Secularism How India Reshaped the Idea

Secularism emerged in 17th-century Europe as an essential element of what

became the modern state. The separation of church and state that it entailed

paved the way for the democratic republics we take for granted today.

Tolerance, as understood in the West, was sought to be introduced as state

policy by the British in India too. But our nationalist leaders understood their

country better than to adopt the concept without local adjustments.

Political philosopher Nalini Rajan examines the tension between religious

freedom and state intervention in India, a tension that comes with the idea

of 'principled' state intervention in matters of religion, as mandated by the

Constitution. Demands for reservations and separate electorates by minorities

in the early twentieth century had essentially ruled out absolute state neutrality

in this respect. But it is only by analysing the fascinating debates on secularism

in the Constituent Assembly (1946-49) that we see how and why the specific

provisions on minority rights-Articles 25 to 30-came to be adopted. These

provisions implicitly envisioned a key role for the judiciary. A full section of

this book is thus devoted to understanding the role that the courts have played

in establishing, and just as importantly, defining Indian secularism-through

such judgements as in the Shirur Mutt case of 1954, the Durgah Committee case of

1961, the Satsangi case of 1966, the Stanislaus case of 1977, the Shah Bano case

of 1985, the so-called 'Hindutva' cases of 1996, the Vaishno Devi case of 1997,

and the Puttaswamy case of 2017.

This exhaustive monograph should be read by all those interested in

understanding how a distinctive secularism shaped modern India, and how the

latter shaped our secularism.