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Original Articles

The conceptual vocabularies of secularism and minority rights in India

Pages 179-198 | Published online: 04 Aug 2010

References

  • 1997 . “ 'Recognizing Minorities: Some Aspects of the Indian Constituent Assembly Debates, 1946-1949' ” . University of Oxford . I have argued this in my M.Phil, thesis
  • May 1999 . “ 'Secularism, communalism and the politics of lower castes and minorities in India' ” . May , Oxford : Queen Elizabeth House . An earlier version of this article was presented at the workshop on
  • 2000 . 'Constituent Assembly Debates and Minority Rights' . Economic and Political Weekly , XXXV/21-22 May 27 : 1837 – 1845 . 1 am grateful to Michael Freeden, Nandini Gooptu, Nigel Bowles, David Miller, Marc Stears and Prashant Kidambi for comments. I am also grateful to the Editors of Economic end Political Weekly for permission to use material: from my article
  • Embree , A. 1990 . Utopias in Conflict: Religion and Nationalism in Modern India , Delhi : University of California Press . On this point, see
  • Embree, ibid, p. 87
  • Chatterjee , Partha . 1998 . “ 'Secularism and Tolerance' ” . In Secularism and Its Critics , Edited by: Bhargava , R. 345 – 379 . Delhi : Oxford University Press . A rich body of scholarship has emerged in recent times challenging the validity of the contrast between Western and Indian secularism from different standpoints. See, in particular, articles by
  • Chandhoke , N. 1999 . Beyond Secularism: The Rights of Religious Minorities , Delhi : Oxford University Press . Rajeev Bhargava, Akeel Bilgrami, Partha Chatterjee, Amartya Sen in the volume cited above. See
  • Archer , Robin . 1999 . 'American Communalism and Indian Secularism: Religion and Politics in India and the West' . paper presented at Queen Elizabeth House . May 1999 , Oxford . The present article, while following this direction of criticism, seeks to challenge the contrast between conceptions of secularism in India and the West in the context of Indian parliamentary debates
  • Freeden , M. 1996 . Ideologies and Political Theory: A Conceptual Approach , Oxford : Oxford University Press . On how changes in the configuration of concepts constitutive of an ideology result in shifts in meaning, see
  • Constituent Assembly Debates: Official Report (henceforth CAD), 12 vols. (Delhi, 1946-1950), VII, p. 1057. See also Rev. Jerome D' Souza's statement, ibid., p. 1059. Another prominent Congressman asserted: 'I do not by the word "secular" mean that we do not believe in any religion, and that we have nothing to do with it in our day to day life'; M. Ananthasayanam Ayyangar, CAD, II, pp. 881-882.
  • Bhargava , R. 2000 . “ 'Is Secularism a Value in Itself?' ” . In Pluralism and Equality , Edited by: Ahmad , I. , Ghosh , P. and Reifeld , H. 101 – 112 . Delhi : Sage . On the distinction between different forms of separation between state and religion, see
  • Bhargava , R. “ 'What is Secularism For?' ” . Edited by: Bhargava . 486 – 542 . On the different arguments for secularism, see also, op. cit., Ref. 4
  • Rao , B. Shiva . 1967 . The Framing of India's Constitution, Select Documents , vol. II , 87 Delhi : Indian Institute of Public Administration . B. R. Ambedkar, one of the chief architects of the Constitution, stated: "The State shall not recognise any religion as state religion':
  • Mahajan , G. 1998 . Identities and Rights: Aspects of Liberal Democracy in India , 47 Delhi : Oxford University Press .
  • Pandey , G. 1990 . The Construction of Communalism in Colonial North India , Delhi : Oxford University Press . It has been argued that a nationalism that stood outside and above the different communities and took as its unit the individual Indian citizen came to dominate nationalist discourse from the 1920s onwards. It was in this secular modernist nationalist vision that 'communalism' was opposed to 'nationalism' and identified with everything that was pre-modern, backward, sectarian and reactionary in Indian politics. See
  • Jayal , N. G. 1999 . Democracy and the State: Welfare, Secularism and Development in Contemporary India , Delhi : Oxford University Press . On this point, see
  • Embree, op. cit., Ref. 2.
  • argued , Nehru . “ 'produces narrowness and intolerance, credulity and superstition, emotionalism and irrationalism' ” . In Jawaharlal Nehru, The Discovery of India , 1956 edition , 526 London : Meridian Books . Organized religion,, Also cited in Mahajan, op. cit., Ref. 9, p. 19
  • Bilgrami , A. 1994 . 'Two concepts of secularism: reason, modernity and Archimedean ideal' . Economic and Political Weekly , XXIX/28 9 July : 1749 – 1761 . On this point
  • Parashar , A. 1992 . Women and Family Law Reform in India , Delhi : Sage . A large scholarly literature exists on the Shah Bano case. For an analysis of political debates in the Shah Bano case, see Jayal, op. cit., See also
  • Engineer , A. A. , ed. 1987 . The Shah Bano Controversy , Hyderabad : Orient Longman .
  • Pathak , Zakia and Rajan , Rajeswari Sunder . 1989 . 'Shah Bano' . Signs , 14/3 : 558 – 582 .
  • Hasan , Zoya . 1989 . 'Minority identity, Muslim women bill campaign and the political process' . Economic and Political Weekly , XXIV/1 7 Jan : 44 – 50 .
  • Sen , A. K. 1986 . Lok Sabha Debates Eighth Series , vol. XVII , Delhi : Government of India . Fifth Session (5.5.86), (henceforth LSD), col. 314
  • Smith , D. E. 1963 . India as a Secular State , Princeton , NJ : Princeton University Press . For instances of these, see
  • Galanter , M. “ 'Hinduism, secularism, and the Indian judiciary' ” . Edited by: Bhargava . 268 – 293 . G. Mahajan, op. cit., Ref. 9. With regard to the relation between law and religion in India, Galanter points out that Indian law not only permits application of different bodies of family law on religious lines, it also 'permits public laws, like those of religious trusts, to be differentiated according to religion; and permits protective or compensatory discrimination in favour of disadvantaged groups, and these may sometimes be determined in part by religion. The penal law in India is extraordinarily solicitous of religious sensibilities and undertakes to protect them from offence. The electoral law attempts to abolish religious appeals in campaigning. In all these areas, courts must determine the nature and boundaries of a particular religion. But beyond this, the state is empowered generally to use its broad regulative powers to bring about reforms in religious institutions and practices, and this power is wider with regard to Hinduism than it is in relation to other religions. The state is empowered to assure that Untouchables have full access to Hindu religious institutions.', op. cit., Ref. 4
  • Cossman , Brenda and Kapur , Ratna . 1996 . 'Secularism: Benchmarked by Hindu Right' . Economic and Political Weekly , XXXI/38 21 September : 2613 – 2630 . 2621 Also cited in Jayal, op. cit., Ref. 21, p. 102. In Indian debates, Nehruvian secularism is sometimes identified with dharma nirpeksata (roughly, religious impartiality), and the Gandhian notion with sarva dharma sambhava (roughly, respect for all religions)
  • Zaidi , A. M. 1984 . Congress and the Minorities, Preserving National Cohesion: A Study of Congress Policy Towards Minorities During the Last 100 Years , New Delhi : Indian Institute of Applied Political Research . This position was reiterated in different forms in various Congress resolutions of the 1920s and 1930s: see
  • Shaikh , F. 1989 . Community and Consensus in Islam: Muslim Representation in Colonial India, 1860-1947 , Cambridge : Cambridge University Press . On the notion of descriptive representation, see
  • Pitkin , H. 1967 . The Concept of Representation , Berkeley , CA : University of California Press .
  • Phillips , A. 1995 . The Politics of Presence , Oxford : Clarendon Press .
  • Morris-Jones , W. H. 1963 . “ 'Behaviour and ideas in political India' ” . In Constitutionalism in Asia , Edited by: Spann , R. N. 74 – 91 . Bombay : Asia Publishing House . On how the national movement for independence in India exercises a powerful hold on the standards people employ for judging the performance of politicians, see
  • Hasan , Zoya . 1998 . “ 'Gender Politics, Legal Reform, and the Muslim Community in India' ” . In Appropriating Gender: Women's Activism ami Politicized Religion in South Asia , Edited by: Jeffery , Patricia and Basu , Amrita . 71 – 88 . New York : Routledge . On political unity and national identity as components of national unity concerns, see Embree, op. cit., Ref. 2, p. 56. For national unity concerns in the Shah Bano case, see

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