Indians, how they get ‘secularism’ so horribly wrong and how the atmosphere changed after Islam and Christianity entered India
4 years, 7 months ago

Indians, how they get ‘secularism’ so horribly wrong and how the atmosphere changed after Islam and Christianity entered India

Op India  

Indians are generally highly intelligent. Now the idea that reason, and not blind belief in one ‘revealed truth’, should guide society, took root in Europe and this lead to the demand for separation between State and Church. Though Hindu Dharma survived and never dictated terms to its followers nor to the state, ‘secular’ was added to the Constitution of India in 1976. However, even after adding ‘secular’, the government seemed eager to benefit specifically the dogmatic religions, which secularism is meant to counter. Yet Islam and Christianity that have gravely harmed Indians over centuries got preferential treatment by the Indian state, and India’s own beneficial, plural dharma that has no other home except India, is pushed into a corner.

India Europe Christianity Secularism Church Constitution Islam Dharma State Hindus Muslim Indians Called Secular Preferential Treatment Blind Belief  entered  secular  dharma  religions  called  horribly  indians  atmosphere  christianity  india  islam  truth  changed  state  secularism  wrong

History of this topic

Head-on | India’s innate secularism demolishes majoritarian myth
4 months, 1 week ago

Head-on | India’s innate secularism demolishes majoritarian myth

Firstpost  

Despite provocations, the majority of India’s 80 per cent Hindu population has not succumbed to majoritarianism. Jews fleeing persecution in Europe and the Middle East too found refuge in India’s southern states, living in peace with Muslims and Christians amid a Hindu majority. The communalisation of Goa’s social fabric was caused not by India’s innate secular ethos but by Portugal’s …

Why We Need to Redefine Our Secularism
1 year, 1 month ago

Why We Need to Redefine Our Secularism

News 18  

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 …

Secularism has become pejorative for those now in power: Sonia Gandhi
1 year, 2 months ago

Secularism has become pejorative for those now in power: Sonia Gandhi

The Hindu  

Describing secularism as a foundational pillar of India's democracy, Congress leader Sonia Gandhi said the word secular is being used as a "pejorative" by those now in power, resulting in increased polarisation in the society. A clear understanding of these terms will help every citizen better understand India's history, the challenges of the present, and the path to the future," …

Secularism does not mean non-religious but equal respect to all faiths, says EAM Jaishankar
1 year, 4 months ago

Secularism does not mean non-religious but equal respect to all faiths, says EAM Jaishankar

Firstpost  

The senior BJP leader said the political and social changes seen in India in the last few years have partly been a reaction “at an intellectual and political level” to this sense of unfairness. External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar emphasized that secularism in India entails equal respect for all faiths, dispelling the notion that it implies non-religiosity. Speaking during an …

Why Amit Chaudhuri’s slim book ‘On Being Indian’ is his manifesto of hope
1 year, 5 months ago

Why Amit Chaudhuri’s slim book ‘On Being Indian’ is his manifesto of hope

Live Mint  

On Being Indian, which is author, poet, and musician Amit Chaudhuri’s latest book, can be described as a reflection of an intellectual’s fearful journey through a period in India which has seen dissent being labelled as anti-national. Through the book—the second in the Literary Activism series, a collaboration between Ashoka University’s Centre for the Creative and the Critical and the …

‘Secularism is also to protect Hindus from their own orthodoxies’
1 year, 5 months ago

‘Secularism is also to protect Hindus from their own orthodoxies’

The Hindu  

Multi-religious India’s founding ideals are fast being reshaped by a majoritarian formulation of the relationship between the state and religion. Rajeev Bhargava, political theorist and author of Reimagining Indian Secularism, analyses the strengths and failings of India’s sui generis secularism. On the other hand, Indian secularism was born in response to India’s phenomenal diversity. Borrowing from the title of your …

Political Storm Over Religious Conversions: Does India Need a National Law? - News18
1 year, 9 months ago

Political Storm Over Religious Conversions: Does India Need a National Law? - News18

News 18  

The possible repeal of the Karnataka Freedom of Religion Act, 2021, enacted under the Basavaraj Bommai-led BJP government has created a political storm. Amid the sharp political narrative between the Congress and BJP, the intricate issue of religious conversions in India has never found the serious attention it deserves. The absence of empirical data or any study on religious conversions, …

Indian Secularism Has Evolved Beyond the Pale, Icy Definition Imposed by the British - News18
1 year, 9 months ago

Indian Secularism Has Evolved Beyond the Pale, Icy Definition Imposed by the British - News18

News 18  

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, during his visit to the United States last week, termed the Indian Union Muslim League a ‘secular’ party. Political secularism would deny the history of destruction and selectively celebrate the unique cultural identity of India. Without going into too many examples, let’s turn to the case of the Supreme Court of India which has fiercely guarded …

Why Hindu Faith is the Reason for India’s Success - News18
2 years, 1 month ago

Why Hindu Faith is the Reason for India’s Success - News18

News 18  

As we near the general elections of 2024, politically motivated propaganda by the Opposition parties against the Bharatiya Janata Party is on the rise, only to spread fear, insecurity, unrest and anxiety in the minds of the non-Hindu electorate. The Muslim community, the easiest to be swayed by rumours of the rising Hindu sentiments in a BJP-led country that will …

Book Review | Missed chance to bring nuance to the conversation on Islam
2 years, 5 months ago

Book Review | Missed chance to bring nuance to the conversation on Islam

Deccan Chronicle  

This is a book for our times. Its success depended crucially on getting right three distinct ideas — that India is a layered and diverse society in every sense of the word and was fed through migrations over the millennia; that the nationalism engendered through the anti-colonial struggle could only be of a civic variety and not one based on …

The Great Indian Secularism: Why We Need an Indigenous Model That Recognises Bharat - News18
2 years, 7 months ago

The Great Indian Secularism: Why We Need an Indigenous Model That Recognises Bharat - News18

News 18  

The Muslim clergy, representing the gargantuan chunk of one among the six notified minorities on TV debates, claim to believe in the neologism of Ganga-Jamni Tehzeeb. With the backing of the Nehruvian establishment, academics, ideologues and activists with political agendas and communist proclivities have cleverly advertised secularism and reduced it to having odious and pejorative opinions about the majority — …

Dharma Files | This is how secularism has failed India
2 years, 7 months ago

Dharma Files | This is how secularism has failed India

Firstpost  

The government should immediately get out of the business of running Hindu temples, as by not doing so it violates one of the basic tenets of secularism This question can no longer be dodged. Is it a tenet of Indian secularism, that it is only the Central government which will stay out of religion, and not the state governments? According …

Mohan Guruswamy | How Hindus and Muslims misunderstood secularism
2 years, 10 months ago

Mohan Guruswamy | How Hindus and Muslims misunderstood secularism

Deccan Chronicle  

Pakistan, the so-called “land of the pure”, was carved out of India as a homeland for Muslims, a fact that was doubly ensured by the “cleansing” out of most of the non-Muslims who were living within it. Even those Hindu nationalists who for long took a simplistic view of the 1947 Partition as India for Hindus and Pakistan for Muslims …

If Britain’s Christian roots don’t turn it theocratic, how will India’s Hindu identity make it less secular, democratic?
2 years, 10 months ago

If Britain’s Christian roots don’t turn it theocratic, how will India’s Hindu identity make it less secular, democratic?

Firstpost  

At a time when the country is debating the Uniform Civil Code — though it would be ideal to call it the Common Civil Code — an important book, Unmasking Indian Secularism, by veteran journalist and writer Hasan Suroor, has hit the shelves. Sai Deepak explains, “Clearly, this is attributable to the Indian State’s embracing of colonial assumption that the …

Strengthen secularism, save the republic
2 years, 11 months ago

Strengthen secularism, save the republic

The Hindu  

The High Court of Karnataka has not been able to settle the hijab issue. Another crucial factor which makes a theocratic state impossible in India is the complex, inegalitarian, hierarchical and oppressive social structure of the majority religion. A theocratic state functions on the basis of religious laws, which in India means the Dharma Shastras according to which only a …

Nehruvian secularism places Muslims not as equals but as a permanent minority to Hindus: Arif Mohammad Khan
3 years ago

Nehruvian secularism places Muslims not as equals but as a permanent minority to Hindus: Arif Mohammad Khan

Firstpost  

The Kerala Governor says that the kind of secularism pursued in India creates distrust among Hindus and Muslims, placing one against another as competitors for national resources Since the early 1980s, Kerala Governor Arif Mohammad Khan has been consistently fighting against the fundamentalist forces of the country, whether it was in the Shah Bano case during Rajiv Gandhi’s regime or …

The two Indias when it comes to secularism
3 years, 3 months ago

The two Indias when it comes to secularism

Op India  

This week, Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the Kashi Vishwanath corridor, built at a cost of around Rs 339 crore. What is the relationship between the Hindu religion and the modern Indian state? In this version, what is the relationship between the Hindu religion and the Indian state? But then, why do liberals complain when the government promotes the state …

Nature of religiosity in India
3 years, 8 months ago

Nature of religiosity in India

The Hindu  

FEAR of the mysterious, the unknown, death and defeat is the foundation of religion, declared the British polymath Bertrand Russell in 1927. By contrast, among those who said religion was less important in their lives, 39 per cent expressed a similar view. Women, Indian adults without a college education and those who said religion was very important in their lives …

Living together, separately
3 years, 8 months ago

Living together, separately

Hindustan Times  

The findings of the latest Pew survey on religion in India raise questions that lie at the heart of India’s contemporary political debates. While it is tempting to conclude that existing social barriers are insurmountable, it is also true that more Indians than at any point in history are defying caste and religion structures in making life choices, including marriage. …

What Indians think about religion and religious differences, in five charts
3 years, 8 months ago

What Indians think about religion and religious differences, in five charts

Live Mint  

Indians profess respect for all religions but want to live their own lives among co-religionists, a new survey conducted by the Pew Research Centre shows. Building Ghettos The majority of people across all religions say that the freedom to practise all religions freely is important to their own religion, and to their identity as Indians. 80% of Muslims say it …

Gandhi, Secularism, And Cultural Democracy
4 years, 5 months ago

Gandhi, Secularism, And Cultural Democracy

ABP News  

One might put it differently: any serious discussion of ideas in the public sphere is becoming increasingly difficult, and in this respect it is not Gandhi alone who has suffered—and similarly it is not in India alone that a frightening ethno-nationalism is now unabashedly on display. Some days ago, I was pleasantly surprised to read that India’s Minister of External …

The unique goals and challenges of Indian secularism
5 years, 1 month ago

The unique goals and challenges of Indian secularism

Hindustan Times  

Dr Jaime Torres Bodet Director General of UNESCO Jawaharlal Nehru and Abul Kalam Azad arriving at Parliament House for the session of the Indian National Commission for Cooperation with UNESCO. Most commonly, “Indian secularism” is understood to mean something like the equal treatment of all religions. However, virtually all commentators agree that India is secular—which seems unarguable given the word’s …

Secularism is a western concept, India must reconsider its inclusion in preamble: RSS ideologue
5 years, 2 months ago

Secularism is a western concept, India must reconsider its inclusion in preamble: RSS ideologue

India TV News  

"Sovereign, socialist, secular, democratic republic" is how India is referred to in the preamble of the Constitution. However, J. Nandakumar, a key RSS leader and All India Convenor Prajna Pravah, a Sangh offshoot, wants India to reconsider the inclusion of the word "secular", claiming secularism is a "western, Semitic concept". He argued that India does not need a secular ethos …

The return of the secular
5 years, 2 months ago

The return of the secular

The Hindu  

It was both touching and comforting to hear the reply of Nikhil, a young student from Jamia Millia Islamia, to an unexpected question put to him last week by a TV anchor — “What does Jamia mean to you?” After a long pause, he said, “It has given me tehzeeb, an understanding of the samvidhaan and taught me to read, …

CAA, NRC, Article 370 protests have called into question idea of India's secularism; answers lie beyond the Constitution
5 years, 3 months ago

CAA, NRC, Article 370 protests have called into question idea of India's secularism; answers lie beyond the Constitution

Firstpost  

Saying India is secular because the Constitution says so is an appeal to authority. The people of India deserve the dignity of an argument for secularism When the government abrogated Article 370 this year, there was a lot of conversation around the fact that the people of Jammu and Kashmir should only join India with their consent. The re-election of …

‘India is Secular despite Hindus,’ Aakar Patel claims in Congress mouthpiece National Herald but is India really secular?
5 years, 10 months ago

‘India is Secular despite Hindus,’ Aakar Patel claims in Congress mouthpiece National Herald but is India really secular?

Op India  

In an article for the National Herald, Congress party’s mouthpiece, Executive Director of Amnesty International India, Aakar Patel, makes a rather bold assertion. If all of this wasn’t enough, we have the Hindu Charitable and Religious Endowments Act which grants the ‘secular’ government of India the right to administer and control Hindu Temples. However, it’s only Hindu Temples that the …

Secularism is the core safeguard India needs
6 years, 2 months ago

Secularism is the core safeguard India needs

Deccan Chronicle  

As the sands of 2018 trickled away, Naseeruddin Shah’s snub to Imran Khan for daring to comment snidely on India’s minority position reminded us that Sudip Ranjan Sen, the Meghalaya judge, had the logic of numbers on his side in claiming India “should have been declared a Hindu country”. A Hindu state may not have raised much cavil if it …

Watch: Is the Indian state really secular? No, according to this Supreme Court advocate
6 years, 4 months ago

Watch: Is the Indian state really secular? No, according to this Supreme Court advocate

Op India  

UpWord, a not-for-profit knowledge platform co-founded by Ashish Dhar and Ajaey Sharma, produces well-researched content in the form of short videos. It published a new video on YouTube today, featuring Supreme Court advocate Kanu Agarwal elucidating the manner in which certain articles of the Constitution discriminate against the majority faith in the country. In the video, Mr Agarwal asks the …

‘New secularism’ of Indian liberals is a scary kind of fundamentalism
6 years, 10 months ago

‘New secularism’ of Indian liberals is a scary kind of fundamentalism

Op India  

A few years ago, Al-Shabab, the radical Islamist group in Somalia, made a decision to put a ban on samosas. How different is Al-Shabab’s 2011 war on samosas from what I call the “new secularism” that is practised by Indian liberals of today? This mutant form, which I call “new secularism” is much more aggressive than anything seen in the …

Inventing history to inculcate hatred
7 years, 7 months ago

Inventing history to inculcate hatred

The Hindu  

When 70 years ago India obtained freedom it also got divided on religious grounds. It may here be mentioned that much before the term “secularism” came into use, the United States Constitution of 1787 and, particularly, the French Revolution of 1789-94, by barring religious influences from all conduct of state affairs, had already produced fair models of a secular state, …

Debating secularism
7 years, 8 months ago

Debating secularism

The Hindu  

JUSTICE VIKRAMJIT SEN, A RETIRED JUDGE of the Supreme Court, once observed during the hearing of a case in 2015: “India is a secular country, but I don’t know how long it will remain so.” A sense of exasperation might have been behind his observation, but events since then could make one wonder whether the judge’s remark was meant to …

Philosophy moderates dynamics of religions
7 years, 9 months ago

Philosophy moderates dynamics of religions

Deccan Chronicle  

Chennai: What we usually associate with ‘religious emotions’ of people come as a mixed bag. It is thus at every step, religion needs to go hand-in-hand with philosophy of religion, the latter serving as ‘moderators’ or ‘coolants’ as in a reactor, providing the secular space for deeper reflections and discussions. In fact, looking at the wider canvas of the India’s …

A Saturday : One Bengali renounces Indian secularism
7 years, 9 months ago

A Saturday : One Bengali renounces Indian secularism

Op India  

Here’s a wish from Rabindranath Thakur : Chitta jetha bhoyshunyo, uchcho jetha sheer… Bharatere sei sarge koro jagorito Words from Gitanjali. No, as a matter of fact, this whole joke called “idea of India” was built on the bones of millions of Hindus of East Bengal. Why did Indian secularism throw away the lives of Hindus of East Bengal? The …

UP election results will herald a funeral of 'counterfeit' secularism in India
8 years ago

UP election results will herald a funeral of 'counterfeit' secularism in India

Firstpost  

The counter-secularism forces have registered a decisive victory in UP and this trend is likely to continue through the 2019 elections and beyond. On Saturday, when the Uttar Pradesh Assembly election results were announced, I had argued in Firstpost Decode – the website’s live election day coverage – that BJP’s landslide victory will herald in the “funeral of secularism”, whose …

State vs Hindus – how Indian politics has destroyed the notion of ‘secularism’
8 years, 1 month ago

State vs Hindus – how Indian politics has destroyed the notion of ‘secularism’

Op India  

A wise man once said “When you are used to privilege, equality seems like oppression.” Was reminded of this brilliant quote yesterday when a speech by Prime Minister Narendra Modi evoked hysterical outrage by the so-called left-liberals. That the “Idea of India” gives precedence to an imaginary puppy over actual flesh and blood Hindus killed in firing by the State …

The secularism debate: Here's why mixing politics with religion is a bad idea
8 years, 4 months ago

The secularism debate: Here's why mixing politics with religion is a bad idea

Firstpost  

Mixing up religion and politics can be disastrous for a country – Pakistan is an example. And that is why the BJP leaders who willingly give full play to religion in politics should be extremely careful. In a submission before the Supreme Court, three BJP-ruled states have said that religion can always be used in any sphere of society in …

India's model of secularism is miraculous and a phenomenon that needs to be studied: Daniel Benjamin
9 years ago

India's model of secularism is miraculous and a phenomenon that needs to be studied: Daniel Benjamin

India Today  

Daniel Benjamin traverses the depths of the ISIS problem, tracing its origins, examining the landscape of its operations and assessing its impact. Like every ideology similar to that of ISIS from the past, it too will meet its end one day, he says. Calling India's model of secularism miraculous and a phenomenon that needs to be studied, he requests us …

Secularisation of society is a long, historical process: Romila Thapar
9 years ago

Secularisation of society is a long, historical process: Romila Thapar

Hindustan Times  

In 1976, the word 'secular' was included in the Indian constitution. With this change religion became powerful both as the focus of belief, and as an authority controlling social institutions through various religious organizations. Rather than focusing on monolithic, undifferentiated religious society in general, what may be more insightful would be if we study the link between caste and sect …

An open letter to Rajdeep “IAmAntiNational” Sardesai
9 years, 1 month ago

An open letter to Rajdeep “IAmAntiNational” Sardesai

Op India  

Dear Rajdeep, It seriously doesn’t matter to me what’s your self-image: Nationalist or anti-nationalist. That’s how India was divided between organized and funded club members of a ‘Secular India’ and unorganized, simple, honest and truly secular Indians. You started calling Modi supporters as ‘sanghis’, bhakts, and pseudo patriots, without even realizing that these people love Modi for he is a …

When Secularism Hasn’t Served Its Purpose, Will ‘Areligious’ Do?
9 years, 3 months ago

When Secularism Hasn’t Served Its Purpose, Will ‘Areligious’ Do?

The Quint  

The inability to do or find something could, at times, be the mother of transcendence. The need arose when discussions on the Constitution, held in Parliament on 26-27 November 2015 – to commemorate the 125th birth anniversary of the father of that great piece of literature B R Ambedkar – took place. Speaking in the Lok Sabha on that occasion, …

Why India is not a secular state
9 years, 3 months ago

Why India is not a secular state

Op India  

The 42nd amendment to the Constitution of India inserted the word “secular” into the preamble thus making India a “secular” Republic. Here is why I assert that the Indian state is NOT secular : Different laws for Hindus, Muslims and Christians In a truly secular country, all citizens irrespective of religion would be covered by a single set of laws. …

The need for a new agenda
9 years, 8 months ago

The need for a new agenda

The Hindu  

Secularism is often understood in the narrow confines of religious tolerance. However, inter-religious harmony and tolerance are an important element of the larger concept, which concerns us today, of the “idea of India”. Indeed, for this very reason, given the Left’s visionary commitments to the long struggle for freedom, its role is absolutely central to the realisation of the idea …

Is religious conversion really a fundamental right, or can we ban it?
10 years, 6 months ago

Is religious conversion really a fundamental right, or can we ban it?

Firstpost  

By Jaideep A Prabhu To most observers, India appears a paradox - teeming with diversity of cuisine, dress, language, pigmentation, and faith under one flag, yet simultaneously simmering with communal tensions. As Jakob de Roover of Ghent University argues, the liberal principle of religious freedom implicitly endorses the Abrahamic view of the world that religion revolves around doctrines and truth …

Saving secularism from the ‘secularists’
10 years, 11 months ago

Saving secularism from the ‘secularists’

Live Mint  

In 2005, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh appointed the Sachar committee to study the social and economic condition of India’s Muslim community. In January 2014, in an astounding display of New Delhi’s executive interference in the functioning of states’ police and judiciary, Shinde wrote to all chief ministers asking them to set up special screening committees to look at cases where …

It feels, speaks, smells like home
11 years, 7 months ago

It feels, speaks, smells like home

The Hindu  

When I first visited India in the late ‘80s, I did not for an instant think I was in another country. The reason was not that one of India’s many cultures is my own or that I speak one of her many languages or the fact that I look Indian. Not many people understand why I, as a European citizen …

India First - Who is afraid of Narendra Modi's definition of secularism?
12 years ago

India First - Who is afraid of Narendra Modi's definition of secularism?

India TV News  

‘Secularism' basically is a western concept that separates government institutions and functionaries from religious institutions and dignitaries.It basically means that the state has no religion of its own and that it will neither influence religious institutions nor will get influenced by them.The constitution that India adopted post independence did not include ‘secularism' in its Preamble. After the country was partitioned …

For me, secularism means India First, Modi tells Indian disaspora in the US
12 years ago

For me, secularism means India First, Modi tells Indian disaspora in the US

India TV News  

Washington, March 10: Denied a visa to visit US, Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi today took to video conferencing to address Indian-American community, saying his idea of secularism is "India First". And if this happens, secularism will automatically run in our blood," the Gujarat Chief Minister said.Modi was denied US visa on the issue of human rights violation.Last week, the …

Secularism the basis of India's existence: Bhardwaj
12 years, 1 month ago

Secularism the basis of India's existence: Bhardwaj

India TV News  

Bangalore, Jan 26: Karnataka Governor H.R. Bhardwaj on Saturday said secularism was the basis of the country's existence and highlighted the importance of a disciplined democracy. In his address after hoisting the national flat at the Republic Day celebrations in Bangalore, he reminisced Mahatama Gandhi's comparative message of disciplined and prejudiced democracy.“Democracy disciplined and enlightened is the finest in the …

Why Equality, Democracy, and Social Justice Are Essential for a Secular Society
13 years, 1 month ago

Why Equality, Democracy, and Social Justice Are Essential for a Secular Society

The Hindu  

I have known Prof. Romila Thapar for about 45 years, most of it as a colleague at the Centre for Historical Studies of Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Nehru told Malraux that the secular project in India was not limited to the creation of a "secular state in a religious society, but the creation of a secular state in a …

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