Table of Contents

Preface vii
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction / Rajeswari Sunder Rajan and Anuradha Dingwaney Needham 1
I. Secularism’s Historical Background
Reflections on the Category of Secularism in India: Gandhi, Ambedkar, and the Ethics of Communal Representation, c. 1931 / Shabnum Tejani 45
A View from the South: Ramasami’s Public Critique of Religion / Paula Richman and V. Geetha 66
Nehru’s Faith / Sunil Khilnani 89
II. Secularism and Democracy
Closing the Debate on Secularism: A Personal Statement / Ashis Nandy 107
Living with Secularism / Nivedita Menon 118
The Contradictions of Secularism / Partha Chatterjee 141
Secular Nationalism, Hindutva, and the Minority / Gyan Prakash 177
III. Sites of Secularism: Education, Media, and Cinema
Secularism, History, and the Contemporary Politics in India / Romila Thapar 191
The Gujarat Experiment and Hindu National Realism: Lessons from Secularism / Arvind Rajagopal 208
Secularism and Popular Indian Cinema / Shyam Benegal 225
Neither State nor Faith: The Transcendental Significance of the Cinema / Ravi S. Vasudevan 239
IV. Secularism and Personal Law
Siting Secularism in the Uniform Civil Code: A “Riddle Wrapped Inside an Enigma”? / Upendra Baxi 267
The Supreme Court, the Media, and the Uniform Civil Code Debate in India / Flavia Agnes 294
Secularism and the Very Concept of Law / Akeel Bilgrami 316
V. Conversion
Literacy and Conversion in the Discourse of Hindu Nationalism / Gauri Viswanathan 333
Christian Conversions, Hindutva, and Secularism / Sumit Sarkar 356
Appendix: Chronology of the Career of Secularism in India / Dwaipayan Sen 369
Works Cited 373
Contributors 397
Index 401

Promotional Information

Collection of essays that focuses on the effects of the secular state government on religious minorities in India.

About the Author

Anuradha Dingwaney Needham is Donald R. Longman Professor of English at Oberlin College. She is the author of Using the Master’s Tools: Resistance and the Literature of the African and South Asian Diasporas. Rajeswari Sunder Rajan is Distinguished Visiting Global Professor in the Department of English at New York University. Her books include The Scandal of the State: Women, Law and Citizenship in India, also published by Duke University Press.

Rajeswari Sunder Rajan is Distinguished Visiting Global Professor in the Department of English at New York University. Her books include The Scandal of the State: Women, Law and Citizenship in India, also published by Duke University Press.

Reviews

"This very rich collection of essays from a stellar line of contributors is remarkable not only because it updates Indian debates on secularism. It also evinces a spirit of scrupulous engagement with the present, by deliberately situating itself in the shadow of the anti-Muslim violence in Gujarat in 2002. Philosophical, historical, and contemporary at the same time, these essays add a new dimension to global discussions of liberalism and the politics of the religious Right."--Dipesh Chakrabarty, author of Habitations of Modernity: Essays in the Wake of Subaltern Studies "Indian public debates on the question of secularism have been among the most thought-provoking in the contemporary world. This rich collection of essays by Indian intellectuals (including historians, political scientists, and philosophers) reflects the sophisticated character of many of the arguments being deployed. I strongly recommend it to anyone who has been seriously thinking about this problem."--Talal Asad, author of Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity "This insightful and informative volume benefits from contributors who are leaders in their fields and is to be recommended to anyone with an interest in religion in India for its sometimes provocative, but always thoughtful engagement with a vitally important contemporary issue which has much broader ramifications in India and elsewhere. Readers concerned with the constitutional place of religion and the activities of the religious right will also find much to interest them, not least in a post-9/11 world. Perhaps one of the volume's most valuable features is its combination of an intellectually rigorous, yet activist-inspired response to the crisis in Indian secularism and an obvious relevance to global issues about religion in comparative perspective."--Journal of Contemporary Religion, Vol. 23, No. 1, January 2008, 87-128