Session 9: Religion, identity and ‘communal’ politics

 9. Religion, identity and ‘communal’ politics                                                      

Sudipta Kaviraj, Languages of secularity. Economic and Political Weekly, 48(50): 93-102, 2013.

Peter van der Veer, Religion in south Asia. Annual Review of Anthropology, 31: 173-187, 2001.

Surya P. Upadhya and Rowena Robinson, Revisiting communalism and fundamentalism in India. Economic and Political Weekly, 47(36): 35-57, 2012.

Harbans Mukhia, That fateful day. Economic and Political Weekly, 52(48): 25-28, 2017.

Talal Asad, Thinking about tradition, religion and politics in Egypt today. Critical Inquiry, 42: 166-214, 2015.

Additional reading:

Talal Asad, Formations of the secular: Christianity, Islam, modernity (Cultural Memory in the Present). Stanford University Press, 2003.

Rupa Viswanath, The pariah problem: Caste, religion, and the social in modern India. Columbia University Press, 2014.

Veena Das (ed), Mirrors of Violence: Communities, riots and survivors in South Asia. Delhi: OUP, 1994.

Roma Chatterji and Deepak Mehta. Living with violence: An anthropology of events and everyday life. Routledge India, 2007.

Gyan Pandey, Remembering partition; violence, nationalism and history in India. Cambridge UP, 2004.

Shubh Mathur, Everyday life of Hindu nationalism: An ethnography. Three Essays Collective, 2008.

(post by Krupa and Surya)

Mukhia, 2017:

Mukhia, a medieval historian writes this opinion piece on the occasion of the 25^th anniversary of the Babri Masjid demolition. He opens his piece by noting that the demolition did not yield any immediate political dividend to the BJP – it took them 6 years to come to power at the centre.

Second that it is during the medieval period that two ‘rival notions of God’ came face to face. However throughout this period there is no record of communal violence at all. Mukhia suggests this is likely due to the prevalence of the bhakti movement during this time and its philosophy, which straddles both (Islamic) monotheism and (Hindu) polytheism.

With regard to the Babri Masjid site being a disputed one, Mukhia reiterates that there is no recorded evidence (medieval period records) of there ever having been a temple at the site. He suggests the answer to the site being noted as a temple may actually lie in a study of tradition and its links to popular culture. For example, the first record of the site possibly being a temple is from the 19C and he considers this is likely a reflection of the “prevailing mood at that time”. And over the years this ‘hint of a temple at the site’ concretised resulting in demolition. He suggests there is more to the incident than just demolition. Rather it is part of a well thought out plan by Hindu fundamentalists to reshape the nation’s identity and heritage from pluralistic to Hindu.

Upadhyay and Robinson, 2012:

This is a review article on literature related to communalism since post-independence India. However it also reviews colonial and precolonial period literature. The authors note that broadly communalism is to be seen as a secular rather than religious phenomenon, one that is rooted in power relations between “communities”. With regard to literature the authors first note that there is vagueness over the phenomenon of communalism and its association with “community” due to arbitrary definitions and explanations. Second that most writings on communalism are not on communalism per se rather on Hindu and Muslim communalism and Hindu fundamentalism. Third, features of ‘religious’ communalism i.e. ‘presumed homogeneous community identity and consciousness’ can be seen in sects, castes, regional and linguistic “communities” too but they are typically not defined as communalism. Fourth, communalism is not a peculiarly north Indian urban phenomenon.

Community and communalism:

The association between both is typically seen as a given. However it fails to take into account the narrowing of the definition of community when applied along with communalism – the latter is usually seen through the lens of religion alone. Scholars remain divided over whether the term communalism ought to be applied across other categories of communities too. Further, in India the core of literature on communalism is essentially focused on the Hindu-Muslim relationship.  Here it is worth noting that building on Varshney they suggest “ethnic” might be a better fit than “community” to describe such a narrow understanding of the relationship between communalism and communities. Further building on Varshney’s work the authors consider that communalism has generally been explained from four theoretical perspectives – essentialism, instrumentalism, constructivism and institutionalism.

·         Essentialism focuses on “primordial conflicts” (between Hindus and Muslims) and so it only highlights animosities while drawing a picture of both sides as unchanging monoliths.  

·         Constructivism focuses on colonial policies that resulted in the development of “community consciousness” and hard identities.

·         Institutionalists consider communalism an outcome of economic and political institutions both that resulted in slow economic growth, and scarcity of resources – leading to competition to access these scarce resources and economic opportunities.

·         Instrumentalists consider communalism a consequence of the vested interests of political leaders, elites and the middle class.

The authors seem to suggest communalism lies somewhere across all four and question how religious communalism operates differently from clashes over other social aspirations (regionalism, lingualism, casteism). They consider that there is almost no work that touches on this angle.

Chronology:

The authors then trace the history of the concept since precolonial times. Literature suggests that in precolonial periods religious identities were more localised and identities or ‘a sense of difference from the “other”’ was understood more along territorial, sectarian, ethnic and cultic lines. Conflicts, when they occurred, were typically over resources – land or political authority. Although they might be disguised as communal conflicts. On the other hand certain scholars have argued that communal conflicts in precolonial periods had a lot in common with those in the colonial period – and hence the colonial period did not really mark the start of a new kind of conflict. The authors suggest that rather than argue about the presence or absence of such conflict in precolonial India, it would be more fruitful to look at how the colonial period made it possible for certain localised conflicts to spread to other social sites and how ‘new areas of contestation emerged’.

The authors then examine how during the colonial period certain economic and political contestations emerged around Hindu-Muslim and resulted in the fusing of discrete localised issues under one homogenous category of communalism. Scholars attribute this to the British policy of repressing Muslims whom they saw as a threat to their political power. This resulted in the rise of a new educated middle class – mainly upper caste Hindu elite. And then once the Indian National Congress began to be seen as a potential threat the British commenced a policy of appeasing Muslims. For example, through separate electorates. However the authors note that though British policies divided communities they were also internally divided which needs to be acknowledged.

They note that ‘modernising religious reform movements’ of the colonial period like the Arya Samaj, Wahabi, Ahmadiya, also had a role in making religion susceptible to communalism. Nor were the princely states (Hyderabad, Kashmir, Travancore) immune to communal strife though they were of lesser intensity. This is because though most of these disturbances could be attributed to ‘foreign hands’ the states were internally susceptible to such disturbances.

Unresolved communal tensions during Independence emerged as full scale riots in the 19060s and 1970s, typically over small issues (for e.g. supposed eve-teasing, bursting crackers in front of a mosque) – making it clear that any social issue could be communalised.

In the 1980s strong Muslim leaders emerged (Syed Shahabuddin, Salman Khurshid) and their ‘aggressive manner’ made the average Hindu hostile to the whole community. They note the rise of the Sangh Parivar during this period as marking a shift in communal ideology. This is because their brand of Hinduism found acceptance not just in the political but also in the social realm. Literature notes that the development of minority consciousness (for e.g. SIMI) goes hand in hand with alienation of minorities from contemporary Indian political system and judiciary.

Considering the rise of communal consciousness, literature notes that typically elites are the source of such consciousness while the actual violence undertaken in its name is committed by other groups. However such a view was shaken by the 2002 riots in Gujarat when the middle class also participated in the violence and looting. Literature notes that middle-class Hindus see themselves as ‘victims’ of a State policy of appeasement. And this feeling is aggravated by heightened competition between groups due to slow economic growth, unemployment and scarce opportunities.

Nationalism, Communalism, Secularism:

The authors then review the terms secularism, nationalism and communalism. They again acknowledge that a lot of the debates around these concepts arose out colonial policies. However they reiterate the worth of looking at community formations in precolonial periods and their evolution in post-colonial independent India.

Three versions of nationalism and secularism arose in pre-independent India – secular statehood as visualised by Indian National Congress, Hindu Rashtra as visualised by Hindu Mahasabha and the idea of Pakistan as promoted by the Muslim League. Some scholars argue that these three strands were a result of the desire to be free of colonial rule. Others note that the development of Hindu nationalism as an ideology ought to be looked at independent of Hindu communalism.

Regarding secularism scholars have noted four strands to it – classical (looks at secularism in terms of modernity (Nehruvian)), soft Hindu, hard Hindu and the fourth which attempts to move beyond the opposition of secularism and religion – that straddle the line from practice to philosophy of secularism. Considering the latter some scholars question if secularism is even possible in India, given the attachment to religious identity and public displays of such attachments. Further, that it is difficult to differentiate between communalism, fundamentalism and nationalism – ‘the only difference maybe in intensity or degree’.

The authors then move onto to review associated concepts like ‘communal consciousness’, role of media, women, cultural politics and appropriation of local heroes. They do this in order to review the outcome of communalism across diverse categories.

With regard to the rise of ‘communal consciousness they first define it as rejecting links with other communities. While literature notes some synthesis till 18C by 19C communal ideologies began to rise, partly due to the census and population enumeration. They agree with scholars that census also played a role in stereotyping community identities. Then they move onto stereotyping of women and observe that in nationalist literature, the nation is imagined as ‘Hindu’ female protected by the ‘Hindu’ male. This leads them to question the insertion of women in the Hindu right’s project of cultural nationalism.

Building on literature the authors question the lax role of the State during communal riots (pre and post-independence) and also the role of print and electronic media in instigating communal violence and the limited role played by civil societies in controlling communalism. In fact they question Varshney’s faith in the civil societies as they feel it prevents him from looking at communal phenomena in India. They agree with Brass that an Institutionalised Rioting System (IRS) has been created since Independence.

Regarding Hindutva cultural politics they agree that over the last few decades it has transformed into fundamentalism. They note that the 1980s was a ‘critical period’ that effected this transformation through certain incidents. These include, communal violence in North Indian towns, Mandal Commission recommendations, Indira Gandhi assassination, Ram Janmabhoomi campaign. They also attribute some encouragement to Hindutva ideology through the television serial Ramayana. With the opening up of the economy, access to technology helped further the Hindutva cause (through audio cassettes, national television and later independent satellite TV channels). Consequently they notice the spread of communal movements beyond Hindu-Muslim – it has now affected tribals and increasingly Christians as well. Women are also taking a more active role in spreading Hindutva ideology. The authors then note that there is also a history of appropriating local Dalit heroes by Hindu communal forces but this is not a new phenomenon – it has also recorded in colonial times.

In conclusion they mark broad trends in writings on religion, communalism and fundamentalism. Early decades of Independence has taken a more instrumental or essentialist view. 1980s onwards with the rise of Hindu fundamentalism literature noted the planned and organised nature of violence against Muslims. After the 2002 Gujarat riots literature started questioning the role of the State, politics of the Hindu right and use of Gujarat as an “experiment” in the making of a Hindu Rashtra. More dangerous for them than the role of the State in not checking Hindu fundamentalism is the unquestioned circulation of Hinduised values and culture at the grass roots level.

THINKING ABOUT TRADITION, RELIGION AND POLITICS IN EGYPT TODAY – Talal Asad

The events that unfolded in Egypt before the military coup in 2013, revolved around an Islamic Awakening that was fronted by the Muslim Brotherhood. The movement's insistence on ritualistic observance and blind obedience to authority, as well as the prioritising of the sharia as constituting the foundations of their envisioned state were considered by critics to be threats to the autonomous modern self. This interpretation had to do with the radical secularist understanding of religion as belonging to the past and its contemporary presence being confined to the private lives of individuals. These views, according to Asad, is rooted in understandings that emerged in the period of early European modernity which claimed an inverse relationship between freedom and authority, and the understanding of the individual as subservient to larger social conventions.

Such assumptions about tradition as anti-modern have faced criticism from the likes of Adam Seligman who states that tradition bridges the gap between rigid adherence to actual feelings and its management through certain conventional formalities which makes action possible and acceptable. Tradition also plays a crucial role in modern jurisprudence by establishing the concept of precedence; and in liberal democratic systems as the foundation on which future politics are expected to be conducted. Tradition in the form of material remnants of the past such as objects, texts, buildings etc. are also the base on which the reconstruction of veridical historical narratives are created. However, the unquestioned authority that religious tradition is understood to command, according to critics of tradition, goes against its inclusion in politics, since the ethos of modern democracies is based on deliberation.

However, arguments against such understandings of religion as a coercive and all-encompassing authority is refuted by interpretations which state that the authority of the same was not based on coercion or passive acceptance by the subject, but was based on voluntary submission to the tradition. Such an understanding also encompassed opposition to false claims of authority, which was derived out of interactions with pre-modern Christian traditions.

The growth of a commercial society opens up the possibilities of self-invention, justified on the right of the sovereign self. This disregards the influence of the market on individual behaviour, and the modern commercial society's ordering of individuals into consumers and investors, and the market is viewed as a means for fulfilling their desires. Thereby, ignoring the possibility that coercion can also be internal, and that internal compulsions are as effective a controlling mechanism as external and apparent control. The modern secularist criticisms of religion are based on such understandings of the past as the only source of blind obedience and ignore its potential as a means through which self-conscious acts are turned unself-conscious, in that they do not suppress desires and therefore also signifies freedom of choice. Tradition, according to Asad, needs to be viewed not as a framework of control, but a broad template of understanding and acting in the world. Like language, devotion to tradition required not only repetition but also an inherent flexibility to be able to adapt to changing circumstances. Through continued usage, the element of submission to this framework of understanding disappears, as it takes root in subconscious memory.

The language in which the idea of faith has been framed has been in line with legalistic understandings of obligatory and forbidden actions. These understandings articulate a whole range of actions belonging to the observance of tradition, but have been reduced to an understanding based on forbidding what is wrong. Thereby establishing an understanding of tradition as being founded on certain presupposition of what 'right action/thought' is. However, the formation of right and wrong is much more complex than each being defined by counterpoised understanding of the other. Such understandings, according to Asad, are contingent on the particularities of the space, time, and situation in which it is being understood.

Hannah Arendt conceptualised tradition in European history, as being tied to authority and religion, and in a way this stands true even for the Middle East because of its Greco-Roman inter-linkages and European influences in the post-Enlightenment period. Arendt argues that the rise of modern science substantially destabilised the authority of religion, and subsequently transformed the idea and practice of tradition as well. As a result, these critiques of tradition led to reconceptualisation of ideas of power in Roman political tradition which were based on the dual notions of foundation and a religion that defined their political identity. This marked a division in the understanding of power and authority, mirrored by a similar division in its exercise by different, separate institutional entities - that is, the Church and the State. This division was similarly reflected in medieval Muslim governance between the collective authority of the ulama and the individual amir. With time, the linkages between the religious and temporal as wielders of authority and power respectively were eroded, and as a result religious authority was separated from political authority, thereby secularising the same. This separation of the two has been followed by an augmentation of the state's foundation and its exercise of violence, as opposed to religious tradition, as reflected in the American and French revolutions, which replaced the latter as the new legitimate order for the future. Thereby, leading to a fusing of power and authority in the state alone, essentially removing any measures of checks and balances and introducing a new tradition of the state, rooted in modernity, the repetition of which creates an enduring aspiration for its continuation.

The 2011 Egyptian uprising was based on a negation of the state's usage of violence as a basis for loyalty, and in instituting a new tradition that was to be based on justice, progress and transparency. However, according to Asad did not achieve fruition, primarily because of Egypt never embodied a singular purpose and foundation, due to its inner fragmentation of interests amongst the military, the government, the bourgeois and the protesters, leading to the formation of multiple irreconcilable interests. However, mass protests could be considered to be the true representation of the people's will as espoused by the Schmittian conception of legitimacy which understood legitimate rule in terms of the right to resist the political authority of the state. In that, it presupposes that agitation against authority is an effort to re-establish commonly held views regarding a single, normative order that informs political and legal reasoning, which predates its formal codification in modern state institutions and the constitution. In the case of Egypt, and other modern states where power and authority remain concentrated in the hands of the state, popular movements for change are viewed as threats to their legitimacy, and are stifled through their monopolised usage of power.

In this context, there arises a distinction between the deliberate violence of the secular and Islamist factions, where the former is viewed as necessary for historical progress and the latter as reactionary and guilty of obscuring Egypt's true secular character. These interpretations were commonly held by secularists in Egyptian society, who constituted a small group of middle and upper class elites, and their hostility towards them was ideological. In contrast to this, the state viewed political Islam as represented by the Muslim Brotherhood as a serious political challenge because of their popular following and vast networks of organisation, which straddled vast sections of the Egyptian population. The inherent irreconcilability of these factions prevented them from coming together as a united front against the state as part of a larger attempt to establish and consolidate democracy.

The Muslim Brotherhood and Morsi were viewed as a threat and not as a potential ally against the state, because of the centrality to their religious identity that was accorded to them by their secular rivals. However the motivations for denouncing the Brotherhood were not always hinged on the matters of religious identity, and included lower-class deference towards the elite who swarmed the ranks of the group. However, these motivations were informed by ideas and views which were based on a division of politicised religion and personal beliefs as the only motives, which overshadowed more complex attitudes and opinions which underscored the fluidity of choices. These interpretations also disregard the fact that democracy should ideally be viewed as a continuous process, rather than an end in itself, and undergoes several reiterations in order to maintain its representativeness, thereby negating the merits of a different system, that the Brotherhood represented.

The ordering of these segregations, that of secular and Islamist, were founded on understandings based on exclusive political and philosophical categories that had been used exclusively within the said categories. Exchanges across traditions were marked by mutual distrust and hostility and therefore lacked any scope for a viable synthesis. As a consequence, the vision of an ideal end-state was based on ideas that were considered to be rational and decisive, as opposed to notions associated with religion such as affective, violent and inconclusive. This justifies the importance that was accorded to the consolidation of liberal conceptualisations of democracy and its associated values and the free market system. These associated values of conclusiveness and calculability were misconstrued in their representation as ideal philosophical groundings for a modern nation state. Thereby, this completely disregarded the necessity of inconclusiveness and states of flux in politics as markers of a healthy, functioning democratic system.

This unquestioned ascription to certain principles as ideal therefore disregards the interdependence that exists between different discursive traditions. Growing consumerism and the incursions of the market into everyday life have resulted in the devaluation of continuity with the past and all its associated linkages, faith being one. These are usually viewed as impediments to the realization of the unhindered self through opposition to embodied traditions and external constraints. Therefore, this made hostility towards religion a part of being modern. However, such a perspective completely disregards the all-pervasive nature of the market and its own set of constraining factors which have come to define the metrics of what can be considered a good life in a modern context.

The criticisms regarding an Islamist state focused more on the religious prefix than it did on the nature of modern governance itself, which has come to define the conditions for a modern reality. The projected irreconcilability between what are considered distinct pre-modern and modern constructs are based on problematic assumptions regarding the rational, conclusive and ethical conceptualization of the latter. In reality, the modern state is marked by inconsistencies in its everyday functioning, founded on the performance of certain exclusionary and violent practices either against its own people or those belonging to other states, as a way of maintaining its primacy. Asad concludes by stressing on the possibility of the exercise of these same rights and duties without its regulation by an overarching authority. The presence of multiple non-hierarchical domains of normativity would fundamentally change politics by opening it up to different overlapping interests, all oriented towards maintaining this plurality. In such an ordering of reality, the past would continue to be a necessary aspect for a coherent life. This has to be followed by a change in perspective regarding what tradition embodies, and to view it not as an impediment to the realisation of contemporary ideals and goals but as a code of observance that checks the excesses of the coercive forces of the sovereign state and the free market.

The project of Orientalism was based on asserting the differences in experience between the East and the West, and destabilizing hierarchical orderings of experiences and knowledge emanating from these fundamentally different systems. Religion constituted one plane of differentiation between the religious East and the secular West. According to the author, the orientalist privileging of religion is not predicated on a resigned acknowledgement of the importance religious institutions in the colonies, but on modern understandings of religion in relation to its nationalisation and its interlocutions in the public sphere.

Colonial rule has been subjected to multiple readings based on understandings derived out of different traditions. The variations that such interpretations explicated were based on the tropes of internality and externality of colonial and native elements and structures, thereby subscribing to an understanding based on their mutual exclusivity.
The relation between religious and secular and their meanings in themselves, came to be defined through the continued interactions of different faiths in the public sphere. These interactions played out in the form of contestations amongst different faiths and their efforts to secure their followers against conversions and defections. In India, this took the form of Hindu resistance to missionisation by Christian missionaries, subsequently leading to the formation of a public sphere that was not secular by any means. Even though the colonial policy of secularism avowed by a neutral religious policy, it proved to be difficult to realise in a society where religion played an important political role. As a result, externality and neutrality were reduced to mere tropes that the state assumed to maintain its identity of a transcendent and neutral arbiter in a society undercut by multiple religious identities. Despite such efforts, Indian religions developed its opposition to the state, which was understood to be fundamentally Christian. As a result, colonial frameworks of organisation, laws and regulations, which were considered to be instruments of modernity, elicited reactions from different religious groups which viewed them as unwanted incursions and impediments on the observance of their faith. These changes provided a new impulse to modern religions, whose opinions were voiced by an Indian bourgeois that was fractured along lines of caste and religion in the colonial Indian public sphere. In the absence of political representation and avenues for participation, mass politics in India took the form of political rituals like Tilak's Ganpati festival, and reflected majoritarian narratives of Hinduism, which led to the emergence of other oppositional discourses such as Ambedkar's politics of conversion, Periyar's anti-Brahmanism and Gandhi's politics of Hindu inclusivism.

Democracy as an aggregate of political and legal devices represents the need for addressing the ineradicable differences and disagreements that exists within the modern state. Therefore, democracy in a sense, presupposes the presence of multiple, sometimes irreconcilable discourses. the disputes that exist amongst them, make for a kind of unity established out of a dialectics of reconfigurations which hacks away at the inessentials and preserves what arises out of the process as essential and therefore, worth defending. In Egypt, the uprisings, although similarly representative of varying narratives of opinion and intent, came to be coloured by the other in terms that were suited to ensuring the prevalence of their own vision of the future. As a result, diffidence in this case, consolidated these factions against one another, rather than uniting them in pursuit of a common goal, that is establishing and consolidating democratic principles in Egyptian society.

RELIGION IN SOUTH ASIA – Peter Van der Veer

Van der Veer states that the colonial state cannot be studied in isolation, and needs to be understood in the context of the global framework of imperial interactions between the metropole and its colonies. These interactions produced both colonial and national modernity.

The universalisation of religion according to Asad (1993) is directly related to the coming of modernity in Europe and the subsequent proliferation of the same understanding through the spread of European colonial dominance. As a result, traditions were invented in order to give certain possibly dissociated and heterogeneous cultures a sense of coherence in attempts to understand and represent them. Hinduism being a prime example of such an exercise in classification. The classification of such divergent practices and traditions under one broad masthead of Hinduism influenced a movement for the unification of its various polytheistic traditions under a singular understanding of a constructed tradition. The Revivalists therefore constructed the notion of unity of God, the scriptures and subsequently the observance of faith as part of a larger effort to fashion a modern Hinduism, which would constitute the basis for moral action in the secular world. Similar transformations took place in Islam, Sikhism and Buddhism as well.

Modern religions also brought about the creation of an informed religious public. This adds a new dimension to Habermas' understanding of the concept of the public sphere as a space for open, unhindered, critical evaluation of the state's exercise of political power, which did not account for the presence of religious public opinion as it was not considered to be rational and critical. However, most modern nation states allow citizens to follow different religions, without understanding varied affiliations in relation to their loyalty to the state.

Religious movements that originated in the colonial period or which are the successors of the ones which did, mark the contemporary modern public sphere in South Asia. Certain movements were aimed at unifying and homogenising the religious community, and therefore directed their ire against what they considered to be a pseudo-secular state and attempts at conversion by other religious sects. Movements like this such as the Tablighi Jama'at and groups like the RSS and Shiv Sena and their views on organising the personal lives of its adherents and members therefore runs into direct confrontation with the agenda of the secular nation-state and its own tendencies of interference in the lives of its citizens.

The media, against the context of developments in communication technologies, also plays a crucial role in the transformation of the public sphere. Developments in real time broadcasting capabilities have extended ideas of darshan beyond temples and sites of pilgrimage. Also, continued representation and display of sacred images and themes in popular media not only informs the manner in which the visual register of the public sphere is constituted, and also marks an increased mobility of sacred power across time and space. The reach of new media has had a substantial role to play in the creation of transnational religious spaces for migrants, who both transformed by transmitted ideas and images of religion from their homelands and subsequently transform the same in the process.

Religion constitutes a defining element in the politics of identity in modern South Asia, but its beliefs and practices are not geographically confined to the region, as neither are the people who belong to it. As a consequence, it becomes important to understand the manner in which forces of globalisation have transformed nation-states as well as the functioning of its many defining elements in a transnational context.

LANGUAGES OF SECULARITY – Sudipta Kaviraj

Ideas concerning secularity entered the South Asia, particularly India, gradually. Instrumentalities of colonial power and missionary debates were the first point of entry for Western influences, but deist attacks on all established religions, such as those fronted by Raja Rammohan Roy and the Brahmo Samaj were not based on a complete rejection of religion, but on a policy of reconstitution of its basic principles of adherence and worship in an effort to initiate an internal shift from pre-modern observances to a modern rationalist version of the same. Similar movements, according to Kaviraj, questioned the need for a god, as a central force of ethics, and attempted to locate capabilities of objective decision making within people and not some superfluous, un-interrupting force. Syed Ahmad Khan’s reformism within Islam followed a similar trajectory in terms of situating Islam within a more modernist framework. These interventions established the foundational principles of modern secularity – decline in religious control over social life, that is, ethical secularity, and, the state’s position on religious affairs or political secularity.

The end of colonial rule marked the emergence of two perspectives in terms of the final direction that these decolonised systems would possibly assume. Gandhi stated that these states could either emulate the Western path into the modern. While the Nehruvian vision claimed that the real march towards modernity could only be envisioned with the end of colonialism; since any social, political or ethical mechanism produced during the colonial period would be in strict opposition to British rule and would represent an oppositional model to colonial modernity. This line of thought separated the realisation of modernity from a European context, and implied that colonialism, which sought to establish its modernising ethos in the colonies, had in reality despoiled the ideals of Enlightenment. According to Nehru, the dissociation of these ideas from the geographical bounded-ness of its applicability and peddling them as universal ideals, the process completely ignored the prior historical processes and changes that Europe had undergone prior to the inauguration of modern constitutions. In the Indian context, such understandings regarding the applicability of Enlightenment ideals disregarded the newness of its own institutional history.

The trajectories of development of European and Indian state secularism were substantially different. In Europe, it emerged as a response to years of religious wars, before the establishment of modern constitutions. In India, the same constitution which established adult suffrage as a fundamental right, also established state secularity. The Partition of 1947, made this ideal contentious, as the Pakistani state was based on its rejection, whereas nationalists in India did not believe in its effectiveness. Unlike in Europe, secularity was not subjected to a democratic test, and therefore lacked institutional mechanisms or popular assent to justify its presence in the constitution.

 The 1980’s sparked off a new linguistic shift in understanding secularism. Hindu nationalists acquired an anti-secularist stance based on reasoning derived from thinkers like Savarkar. They attacked the Congress’ policies of secularism, claiming unrestricted rule of the majority community, in order to claim their ‘legitimate right to rule as a putative majority and to stamp their cultural identity on the state’. A shift in the language of the rightist Hindu polemics occurred, which saw a transition from attacks on constitutional secularity to attacks on the Congress’ vaunted secular identity. They claimed that although a secular state was desirable, but within a framework of uniform and principled administration, with no exceptions. This marked the rise of a distinctive language of the liberal political imaginary. The liberal political ideology was fundamentally concerned with the idea of dignity, predicated on the equal treatment of all. Unlike in Europe, where again, such ideals preceded formal institutionalisation through laws, in India the directionality of such developments was inverted. Ideas concerning equal treatment came to be understood in terms of political transactions, promises made during electioneering, that is, through understandings based upon a system of gains and advantages, and not on high political thought. These positions came to be assumed by the political Left as well as the Hindu nationalists. As a result, Indian liberalism was recast from what was to be a revolutionary overthrow of an exploitative order to a fight against discrimination which based its arguments on the logics of numerical preponderance. Hindu nationalism also underwent a similar discursive shuffle where it assumed a combination of politics based upon identity and demands for justice; and situated them in parallel with narratives of discrimination. This discrimination was understood historically – in terms of the mistreatment in hands of Muslim rulers – and in a modern context – by a state that unfairly solicited only minority interests.

Academic debates regarding secularism followed these political changes. T. N. Madan (1998) viewed secularism as a precondition for the establishment of state secularity, and both stages of change being rooted in a Christian culture. This process had underscored the changes in Christianity in Europe in response to the scientific revolution of the 17^th century and the rise of Protestantism. Europe’s secular project went through different stages of evolution into its final interpretation as a legal doctrine. However, this distinction between secularism as a legal doctrine and secularisation as a historical process is viewed as being based on a presupposed distinction that was already inherent within pre-Reformation Christian scriptures. However, this analysis does not account for the initial steps that had been taken to settle the problems of religious difference by treaties which sought to establish non-religious states. This did not ensure the protection of religious minorities who were forced to accept their subordinate status. However, forces of economic and social modernity drove populations towards more interactions, thereby rendering religious sequestration impracticable. This led to the transformation of the existent system into one that was blind to the differences of religious thought and practice amongst its subjects. Madan’s emphasis on secularism as a legal doctrine and secularisation as a historical process is according to Kaviraj, based on a presupposed distinction that was already inherent within pre-Reformation Christian scriptures, without explaining the sociological process of its translation into practice. It needs to be understood that the first step that was taken by holders of new mechanisms of the disciplinary powers of absolutism was homogenisation. Despite such efforts, small pockets of heterogeneous groups remained, as did subdivisions within dominant groups, as well as non-religious communities. As a result, most European states, where religious identity was dropped as a metric of recognition in legal procedures by the state, without imposing restrictions on the conduct of its subjects’ private lives. Therefore, the secular state was not ‘effected as a consequence of secularisation’ but in response to a deep religious quandary.

Ashis Nandy’s analysis finds agreements with Madan’s in terms of accepting that secularism embodied the dream of a modernist minority who acquired state power through Nehru’s dominance over the postcolonial Indian political landscape, and with that the responsibility to ‘remake the masses’. However, Nandy understands secularism and communalism as representative of two binary understandings of how popular Indian imagination is to be constituted with both ideas pivoting their realisation and subsequent operationalisation on acquiring state power. Nandy characterises secularity into tis modern and traditional variants. The modern variant of secularity understands religion as an ideology and therefore assumes an intellectual form in which arguments are justified by the state along lines of rational falsification. Unlike Madan, who views secularism as a modern project, Nandy upturns this assumed binarised characterisation based on the self-images of the modern as fundamentally opposite to pre-modern conditions. Instead, he turns it around to constitute his argument on the dogmatic imposition of conceptions of right, best and appropriate without understanding the implications of the same. Thereby, drawing parallels with secularist ideas of how religions function through ideas of damnation, salvation and conversion. Madan challenged the general view that secularism only required governmental will in order to succeed as a project of postcolonial modernity, but in that he exposed it as the mission of a small elite, westernised minority.

Nandy’s challenge to social science orthodoxy targeted individual articles of Weberian faith and upturned previously held notions that social secularisation must precede political secularity, and notions that modern secularists were tolerant and atavistic traditionalists were intolerant and aggressive. Nandy’s views regarding the modernist elites as a small clique of people separated from the belief culture of their people, but adept at capturing the state and imposing their political imaginary in a suppressed populace through fundamentalism and militancy provided a new perspective on the project of secularity. Kaviraj believes Nandy’s argument to be not just critical of secularism, but religious orthodoxy as well, through its extrapolative logic. He also claimed that religious peace in Indian society was based upon influences of traditional religiosity. By changing the direction of responsibility from the state to the people with regards to securing religious tolerance, not through new techniques of control but the continuity of religious traditions, it placed the onus of finding a solution on social scientists and not statesmen. This created a demand in academic discourses for critical postcolonial analyses of religious life and the modern state.