Index

Cover page…………………………………………………… 1

Certificate……………………………………………………. 2

Acknowledgement……………………………………….. 3

Abstract……………………………………………………….. 5

Introduction…………………………………………………. 5-6

Literature Reviews………………………………………. 7-8

 Literature review 1 6-7
 Literature review 2 7
 Literature review 3 8

My Opinions Regarding Secularism………….. 9

Conclusion…………………………………….. 10
Bibliography…………………………………… 11

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 Abstract

This research project, in general looks at secularism and in particular focuses on the issue of secularism in a
highly diverse country like India. In 1976, the 42nd amendment in the constitution of India asserted India to be
secular nation. However it is difficult to straightway apply the concept of secularity to a highly diverse nation
like India and take into account numerous aspects of religious tolerance into consideration. In many cases,
secularism especially political secularism is still lacking in India because of which at some point it is felt that
India may constitutionally be a secular nation but socially it still needs to be one. This is the reason why India is
said to be following pseudo-secularism especially when it comes to political secularism.Minorityappeasement is
the best explanation to what secularism in India has been reduced to. This is now posing a great threat to
India.minority appeasement is basically when those demands of the minorities are accepted by politicians
which are inconsistent with the policies of Democratic Secularism and National Integration, and are intended
just to become famous and secure votes from the minorities.

Introduction

I am still confused, when it comes to my religion. I know the statement seems to be quite funny! It is just that I
know that I am a Hindu by religion but the irony is that I am confused, I do not understand why am I a Hindu by
religion? And with every upcoming day my confusion increases even more. Yes I was born as a Hindu in India.
I was sent to a Christian missionary school or I would rather prefer saying a secular school with Hindu
principle, some teachers belonging to Muslim background and my batch mates were of course a depiction of
mini India in itself. When it comes to festivals, I was and I am equally enthusiastic about each festive season.
We always have a grand poojan (worship ceremony) of goddess Lakshmi every Diwali, I always used to find a
surprise gift under pillow and the some gifts in the socks I hung during Christmas and yes, how can I forget the
eidi(gift on occasion of eid) that the parents of my friend, who was a Muslim use to give me every year on the
occasion of Eid. Reading or being taught the preaching or the values instilled in Bhagwat Geeta, Kuran or Bible
has never put my religion as Hindu on stake because I as a true human being is supposed to be a secular
individual who has an open and equal acceptance for all the religions.

This is exactly what my definition of secularism is. Every individual has a separate set of religious believes,
faith and a complete independence to follow them. Here is exactly where secularism comes into picture. The
very meaning of this word lies within separating the religious believes with the policies of a state i.e. both
should not have an effecton each other. The laws, policies or the decisions of public authorities should be
designed with a laymen’s general perspective of religion. Also it is the responsibility on part of all the
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individuals to make sure their religious believes or rituals are in no way hindering or violating the general
policies of the state and not creating any kind of nuisance in the society.

Literature Reviews

Literature review 1

Mr. Karan Singh,a Congress Rajya Sabha MPin 2015 in his article “A Suitable Secularism It needs to be
reinterpreted for a new time” discusses the weak ideological stand of India on secularism. He has foundthree
main reasons for this. First, he says is that the concept of secularism is originally from Europe with its basis
lying on the separation of state and church. However, India being a religiously diverse country, this concept is
not much applicable here. Instead “sarva dharma sambhava (respect for all religions)” seems to be formulated
more meaningfully.

Second reason he identifies is the wrong belief or the myth that practice of a religion is purely a personal affair
and not a subject of concern for the state. This can be true only when the practice is restricted till the individual
prayer or practicing inner self or spiritually. But practically following any religion definitely has a collective
effect on the society. For instance, it is the responsibility of the state to make numerous arrangements for the
people flocking for religious trips at faraway places like going to the most awaited Kumbh mela. Also, the
relationship between state and religion cannot be denied when it comes to various serious law and order
problems due to the conflicts arising between different religions.

Third reason according to Mr. Singh is the society’s assumption, which is completely disproved, that with the
increase in the level of education and living standards, people start having less faith in the word ‘religion’ they
start becoming more liberated of these narrow things. The reality is that with the growing affluence, religion
factor also gears up.

However, I do not find this third reason very apt because it is generally seen that with higher education levels,
people start becoming more open minded and start breaking these narrow boundaries of religion, race, gender
etc.

He finds a need to move to a completely new, rather accurate concept of secularism which is more in anIndian
context. It surely does not mean being an anti-religious person or state denying any particular religion. It is
actually applicable with no importance to any one religion in a state and giving people full liberation to follow

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their religion unless they are not conflicting with each other or the state authority and no funds meant for the
society are utilized specifically for a state’s purpose.

The problem can be solved not by making people denying their own religion but by making them understand the
importance of having the same emotional connect with all the religions that they have for their own.

Mr, Singh has very well defined the meaning of secularism as “What is needed is a deeper understanding of the
importance of religion in the life of our people, and a new and dynamic interpretation of secularism.” He
explains that the growth and development of nation is not merely dependent on the government policies. The
growth will never be able to take place at its full potential if its central concepts which are imbibed in its
religious and cultural values become fossilized and it does not possess the art of creative reinterpretation of its
philosophical roots i.e. basically the secret of Indian civilization which is still surviving despite of two centuries
of colonization, massive incursions.

Literature review 2

“Is India a secular nation?” is thetitle given to this articleby Mr. Madhav Godbole due to the very fact that he
did not want to restrict secularism to the boundaries of a state but to a more important subject of a secular
nation. He strongly favors the working of secularism as the root of sustaining India as a multicultural,
multilingual, multiracial, multi-religious society. It is very difficult to sustain peace in our society even if one-
fourth of its population is neglected, the resulting conflicts can be seen in our day to day life.Mr.Godbole has
further tried to focus on the relationship between ‘secularism’ and ‘minority’. The concept of secularism is very
much based on giving equal recognition and protection to minorities. He emphasizes on having a commission
being appointed to take care of the strict adherence of the constitutional secularism. Also, it has to be made sure
that there is a clear demarcation between religion and politics. Every nation in the world has its own definition
for secularism based on their cultures and historical backgrounds. But the continuation of political parties
misusing the concept of secularism will continueto flourish until we do not stop dividing our society based on
caste, religion, region, and race.

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Literature review-3

The article “Why India Is Not A Secular State” written by Mr. Omar Khalidi and published by the magazine
‘outlook the fully loaded magazine’ is focused on India being a country that is quite biased towards its majority
community i.e. the Hindu community. Mr. Khalidi describes the following five reasons for the Indian state
being a defender of dharma-

1. Constitutional discrimination- the writer finds the Indian constitution more in favor of Hindus for
instance, when it comes to Hindu marriage act of 1955 or Article 25 (2) which states "social welfare and
reform and throwing open of Hindu religious institutions of public character to all classes and sections of
Hindus." He argues that there are no such provisions for Buddhist, Jain, or Sikh in our constitution. Is it
just because there number is not as large as that of Hindus.
2. Legislative discrimination- even after constitution’s Article 25 (1), granting the freedom of religion,
there are still 7 state legislatures including Arunachal, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Himachal, Orissa,
Rajasthan and Tripura which have passed laws that strictly restricts the conversion from Hinduism to
other religions while conversion to Hinduism us permitted.
3. Employment discrimination- according to Article 16 (2) discrimination in public employment on the
grounds of an individual’s religion is prohibited. Mr. Khalidi in this article has provided us with various
instances to prove his stance. One such example he provides is that after obtaining any job or admission
in some institution if a SC changes religion, then would forfeiture job or withdraws from the institution
but nothing of this sort will take place if the religion is being switched to Hinduism. Discrimination in
Army has also offended many non- Hindu religions.After 1947, Hindu army in Kashmir was taken up in
the national army; whereas Muslim army of Hyderabad was separated, which left nearly 20,000 army
people jobless. Many such instances in past have been demonstrated that depict Hindu army people
being majorly favored.
4. Cultural Discrimination- it is evident from many cases that Indian culture is equated to Hindu
culture. The banning of cow slaughter is one such case which deprived numerous butchers their only
source of earning and many poor people’s their inexpensive source of protein nourishment. It is just
because cow is considered to be a sacred animal according to Hindu religion but no so by other
communities like the Dalit, Muslims or Christians.
5. Religious Programmes- he gives certain instances wherein certain Hindu religious programmes are
sponsored or supported by the government.

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 My Opinions Regarding Secularism

Religion is something that is very personal choice of any individual. We are not practically but emotionally
attached to our religious belief system and strongly desire to follow it and execute its practices without any
external interference. But the debate arises due to the reality that no matter how much subjective this issue may
be but it has to be understood that certain acts or omission of acts do exist under every religion which when
followed, eventually does have an impact on our society. Therefore, here arises the dilemma of whether it is
possible to have a completely secular nation, where there is a complete harmony among various religions. This
question is particular to a country like India due to its prevalent high religious diversity. Among the many
factors that hinder the growth of our country, secularism is also one such directly or indirectly contributing
factor. For the Peaceful and harmonized sustenance of this country and to maintain it as a multicultural,
multilingual, multiracial, multi-religious society, secularism works as a root. It is very difficult to sustain peace
in our society even if one-fourth of its population is neglected. Also, this is one of the reasons of choosing
‘secularism’ as a topic for this research work. However, at some point I do feel it quite difficult for India to
emerge as a pure secular nation because it is extremely difficult to convince such a large population from
diverse religion, varied belief systems to behave in a particular manner or follow a set pattern of behavior.
Conflicts are bound to take place and no wonder our politicians, if not completely, but partially are working to
resolve this issue. This is the reason why I do not completely agree with Mr. Omar Khalidi in his article “Why
India Is Not A Secular State” (literature review 3). It seems as if his article rather than dealing with problems
India is facing to adopt pure secularism is dealing more with the views of an anti-Hindu. I found quite many
factual and conceptual errors and lack of understanding in some of his statements. For instance in his example
of army, he has not considered the code used in the working of army on which there distribution of work is
based. However, I am not going completely against his article as he has supported his claims using real cases
but it would not be wrong to say that due to certain loopholes in our system we cannot straightway declare a
nation to be anti-secular.

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 Conclusion

After reading several cases, facts, articles, journals and completing this research work, I am quite convinced that
India may constitutionally be a secular nation but socially it still needs to be one, for instance, the politics in
India especially when it comes to voting issues often involve politicians influencing people by highlighting the
religions.Also, somewhere during the research work I was able to relate Plato’s philosophy to the concept of
secularism. Plato believed in the ideational existence instead of the physical existence, which according to him
is always in a constant state of flux whereas the realm of pure ideas is unchanging. Therefore, in accordance
with his philosophy, people should understand the idea behind the existence of mankind instead of dividing
themselves into various religions because the religious faiths and believes can be unstable or changing with time
but the basic idea or pure reason behind the existence of humanity would always remain unchanging.

However, our hope of achieving the best scenario when it comes to secularism will always be their but to
achieve this goal our nation needs to focus on the education system which could inculcate a more liberated and
open thought process in our young minds, NGOs working towards this can be a great support for achieving the
state of pure secularism for our nation. Further, religion-phobia has to be overcome from our education system,
because in present the worst of both worlds is being served. A positive attitude of presenting students our rich,
multi-religious heritage should be adopted instead of leaving religious education completely to those who are
occasionally equipped to take up the task and mostly display conservative approach and interpretations of the
living truth that depict religious traditions. The irony is that even after India being the richest zone to study
multi religion, there are more foreign scholars than the Indian ones who have explored the vast treasure of
sociology and worldly wisdom, philosophy and mythology in the last for decades.

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 Bibliography
1. Why Is India Not A Secular State. (2009). Outlook.

2. A Suitable Secularism. (n.d.). Retrieved September 28, 2

3. 016, from indianexpress: http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/a-suitable-secularism/

4. Godbole, M. (2016). Is India a Secular nation? Indian Express.

5. Is India A Secular Country- sample group discussion topic. (n.d.). Retrieved October 2, 2016, from
PrepNut: http://www.prepnut.com/prepare/read/166/Is-India-a-secular-country---Sample-Group-
Discussion-Topic/

6. Is India A Secular Nation. (n.d.). Retrieved September 28, 2016, from Economic and Political Weekly:
http://www.epw.in/journal/2016/15/web-exclusives/india-secular-nation.html

7. Singh, K. (2015). A Suitable Secularism. Indian Express.