Reimagining Indian Secularism

An original analysis of religion versus the religionization of society in India.

What is unique about Indian secularism? In this book, Rajeev Bhargava argues that secularism in India, as opposed to in the West, did not arise in a society that had already been religiously homogenised, where the need of the hour was to break the political nexus between church and state. In India, secularism does not demand that the state is against or indifferent to religion, but rather that it combat institutionalised religious domination, both between and within religions. Apathy or antipathy to religion, Bhargava points out, would foment inter-religious rivalries that intensify anti-reformist tendencies, fuelling further division.

As secularism receives daily ridicule in India, Bhargava provides an account of how this “principled distance” from religion has been a victim of misunderstandings by its proponents, abuse by its practitioners, and deliberate distortion by its opponents. Reimagining Indian Secularism offers a proposal of how we might one day be able to rehabilitate secularism.