The Crisis of Secularism in India

by Needham, Anuradha Dingwaney; Sunder Rajan, Rajeswari

• ISBN13: 9780822338468
• ISBN10: 0822338467
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-03-30
• Publisher: Duke Univ Pr

Summary

While secularism has been integral to India's democracy for more than fifty years, its uses and limits are now being debated anew. Signs of a crisis in the relations between state, society, and religion include the violence directed against Muslims in Gujarat in 2002 and the precarious situation of India's minority religious groups more broadly; the existence of personal laws that vary by religious community; the affiliation of political parties with fundamentalist religious organizations; and the rallying of a significant proportion of the diasporic Hindu community behind a resurgent nationalist Hinduism. There is a broad consensus that a crisis of secularism exists, but whether the state can resolve conflicts and ease tensions or whether it is itself part of the problem is a matter of vigorous political and intellectual debate. In this timely, nuanced collection, twenty leading Indian cultural theorists assess the contradictory ideals, policies, and practices of secularism in India.Scholars of history, anthropology, religion, politics, law, philosophy, and media studies take on a broad range of concerns. Some consider the history of secularism in India; others explore theoretical issues such as the relationship between secularism and democracy or the shortcomings of the categories "majority" and "minority." Contributors examine how the debates about secularism play out in schools, the media, and the popular cinema. And they address two of the most politically charged sites of crisis: personal law and the right to practice and encourage religious conversion. Together the essays inject insightful analysis into the fraught controversy about the shortcomings and uncertain future of secularism.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. vii
Acknowledgments	p. xi
Introduction	p. 1
Secularism's Historical Background
Reflections on the Category of Secularism in India: Gandhi, Ambedkar, and the Ethics of Communal Representation, c. 1931	p. 45
A View from the South: Ramasami's Public Critique of Religion	p. 66
Nehru's Faith	p. 89
Secularism and Democracy
Closing the Debate on Secularism: A Personal Statement	p. 107
Living with Secularism	p. 118
The Contradictions of Secularism	p. 141
The Secular State and the Limits of Dialogue	p. 157
Secular Nationalism, Hindutva, and the Minority	p. 177
Sites of Secularism: Education, Media, and Cinema
Secularism, History, and Contemporary Politics in India	p. 191
The Gujarat Experiment and Hindu National Realism: Lessons for Secularism	p. 208
Secularism and Popular Indian Cinema	p. 225
Neither State nor Faith: The Transcendental Significance of the Cinema	p. 239
Secularism and Personal Law
Siting Secularism in the Uniform Civil Code: A "Riddle Wrapped Inside an Enigma"?	p. 267
The Supreme Court, the Media, and the Uniform Civil Code Debate in India	p. 294
Secularism and the Very Concept of Law	p. 316
Conversion
Literacy and Conversion in the Discourse of Hindu Nationalism	p. 333
Christian Conversions, Hindutva, and Secularism	p. 356
Chronology of the Career of Secularism in India	p. 369
Works Cited	p. 373
Contributors	p. 397
Index	p. 401
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