Quest-The Journal of UGC-HRDC Nainital

Indian Secularism has faced continuous challenges in its practice in the past century and this is reflected in the literature on the topic. This article reviews the development of the concept of secularism in the Indian tradition and also in modern scholarship and highlights the challenges in its interpretation and its practice. Even liberal writers admit to the inadequacies of a purely secular view of the world and that a progressive or modernising agenda need not necessarily be a rigidly secularising one. Postmodernists and post-colonialists decried secularisms claim to universal truth and impersonal rationality as a form of ‘cognitive imperialism’. Electoral politics and electioneering, political manoeuvring and politicising of caste, class, religion and regionalism have impeded Indian secular practice. Cleavages based on caste, community language and religion have been severely exploited in modern India. Critics point out that both in the Asian and the Indian context the practice of rigid secularism as a generally shared credo of life for the people is impossible, as a basis for state action impracticable, and a blueprint for the foreseeable future impotent.