Why We Need to Redefine Our Secularism

We are living in a time when the very idea of ‘Bharat’ as a modern nation-state has come under intense scrutiny. There is no gainsaying the fact that India, under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has seen a marked departure from the Nehruvian idea of secularism, demonstrating a palpable desire to embrace its ancient roots which Nehru once disparagingly referred to as the “deadwood of the past.” The question emerges: does the fall of ‘Nehru’s secular temple’ inherently signify the fall of India as a pluralist society? While dismissing the Rajesh Himmatlal Solanki versus Union of India case, the court held that “secularism is not the antithesis of religious devoutness”, and that since the prayer ceremony was “noble” and meant to benefit everyone who used the court’s building regardless of their religion, it was secular. In his book ‘Republic of Religion’, Abhinav Chandrachud argues that “secularism was artificially imposed by the British colonial government in India even though it did not fully exist in England”. At the same time, we have a living tradition of religious tolerance – the result of the broad outlook of Hinduism that all religions lead to the same god.” He passionately argued that the non-establishment clause of the American Constitution was “inappropriate to Indian conditions and we had to evolve a characteristically Indian secularism, and the Indian state could not possibly have a state religion, nor could a rigid line be drawn between the state and church as in the US”.