While secularism has been integral to India's democracy for more
than fifty years, its uses and limits are now being debated anew.
Signs of a crisis in the relations between state, society, and
religion include the violence directed against Muslims in Gujarat
in 2002 and the precarious situation of India's minority religious
groups more generally; the existence of personal laws that vary by
religious community; the affiliation of political parties with
fundamentalist religious organizations; and the rallying of a
significant proportion of the diasporic Hindu community behind a
resurgent nationalist Hinduism. There is a broad consensus that a
crisis of secularism exists, but whether the state can resolve
conflicts and ease tensions or is itself part of the problem is a
matter of vigorous political and intellectual debate. In this
timely, nuanced collection, twenty leading Indian cultural
theorists assess the contradictory ideals, policies, and practices
of secularism in India. Scholars of history, anthropology,
religion, politics, law, philosophy, and media studies take on a
broad range of concerns. Some consider the history of secularism in
India; others explore theoretical issues such as the relationship
between secularism and democracy or the shortcomings of the
categories "majority" and "minority." Contributors examine how the
debates about secularism play out in schools, the media, and the
popular cinema. And they address two of the most politically
charged sites of crisis: personal law and the right to practice and
encourage religious conversion. Together the essays inject
insightful analysis into the fraught controversy about the
shortcomings and uncertain future of secularism in the world today.
Contributors. Flavia Agnes, Upendra Baxi, Shyam Benegal, Akeel
Bilgrami, Partha Chatterjee, V. Geetha, Sunil Khilnani, Nivedita
Menon, Ashis Nandy, Anuradha Dingwaney Needham, Gyanendra Pandey,
Gyan Prakash, Arvind Rajagopal, Paula Richman, Sumit Sarkar,
Dwaipayan Sen, Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, Shabnum Tejani, Romila
Thapar, Ravi S. Vasudevan, Gauri Viswanathan
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