Abstract
There is a widely held view that the rise of the Hindu right, particularly the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), challenged the Nehruvian consensus on political secularism with its emphasis on democracy, religious neutrality (or equal standing for all citizens, regardless of religion), and social justice. Even though the BJP may not demand a role for religious institutions or state support for religious rituals, its political vision and practices are the antithesis of secularism. It not only challenges the secular basis of the state but also seeks a communal reconstruction of national identity. It regards secularism as basically a code for anti-Hindu politics and derides the principle of minority rights, a key feature of Indian secularism, as an unwarranted privilege.1 Much of what has been termed the “secularism debates” revolves around the conceptual and normative structure of secularism, which from viewpoints such as the BJP’s and communitarian scholars, is deeply flawed.2 Very few scholars have looked at the political practices of major political parties and how they impact secularism.
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Notes
See, for instance, Gyan Prakash, “Secular Nationalism, Hindutva and the Minority,” in The Crisis of Secularism in India, ed. Anuradha Digwaney Needham and Rajeswari Sunder Rajan (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2007), 177–188.
Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, “Women between Community and State: Some Implications of the Uniform Civil Code Debates in India,” Social Text 18, no. 4 (Winter 2000): 55–82.
Rajeev Bhargava, “Liberal, Secular Democracy and Explanations of Hindu Nationalism,” Commonwealth and Comparative Politics 40, no. 3 (2002): 92.
Mani Shankar Aiyar, “Can the Congress Find a Future,” Seminar 526 (June 2003): 14–22.
Francine Frankel, India’s Political Economy, The Gradual Revolution, 1947–2004, 2nd ed. (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005), 664–665.
Sumit Ganguly, “The Crisis of Indian Secularism,” Journal of Democracy 14, no. 4 (2003): 11–25.
Rajeev Dhavan, Harassing Husain: Uses and Abuses of the Law of Hate Speech (Delhi: Sahmat, 2007).
Mani Shankar Aiyar, Confessions of a Secular Fundamentalist (Delhi: Penguin, 2006).
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© 2010 Linell E. Cady and Elizabeth Shakman Hurd
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Hasan, Z. (2010). Not Quite Secular Political Practice. In: Cady, L.E., Hurd, E.S. (eds) Comparative Secularisms in a Global Age. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230106703_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230106703_12
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