Religious freedom and cultural asymmetry: Some pitfalls of secularism

ABSTRACT

Disputes concerning state interference in the religious practices and traditions of citizens have created uproar in public debate in India and Europe during the past decades. The contributors to this colloquium on Europe, India, and the Limits of Secularism point to the importance of two domains in addressing these disputes: the comparative study of court decisions and the budding domain of comparative political theory. In this response, I discuss several issues that emerge from these domains and argue that the problem of cultural asymmetry continues to create major pitfalls in the debates on secularism and religious freedom.

KEYWORDS:

• Secularism
• religious freedom
• India
• Sabarimala case
• comparative political theory

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Jakob De Roover http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8790-320X

Notes

1 The references between brackets refer to the numbered paragraphs in Indian Young Lawyers Association v. The State of Kerala, Supreme Court of India, 28 September 2018.

2 Generally, Kannan confuses between my book’s themes and her own concerns about ‘the problem of decolonization’ and ‘subaltern agency’ (even though I do not even use these terms). She lists a series of themes and authors which I should have discussed, according to her: ‘the field of missionary history,’ ‘the representations of Islam, gender and sexuality of the Middle East in Western literature,’ ‘representations of Islam and Christianity … in the Middle East,’ ‘the intersectionality of economics and politics,’ ‘gender and sexuality,’ and so on. Not discussing these themes, Kannan claims, amounts to ‘decontextualizing religion and secular from politics and gender’ and a failure to specify ‘whose agency … the book [is] trying to acknowledge.’ Indeed, I also fail to discuss global warming, identity politics, LGBTQ rights, quantum gravity, and many other matters. Undoubtedly, these are serious flaws. Then again, the book focuses on the emergence of the liberal model of the secular state and religious toleration in early modern Europe and the attempt to introduce this model and its conceptual vocabulary into India. (And it neither seeks to acknowledge nor deny anyone’s agency.)

3 Indian Young Lawyers Association v. The State of Kerala, Supreme Court of India, 28 September 2018.

4 The Durgah Committee, Ajmer vs Syed Hussain Ali and Others, Supreme Court of India, 17 March 1961; 1961 AIR 1402. For more on justice Gajendragadkar, see chapter 7 in Sen (2019).

5 The quotation is from a case where the Supreme Court was asked (for the second time) to decide whether the Tandava dance is an essential practice of the ‘Ananda Margi faith’ or not. See Commissioner of Police & Ors vs Acharya J. Avadhuta and Anr, 11 March 2004, AIR 2004 SC 2984.

6 Adi Saiva Sivachariyargal v. Government of Tamil Nadu, AIR 2016 SC 209; emphasis added.

7 Anil Rao begins to explore some of these issues concerning the doctrine of essential practice in his Master’s thesis, Freedom of Religion and the Supreme Court of India (2018), submitted as a requirement for the degree of Master of Laws at Ghent University, Belgium.

8 Indian Young Lawyers Association v. The State of Kerala, Supreme Court of India, 28 September 2018.