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About This Book
Secularism emerged in 17th-century Europe as an essential element of what became the modern state. The separation of church and state that it entailed paved the way for the democratic republics we take for granted today. Tolerance, as understood in the West, was sought to be introduced as state policy by the British in India too. But our nationalist leaders understood their country better than to adopt the concept without local adjustments. Political philosopher Nalini Rajan examines the tension between religious freedom and state intervention in India, a tension that comes with the idea of ‘principled’ state intervention in matters of religion, as mandated by the Constitution. Demands for reservations and separate electorates by minorities in the early twentieth century had essentially ruled out absolute state neutrality in this respect. But it is only by analysing the fascinating debates on secularism in the Constituent Assembly (1946?49) that we see how and why the specific....
About The Author
Nalini Rajan is Dean of Studies and Professor, Asian College of Journalism, Chennai. She has taken classes on secularism for her students over 20 years. She has a doctorate in Social Communication, specializing in political philosophy, from the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium. She has written five books on political philosophy, including The Story of Secularism: 15th–21st Century and Religious Faith, Ideology, Citizenship: The View from Below (co-author), three works of fiction, and edited six volumes on media studies. Her first novel, The Pangolin’s Tale, was long-listed for the 2007 Man Asian Literary Prize. She is General Editor of the series, Studies in Journalism (Orient Blackswan).
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