable proposition, Madan concludes that "the only
way secularism in South Asia, understood as interreligious un-
derstanding, may succeed would be for us to take both religion
and secularism seriously and not rejectthe former as superstition
and reduce the latter to a mask for communalism or mere expedi-
ency."13He commends Gandhi not only for emphasizing the
inseparability of religion and politics but also for opening up
avenues of interreligious understanding and "of a spiritually
justified limitation of the role of religious institutions and symbols
in certain areas of contemporary life."14
Somewhat like Nandy and Madan, Partha Chatterjee too
finds that the ideology of secularism is not an adequate or appro-
priate political perspective for meeting the challenge of Hindu
majoritarianism.In his view, the official model of Indian secular-
10. Ibid.,p. 192.

11. Ibid.,pp. 185-86.
12. T. N. Madan, "Secularism in its Place," Journal of Asian Studies
(November 1987).
13. Ibid.,p. 758.
14. Ibid.,p. 757.
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
15. Partha Chattejee, "Secularismand Toleration," Economicand Political

Weekly,,9 July 1994.
I
and to accuse the 'pseudo-secularists' of preaching tolerance for

religious obscurantism and bigotry."'6
The quandaries generated by the career of the secular state in
India and the potentially disastrous nature of the new politics of
"positive secularism" lead Chatterjee to the conclusion that the
theory and practice of the secular state cannot bring about what,
according to him, is really needed in India, namely, the toleration
of religious, ethnic and cultural differences.
In so denouncing secularism, Chatterjeeis in agreement with
Nandy. They share the view that the politics of interventionist
secularization is part of the same practices of the modern state
which promotes religious communalism or religious intolerance.
They, however, differ from each other in what they take to be the
desirable and feasible alternative to the standard and positive
versions of secularism. While Nandy's "antisecularistmanifesto"
of religious tolerance is couched in terms of the nonmodern,
preliberal philosophy, symbolism and theology of tolerance in
the everyday faiths of Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism and Sikhism,
Chatterjee's search is for a "political" conception of tolerance as
part of a non-Western form of modernity in India. Finding that
the liberal-democratic state can only recognize individual rights,
and not the collective rights of cultural or religious groups,
Chatterjee directs his intellectual efforts not to secularize the
state in the name of any universalist framework of reason, but to
defend minority cultural rights and to underscore "the duty of
the democratic state to ensure policies of religious toleration."
Chatterjee seems to me to be saying that for a proper
relationship between the state and the religious, ethnic and
cultural groups, we need to go beyond the "state sovereignty vs.
individual rights" discourse of liberalism. Following Foucault,
he maintains that the specifically modern form of power, which
cuts across "the liberal divide between state and civil society,"
exercises itself through forms of representation and through
technologies of governmentality, that is, the self-disciplining of
its subjects. He notes that this modern form of power is
characterized by "an immensely flexible braiding of coercion and
consent." Hence, according to him, the secularization of the state
cannot be taken as a noncoercive or power-free politics of pure
16. Ibid.,p. 1768.
I
(secular) rationality. Rather, under modernity, the religious,

cultural and ethnic communities as well as the secular state are to
be seen as institutional sites or strategic locations of the politics of
identity and difference.This being so, according to him, arguments
for a universal framework of governance based on so-called
pure secular-rational grounds (e.g., the principle of the equal
rights of all regardless of their religion or caste) are just "pious
homilies," which ignore their context of cognitive-political
struggles over issues of identity and difference. In other words,
the conflict between the claims of secular-rational universalism
and the claims for the autonomy of, and respect for, religious or
ethnic minorities is not a simple conflict between reason and
faith; it is a cognitive-political conflict over issues of identity and
difference. Hence, he calls for a conception of tolerance which
recognizes that
there will be political contexts where a group could insist on its right
not to give reasons for doing things differentlyprovided it explains
itself adequately in its own chosen forum. In other words, toleration
here would be premised on autonomyand respectfor persons,but it
would be sensitive to the varying political salience of the institutional
contexts in which reasons are debated.17
Deliberately pursuing the obverse of the implications of

Nandy's nonmodern,religiousconception of tolerance, Chatterjee
directs his search to finding "a 'political' conception of tolerance
which will set out the practical conditions I must meet in order to
demand and expect tolerance from others."18According to him,
if a religious community seeks to gain or preserve its autonomy
and respect from other groups or from the state, it must conduct
its own affairs through representative public institutions insofar
as those affairs are not confined to simple matters of innocent
beliefs or holy rituals. Those affairs or practices of any religious
group which have a regulative power over its members must rest
on the publicly secured consent of those members. "In other
words," writes Chatterjee, "even if a religious group declares
that the validity of its practices can only be discussed and judged
17. Ibid.,p. 1775 (emphasis added).

18. Ibid.,p. 1777, n34.
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
What this principle of the equal tolerance of all religions

presupposes is a nonabsoluteor relativeseparation of politics and
religion. It is a model that is clearly different from both the
theocratic or fundamentalist models of the state and the principle
of a "wall of separation" between the state and religion, which is
followed in some Western countries. Enjoined by the constitu-
tion to be equally tolerant of all religions, the Indian state is
required to steer clear off antireligiosity and communalism.
19. Ibid.,p. 1775.

20. S. Gopal, ed., JawaharlalNehru:An Anthology(Delhi: Oxford University
Press, 1980), p. 330.
ParthaChatterjeeis indeed rightin pointingout the numer-

ous operativedeparturesof the Indianstate and its governing
elitesfromthis constitutionalvision.However,the casehe makes
out-very persuasivelyindeed-for the duty of the democratic
stateto ensurepoliciesof religioustoleranceseems to me to be in
keeping with the constitutionalvision. So is the case with the
principlesof respectfor persons and of the consent of the gov-
erned,which he rightlytakesto be the basis for the tolerationof
religious differences.
Theactivityor policyof giving equaltoleranceto all religions
is not a strictlyreligiousactivityor policy.It is also not an amoral
politicalactivityin which the end is takento justifyany means
adoptedfor its realization.It is rathera moral-political activityor
policy, which is predicatedon the relativeautonomyof the politi-
cal and the religiousfromeach other.It assumesnot only that a
pluralismof religiousand/or nonreligiousbeliefsis ineradicable
under the conditionsof modernitybut also thatpoliticalinstitu-
tions and politicalpolicies can be constructedand operatedin
differentways andfor differentpurposesfrom those of religious
institutionsor religiousdoctrines.
Despiteits variantor sui generischaracter,Indiansecularism
cannotbe said to be situatedentirelyoutsidethe problematicand
thematicof the Westerndiscourseon secularism.Theproblematic
relationshipbetween religion and politics in the West had its
analogiesin Indiatoo.WhatI meanis thatdespiteimportantphilo-
sophicalor metaphysicaldifferencesbetweenthem,bothEuropean
Christianityand IndianHinduismlegitimized,in theirown ways,
analogoussystemsof socialinequalitiesduringthe premodempe-
riod. The latterwas complicitin the "socialconstruction"of the
social evils mentionedabove, namely, sati, untouchability,etc.
Hence, an ethico-politicalreformof the socio-religioussphere
was taken to be an integralpart of the Indian movement for
swarajand sarvodaya.
ThatIndiancitizenslike ShahBanodo regularlyseek secular
interventionsby the state againstinjusticesthat are sanctioned
by religious practicesunderminesthe validity of the presently
fashionablesweeping condemnationsof Indiansecularism.21 As
21. See Zakia Pathakand RajeswariSunderrajan,"Shahbano,"Signs:Journal

of Womenin Cultureand Society14 (1989).
rightly pointed out by Upendra Baxi, "we do not need to exuber-

antly enfeeble the state and law, in their meandering attainments
of 'secularism,' in order to deactivate enmity, and activate mu-
tual toleration, in civil society."22
Turning to Nandy's alternative to Nehruvian secularism, I
find it somewhat flawed. In arguing for a return from modern
Indian secularism to the religious tolerance of premodern times,
he seems to me to be underemphasizing the implications of the
fact that religious life in India before the onslaught of Western
post-Enlightenment modernity was not free from tyrannical
Brahminism and other forms of religious intolerance, on some of
which, he has indeed written insightfully. There can of course be
no denying of the historicity of the premodern forms of religious
tolerance, which, as correctly pointed out by Nandy, was prac-
ticed in exemplary manner by Asoka and Akbar. That there have
been such periods or instances of exemplary religious tolerance
in India's past is indeed a positive factoror strand in the "effective
history" of Indian society today. But that "effective history" is
constituted in a much more important way by the distinctly
modern form in which power is exercised in the society. To
simplify the matter, it can be said that modernity has trans-
formed the premodern, arbitrary way of exercising power (for
instance, by the kings) into codified, disciplined ways of life and
thought for the various sections of the society.
This Foucauldian reading of the pervasive nature of modern
power/knowledge is indeed in evidence in the writings of Nandy
and of such other critics of Indian secularism as Chatterjee and
Bilgrami.23However, the point I wish to stress is that Nandy's
espousal of some traditional forms of religious tolerance as an
alternative to the politics of the modern secular state can have
emancipatory or transformative relevance only if it is the case
that the people living under or with the modern form of power/
knowledge can simply exit from it and return to the past. Unfor-
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.
538 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS
tunately, modernity cannot be cast off so easily. It has to be

wrestled with or resisted from within by those who are hurt or
victimized by it and this has to be done through cognitive-
political resignifications and struggles.24A wholesale rejection of
modernity and a nostalgic yearning for the so-called nonpolitical
religious tolerance of the past may inhibit us from finding or
constructing emancipatory or transformative practices from
within our effective, modern history.
Nandy claims that Gandhi showed us a way of rejecting
modernity in favor of a nonmodern way of tolerant religious
living. The latter's conception of religious tolerance, we are told,
came from his antisecularism, which in its turn is said to have
come from his "unconditional rejection of modernity." This does
not seem to me to be a valid interpretation of Gandhi's approach
to religious tolerance. In his satyagrahaway of bringing about
religious tolerance, Gandhi, far from making any wholesale
rejectionof modernity, did rely on the civil libertiesand democratic
rights components of moder liberal democracy as well as on the
institutions of the moder democraticstate. This can be seen, for
instance,in his Vykomsatyagraha campaignagainstuntouchability25
anid,very poignantly, in his Calcuttasatyagrahaof 1947for bringing
about harmony between the Hindus and the Muslims.26I would
say that Gandhi undertook this Calcutta satyagraha not in
opposition to or as an escape from, but as a necessary complement
to, the then emerging modern democratic state or parliamentary
swaraj,for which he had led the nationalist movement. I would
claim, in other words, that Nehru's so-called New Delhi
24. Thatfor an emancipatorypoliticalagency we need to fashion countercodes

of criticism and resistance from out of what our "own history" offers us is
insightfully brought out by Akeel Bilgrami ("Two Concepts of Secularism," p.
1758).Similarly,Sudipta Kavirajargues that "thelogic of modernity pervades the
map of identities" in that it leaves no identity untouched. What this view implies
is that under modernity any notion of emancipatoryor transformativeagency has
necessarily to be political. See his "Crisis of the Nation-State in India," in
Contemporary Crisisof the Nation-State,ed. John Dunn (Oxford: Basil Blackwell,
1995), p. 118.
25. See Bhikhu Parekh, Colonialism,Traditionand Reform:An Analysis of
Gandhi'sPoliticalDiscourse(New Delhi: Sage, 1989).
26. See Dennis Dalton,MahatmaGandhi:Non-violent Powerin Action (New
York:Columbia University Press, 1993).
experimentin settingup moderndemocraticstatestructuresand

Gandhi'ssimultaneousCalcuttaexperimentof bringing about
religiousharmonythroughthe politicsof satyaand ahimsawere
necessarily complementary to each other. For a specific
substantiationof thisclaim,I canonlymentionthefactthatduring
Gandhi'sCalcuttafast for communalharmony(2-4 September
1947),the policemen on duty in the city undertooka one-day
sympathyfast with Gandhi.Someof them,it may be noted, had
saved Gandhi a couple of days earlierwhen he was seriously
wounded by a violent mob. Hence, if one has to speak of the
distinctivelyIndianapproachto religioustolerancein our times
one has to referto it as the Gandhi-Nehrucomplementationor
It is incorrect,
articulationof the democratic state withsatyagraha.27
I feel, to speakof Nehruviansecularismand Gandhianreligiosity
in dichotomousterms.Sucha readingdenies us the advantages
of the richer,moreenablingmoral-politicallegacywhich I feel is
of continuingrelevanceto us today.
As insightfullyacknowledgedby Nandy,Gandhimaintained
thatinterreligiousharmonycanbe securedwithoutrequiringthe
people to becomeirreligiousor antireligious.In fact, during the
1947 Calcuttasatyagraha for communalharmony,Gandhi held
regularprayermeetings which passagesfromthe texts of the
in
differentreligions were read and commentedupon in the dis-
courses which followed the prayers. In these discourses and
practical,moral-politicalexperiments,Gandhitriedto show that
all the religionshave withintheman inherentuniversalor shared
questor yearningfor an ethicsof toleration,or in otherwords,an
ethics of satya (truth)and ahimsa(nonviolence).He showed,
moreover, that such an ethics can be arrived at through the
satyagraha way of moral-politicalaction,of which an important
27. It is instructiveto comparemy idea of the Gandhi-Nehru complementarity

in the Indian approach to religious harmony with Akeel Bilgrami's preferred
notion of negotiated, substantive secularism. He contradistinguishes that notion
from the notion of the non-negotiated, Archimedean secularism, which he says
was imposed on the society by Nehru. Bilgrami however does not rule out the
likelihood that Nehruvian secularism might perhaps have been based on an
implicit or tacit negotiation among some of the religious communities. My
reading of the Gandhi-Nehru complementarity implies that some real or
genuine interreligious negotiation did take place. Cf. Bilgrami, "Two Concepts
of Secularism."
component is the democratic-political engagements with the

teachings and practices of the different religions. This democratic-
political engagement on the part of Gandhi is not given its due
importance in Nandy's recent reading of the Gandhian approach
as a preliberal, nonmodern, religious approach.2
The critics of Indian secularism seem to me to be misdescrib-
ing the Gandhian perspective either as a premodern, preliberal,
antisecular approach to religious tolerance (Nandy) or as a tradi-
tional peasant-communal moralism that has been re-done either
for subserving the bourgeois-liberalprojectof modernity in India
(Chatterjee29)or for promoting communalism among both Hin-
dus and Muslims (Bilgrami).Against these interpretations, I am
suggesting that Gandhi pioneered a way of moral-political ex-
perimentation in which the relativeautonomy(or, in other words,
the nonabsolute separation) of religion and politics from each
other is used for the reconstructionof both the religious traditions
and the modern state.30
For Gandhi, as it seems to me, the reformist intervention of
the modern democratic state in the socio-religious sphere had to
have as its complementary side some form of moral-political
intervention for transforming the modern state by integrating its
institutions and practices with the principles of satya and ahimsa.
The significance of the former part of the Gandhian approach is
missed out by the traditionalist critics of Indian secularism, while
the latter part of the Gandhian approach is misperceived by the
modernist-political redefiners of Indian secularism.
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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Indian Secularism and Its Critics: Some Reflections

Author(s): Thomas Pantham

Secularismis one of the deeply problematicissues in contempo-

A previous version of this paper was presented to the seminar on "Fifty

What then are the ethicallyor, rather,ethico-politicallyincoher-

2. For a convenient classification, see S. K. Mitra, "Desecularising the State:

achievements of the FrenchRevolution. Later,in England, George

3. See P. L. Berger,TheSocialRealityofReligion(London:Allen Lane,1973),p. 113.

pluralismof religions,an ethico-politicallyappropriatepattern

(9) No citizen can be discriminated against on grounds of

This constitutional framework is premised on the liberal-

activity which may be associated with religious practice." This

6. See Nana Deshmukh, Our SecularismNeedsRethinking(Delhi: Deendayal

The ideology of "positive secularism" is also subjected to

to legitimize themselvesas the sole arbitersamong traditionalcommu-

According to Nandy, this modern Western rational-scien-

1996,p. 608. For a criticalreview of the literatureon the ideology of Hindu

to decontaminateHinduism of its folk elements, turn it into a classical

Crucial to Nandy's analysis is a distinction he makes between

of life as was practiced, in exemplary manner, by Asoka, Akbar

10. Ibid.,p. 192.

15. Partha Chattejee, "Secularismand Toleration," Economicand Political

and to accuse the 'pseudo-secularists' of preaching tolerance for

16. Ibid.,p. 1768.

(secular) rationality. Rather, under modernity, the religious,

Deliberately pursuing the obverse of the implications of

17. Ibid.,p. 1775 (emphasis added).

What this principle of the equal tolerance of all religions

19. Ibid.,p. 1775.

ParthaChatterjeeis indeed rightin pointingout the numer-

21. See Zakia Pathakand RajeswariSunderrajan,"Shahbano,"Signs:Journal

rightly pointed out by Upendra Baxi, "we do not need to exuber-

tunately, modernity cannot be cast off so easily. It has to be

24. Thatfor an emancipatorypoliticalagency we need to fashion countercodes

experimentin settingup moderndemocraticstatestructuresand

27. It is instructiveto comparemy idea of the Gandhi-Nehru complementarity

component is the democratic-political engagements with the

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