whither secularism is it a problem of definition (1)

7/29/2019 Whither Secularism is It a Problem of Definition (1)

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Economic & Political Weekly EPW janua ry 19, 2013 vol xlviII no 3 53

Whither Secularism: Is It a Problem of Definition?

Ratna Naidu

This essay proposes a move away from the dyad

conceptualisation of the secular and the sacred. The

source of contestation against the secular is not only

religion but also other institutions in society. The binary

conceptualisation of the secular and the sacred derived

from the reality of fused institutions of an earlier era is of

limited value. It is argued here that the secular is

multifocal as is the secular agenda. The enemies of the

secular include entrenched interests in the economy andpolity which, in todays highly differentiated societies,

are not guided exclusively by religion. Further, the

conditions that define the secular, namely, the separation

of the state from religious authority, neutrality of the

state towards all religions, the establishment of a

procedural republic, are all ideal types to be used as a

Weberian research tool, but, collectively, these do not

encompass the secular problem in its entirety.

In this essay the secular is defined as a value, a preferred

way of life rooted in secular philosophy. Secularism is the

ideology which motivates action towards implementing

secular values. The essay presents the difficulties with

the traditional definition of the secular with illustrations

from past and current events, and presents an

alternate approach.

Ratna Naidu ([email protected]) retired as Professor from the

Department of Sociology, University of Hyderabad.

At a public event held on 22 October 2009, Judith Butler,

Jurgen Habermas, Charles Taylor and Cornel West

addressed over a thousand people in the Great Hall of

New York Citys Cooper Union on the question of the relevance

of religion in the public sphere.1 Being embedded in different

philosophical orientations, their approaches to the issue dif-

fered. However they all converged on the need for rapproche-

ment between religion and politics. Taylor called for a radical

redefinition of secularism,2 Butler suggested that pushing re-

ligions to the private sphere may be a fugitive way for religion

to survive (Mendieta et al 2011: 72), West called for secularthinkers (to) become more religiously musical (ibid: 93) and

Habermas even suggested that reasoning had entered the

post-secular phase (ibid: 93).

These arguments for religion in the political process may

be very confusing for those of us who believe in the tradition

of the Enlightenment: that the epistemology of secular reason

must be kept separate from that of the sacred, in stance

more rigid.

In the Afterword in the proceedings published on the basis

of these presentations, Craig Calhoun gives a fascinating his-

torical account of the interventions of religious idiom and the

use of religious places (Church, Synagogue, etc) to push secular

issues (the anti-slavery and later, the civil rights movement)in the public sphere (ibid: 118-34). Even the Enlightenment,

Calhoun, says, was a movement among religious thinkers,

a project of religiously informed public reason, a project

dependent on moderation not offaith but of enthusiasm

(ibid: 125), the enthusiasm of the fanatic who brooked no

compromise (ibid: 126).

One is reminded of the Mahatma whose secular credentials

cannot be faulted, yet he led the nationalist movement with

a robust moral and religious fervour. The power of religion in

propelling secular issues in the public sphere can hardly

be denied. One has also to agree with many scholars writing

on this issue, that secular ethics did not emerge from a

vacuum, but are rooted in emancipatory religious texts. The

Ten Commandments, surely, says it all for a functioning

procedural republic.

A key question, though, still remains. How do we synchro-

nise the core message of the Enlightenment, operationalised

by secular ideas: liberty, equality and fraternity with the

basic injunctions of all religion? These injunctions, generally,

put limits to freedom, sanction hierarchy and restrain frater-

nity between faiths.

These contentions are an area of active current debate

which I do not seek to examine in this essay.3 What I would


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janua ry 19, 2013 vol xlviII no 3 EPW Economic & Political Weekly54

like to do, though, is to consider the traditional definition of

secular in the western tradition which is typically directly

and solely in relation to the sacred. I argue that secular

philosophy and values are routinely violated by sources other

than religion and that the binary conceptualisation of the

secular and sacred has obscured the role of a range of

entrenched interests which contest secular philosophy. While

the French Revolution made religion the villain in conflict

with the then incipient secular institutions of a medieval age,

the drama of the event has detracted attention from other

special interests which undermine secularism. I question the

dictionary meaning of the term secular(ism), generally, as the

separation of the state from religion and suggest that the defi-

nition of secular(ism) should be broadened and linked to its

roots in secular philosophy.

I, therefore, deliberately move away from the dyad

conceptualisation of the secular being that which is not

sacred, as also from its etymological roots: the temporal as

distinct from the eternal, profane time as distinct from

sacred/higher time. This requires a redefinition of the secu-lar. I propose to define secular as a value and in turn define

value in the following paragraph. It is further proposed that

secular values are embedded in secular philosophy and a

common sense view of secular philosophy as it emerged in the

West is presented.

The secular is a value, secularity is an attitudinal attribute,

secularism is an ideology and all these are rooted in secular

philosophy/epistemology. Whereas secularism motivates action

towards secular issues, secularity is a preferred attitudinal

value. Values are defined as preferred modes of orientation to

specifiable categories of human experience (Dutta 1971). The

source of values may be secular philosophy, religion, or tradi-

tions of art and culture. By these definitions, secularity is notin conflict with the values of religion. One can be simul-

taneously both secular and religious since the roots which

nourish these values are not in conflict. Further, secularisation

is the process of institutional differentiation between the secu-

lar and the sacred. In primitive/medieval societies the secular

and the sacred spaces were fused.

Secular Philosophy

Basic to secular philosophy are the twin principles of science

and humanitarianism. While science enables material progress,

the emphasis here is on the attitudinal attributes generated by

the culture of science. Fundamental to the world of science is a

culture of empirically grounded reasoning, innovation and

discovery which continuously change our view and the mean-

ing of the world around us.

The words curiosity, comprehension and compassion are

basic to the secular outlook. One imagines that these might

be inherent to almost all living creatures. Whereas all organ-

isms have built-in survival instincts expressed in the form of

signs, in the human these take the form of symbols which

assign meanings and concepts to comprehension and com-

passion. Having assigned meanings, there is the attempt at

assertion to change the environment for a better quality of

life. Secular inquiry and outlook must, therefore, be as old

as the human race but had momentum in western civilis-

ation in ancient Greece. According to recorded history (and

much of what happened earlier may be lost for lack of record)

the basis for a secular philosophy was firmly laid as early

as 600 BCE. Scientific investigations were on going and

superstitions, the basis of ethics and morality were all

under scrutiny.

Thales (624 BCE to 546 BCE) and Democritus (460 BCE to

370 BCE) are prominent among the early scientists. Thales

forte was metaphysics, mathematics, and astronomy. Thales

could determine the height of the pyramids from the length

of their shadows, could calculate the distance of a ship at sea

from observations taken on the land, and was involved in

magnetism, electrostatic effects and many similar projects.

The language of science: theoretical propositions, deductive

reasoning, observation and knowledge of geometry and

mathematics can be traced back to 600 BCE to many of

Thales projects. Thales activities in predicting a good

harvest and then undertaking what might today be calledhedge fund investing, is well known. He would put down de-

posits to buy olive presses at a discount and then rent them

out at high prices during peak harvest season.4 Democritus,

famously known as the laughing philosopher (Barryman

2010) (for his scoffing at human follies) is recognised for the

formulation of atomist physics and was the first also to state

the principle of causality. Referring to cause and effect rela-

tions in nature, he said By necessity are foreordained all

things that were and are to come (Margenau 1950: 395).

Some decades later, Strato (335 BCE to 269 BCE) acknowl-

edged as the founder of geology, observed the flow of rivers

and the consequent change of the landscape by the accumu-

lation of mud and soil in different l ocations. He observedthat falling bodies accelerate by observing the flow of water

poured from a spout. Strato, like Democritus saw life force in

nature and cause and effect relationships of necessity with

intent being neutral between good and evil. Hylozoism can

be traced to Strato.5

Simultaneous with the initiatives to uncover the laws of

nature, were the movements of Sceptics questioning the basis

for knowledge of the objective world and also the basis for

social mores, morals, ethics, and laws. Socrates (469/470 BCE

to 399 BCE) proposed the negative method of hypotheses

selection.6 Known as the questioning technique, this methodo-

logy puts constant pressure not only on the refinement of

knowledge produced about the material world, but also on the

framework of religious rituals, morality and justice to yield

more emancipatory windows to the social process. While

curiosity propelled the discovery of natures secrets, scepti-

cism questioned the parameters of knowledge, the bottom line

being that knowledge produced is non-dogmatic.

The reason for reiterating some of these well-known tales

about the earliest scientists is to make the point that the

genetic code for secular philosophy need to be traced to the

epistemological position of these founders: that the natural

world can be understood by observation, and experiment.


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They were, perhaps, not interested, specifically, in demolish-

ing belief in religion. But in their quest and curiosity about

nature and its mysteries and discovering the laws of nature

and its predictability, if traditional beliefs and rituals fell on

the way side, so be it. Their deterministic view of the universe

has perhaps led later day scholars to regard them as having

atheistic leanings. Beyond elliptical statements like Thales

All things are full of Gods (Thales, op cit) or Protagoras

well known statement:

Concerning the Gods,

I have no means of knowing whether they exist or not,

Of what sort they may be,

Because of the obscurity of the subject and the brevity of human life.7

There is little specific evidence of their attitude towards the

transcendental. As for later day scientists, Newton was a con-

forming member of the Anglican Church, whereas Einstein

was an agnostic. Einsteins views are well documented. To a

question about his religious beliefs, he famously said:

Your question (about God) is the most difficult in the world. It is not a

question that I can answer simply with yes or no. I am not an Atheist. Ido not know if I can define myself as a Pantheist. The problem in-

volved is too vast for our limited minds.8

Conditions for the Rooting of Secular Values

The thinking around the rooting of secular values relies on the

existence of two conditions:

(1) The separation of the jurisdiction and secular authority of

the state from that of the power of religion and religious

organisations and the states neutrality to all religions.

(2) The evolution of civil/procedural laws designed to ensure

the enforcement of neutral applications of rights through secu-

lar institutions and especially through the judicial system and

through orders of the courts.These conditions for the secular are ideal types. It may be

recalled that the ideal type is a construct, a research tool

developed by Max Weber to be used as a measure for assess-

ing the phenomenon under study at the level of reality. The

ideal type is never real, but as an analytical construct can

enable comparative studies of, for instance, secularisation or

the separation of state authority from religious organisations.

As will be seen, in most countr ies, the reality is replete with

deviations from these ideal types and these deviations create

conflict about the validity of the secular ideal. However, to

some extent these conflicts are due to the very limiting and

narrow nature of the definition of the secular in relation to

the sacred.

The Wall of Separation between the State and Religion

The Wall of Separation (the Wall) has been an intractable

issue at the core of recent debate with regard to the nature

of the secular state. There are ongoing attempts to remove

(or put back) bricks from the Wall both on seemingly trivial

issues, but also on issues which are fundamental. In the

United States (US), for instance, the faithful, would like

to take few bricks out of the Wall when secularists name

the Christmas tree, the Green tree and they receive a

Happy Holiday greeting card from the White House rather

than the traditional Christmas card. Equally, in Canada,

there was an outcry when the secularists found many bricks

missing from the Wall when the parents of a Sikh child

insisted on his wearing a kirpan as part of his apparel when

attending school.

Such issues apart, there have always been encroachments

of the secular into sacred space and vice versa in funda-

mental ways which makes one wonder whether the Wall

ever did, really, exist in any nation state. The French Revolu-

tion which initiated the separation of the authority of the

state from that of the church witnessed the most aggressive

takeover of sacred spaces by secular forces with total

disregard for a Wall. The aggression, of course, was neces-

sary to establish the authority of the state vis--vis the all-

encompassing power of the church at that time. Priests and

bishops became state employees, school texts were sought to

be purged of religion, and there was secular management of

religious properties.

Even today, after more than 200 years, the Wall does notexist in the United Kingdom (UK), ironically the birthplace of

the rationalists. The head of the state (the Queen) is also the

head of the established church and yet, secular space, insofar

as it is in the minds of public, is protected by a population

which is increasingly irreligious. A recent research report by

the House of Commons Library found that during the last six

years there has been a 49% increase in non-believers in this

basically Christian country.9 In the US where religion and

religious organisations are vibrant, a more defined Wall exists

between the arena of state authority and the authority of

religious organisations.

The Wall has never been an issue in India where the word

secular appeared in the Constitution only in 1976. There hasbeen a full flow of influences between the religious/sacred and

the secular, and especially into the political sphere. Faith

schools and other faith-based institutions and pilgrimages are

subsidised, there is secular management of religious places

and festivals, and in turn, the voice of religious leaders shapes

vote banks and the political process.

In general, the notion of separation between religious and

secular authority runs into problems where there is state

funding of religion sponsored institutions: schools, old age

homes, orphanages, pilgrimages, places of worship, etc. Many

taxpayers are non-believers or they may not subscribe to the

particular religious organisation which is subsidised. This

divide is at the heart of secular resistance to such state fund-

ing since it results in serious deviations from the ideal type of

a secular state.

Neutrality

The second aspect of the relation between the state and reli-

gious organisation is the notion of neutrality: that it is politi-

cally correct in a liberal democracy for the state to be neutral

vis--vis all religious/cultural communities.

The principal of neutrality and equal distance of the

state from different religions is not new to India. The principle


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was implemented by Akbar as early as in the 1590s. He

abolished special taxes on non-Muslims and in the words of

Amartya Sen:

He paid particular attention to the challenge of inter-community rela-

tions and the abiding need for communal peace and fruitful collabora-

tion in the already multicultural India of the sixteenth century. We

have to recognise how unusual Akbars policies were for the time. The

Inquisitions were in full swing and Giordano Bruno was burnt at thestake for heresy in Rome in 1600 even as Akbar was making his pro-

nouncements on religious tolerance in Indiaalso arranged system-

atic dialogues in his capital city of Agra between Hindus, Muslims,

Christians, Jains, Parsees, Jews and others, even including agnostics

and atheists (Sen 2009: 37).

However, as will be seen in a moment, an emperors vision

and intellectual articulation of neutrality between religious

groups is of a different genre from the neutrality of a state,

under pressure from assertive minorities in election-powered

modern states.

The architects of the Indian Constitution (1950) ensured

multicultural policies long before the term multiculturalism

came into vogue in the west. The term first gained currency inCanada to deal with its complex multi-language, multicultural

issues. Nation states were always constituted of a plurality of

cultures, religions and languages. Such plural societies are

integrated by political arrangements which are hierarchic in

implication. The dominant culture/cultures have space in the

public domain. Harmony between the communities in plural

societies is possible so long as there is no challenge to this hier-

archy and there is no demand from various minorities for

equal space in the public domain. Multicultural policies fine-

tune the process of democracy and offer equal space to all cul-

ture groups in the political process of the nation state. This

does not come as a benevolent gesture from the state, but

evolves through the pressures of various cultural and religiousorganisations for recognition in the process of electoral poli-

tics. This is in tune with the postmodern celebration of diversi-

ties. The term multicultural society, thus, of course has its

origin in the new nations of Canada, Australia and US, peopled

by resilient immigrant groups. In time, multiculturalism

replaced traditional policies on integration of minorities and

immigrants, also, in the UK and other European countries.

Although the established church is prioritised in most western

democracies, the multicultural policy of equal treatment for

all religious organisations is now generally the norm.

In this context, the states neutrality towards all religious

organisations and multicultural values are basic to the secular

package. However, as with the Wall, practical reality does not

reflect a neutral stance of the state between the majority and

the others in any western society. Language, culture, and the

traditional church are generally prioritised by the state in

western liberal democracies.

In India, on the other hand, the critique is that a significant

Muslim vote bank often skews the balance of neutrality. The

carving out of Pakistan merely took out the creamy layer of the

Muslim community from India, leaving behind vast numbers

of poor Muslims in every state of the Indian Union, and more

poor without the umbrella of their traditional patrons. The

founding fathers of the Constitution, and especially Nehru

were particular that the Muslims who stayed on after Partition

should be protected by the state. But 60 years on, in the con-

text of a vibrant democracy, Muslims now constitute signifi-

cant vote banks which every political party has to take into

account. In general, the neutrality principle is vulnerable in all

societies because of the pressure of electoral calculus.

Rajeev Bhargava has offered a new phrase to the discourse

on secularism: instead of neutrality, he suggests a principled

distance of the state to religious establishments (Bhargava

2011). Bhargava would credit the stance of the founding fathers

of the Constitution to the minorities with principled dis-

tance. Perhaps at the dawn of democracy there was a special

moment evoking a special stance towards the minorities. But in

general theoretical terms is principled distance better than

neutrality? Neutrality is not a value loaded term whereas

principles connote values. There is no principle involved in

electoral calculus and certainly for some decades in India,

expediency has been the guiding light in matters of relations

between state craft and religion. I would, therefore, stay withthe term neutrality even though most liberal democracies,

the world over, would not score highly on this account.

Enforcement of Rights of Citizens

This brings us to the second important condition for the root-

ing of secular values, namely, the evolutions of civil/proce-

dural laws designed to ensure the enforcement of neutral ap-

plication of rights to all citizens. In the west, these laws,

whether of the epistemic variety of common laws or civil laws

apply to all citizens in the entire territory of the nation. A more

or less white, Christian majority culture enabled the evolution

of these laws. The roots of the western legal system go back to

ancient Roman times and the system was of course encrustedwith flaws of privilege and discrimination which limited their

neutrality in application to the citizens of the state; hence the

significance of the French Revolution. The French Revolution

made frontal attacks on privilege and discrimination. The slo-

gan: liberty, equality, fraternity not only changed family re-

lations by targeting patriarchy (in terms of laws of inheritance,

gender equality, marriage made a civil act with provision of

divorce, etc) but also freed market systems by targeting the

guilds which used to demand compulsory membership and

regulated every profession. The French Revolution ensured

that the state was the only authority over citizens. Other west-

ern democracies followed this ideal making the citizens free

from religious and other organisations which lacked secular

accountability. Citizens do not have to follow multiple per-

sonal laws (of faith and state) and have equal entitlements.

In India the Hindu Code Bill was successfully legislated after

Independence by the powerful leadership led by Nehru, de-

spite strong resistance from religious fundamentalists. The

Hindu Code Bill brought many of the systemic benefits enjoyed

by women in the west to Hindu women in India. But the neu-

tral application of these rights to all religious communities was

restrained by values of respect to the internal laws of minority

religious communities. The Shah Bano case brought out


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vividly the dilemmas of the government caught between the

rights of the citizen and that of the community. The Supreme

Court delivered a judgment in favour of Shah Bano allowing

her a paltry sum of Rs 179 per month alimony from her hus-

band who divorced her. The judgment was contested by com-

munity leaders with mass demonstrations. A special bill was

passed by the Congress-led government which upheld the laws

of the community. The citizen Shah Bano was no contest for

the voting clout of the community. Here again, there is devia-

tion from the ideal type of the procedural republic which is a

basic condition for the secular process. The challenge today in

most nation states is the need to balance the civil rights of the

individual as against the rights of the community in which the

individual is embedded.

The Wall which should separate the state from religious ac-

tivities, the states neutral stance towards all religious estab-

lishments and the procedural republic are all ideal types. The

secularists in most countries live with the reality of deviations

from the ideal; perhaps this cushions the masses from the

trauma of complete rupture from traditions.

Defining Secular beyond Its Link to the Sacred

It is seen that the strength and form of the separation of religion

from functions of the state, the states neutrality to all religions

and the application of these to evolve a procedural republic

differ in different liberal democracies. Liberal democracy

itself is contextual, shaped by particular struggles in specific

time and space, a sedimented product of the history of particu-

lar nation states. Liberal democracy is both a form of govern-

ment and a process which is propelled by secular philosophy.

The central issue is not merely of separation of religion from

state craft but of the role of the state in protecting humanitari-

anism (and now, it seems, all living creatures and the planetitself) through the lens of a secular world view. In its original

context in 18th century France, secular philosophy provided

the ideology for separation of state and church. This took place

through a revolution which pulverised the divine right of the

monarchy endorsed by the church. Secularism questioned

religion-based endorsements of privilege, hierarchy, exclu-

sion, etc. I would argue that such endorsements have been

made also by sources other than religionthroughout history.

In all dictionaries the meaning of secularism is given in rela-

tion to the sacred: a tendency to exclude religious standards

from public affairs, ethical standards divorced from religious

traditions (Penguin), indifference to or rejection or exclusion

of religion and religious considerations (Webster), etc. Charles

Taylor rescues the term from this dyad predicament by plac-

ing it in, what he calls, The Immanent Frame (Taylor 2011).

His historical study of the dawn of the secular age (Taylor 2007)

in the context of the evolution of Christianity gives a panoramic

view of the expansion of secular space. Taylor suggests that the

secular came into its own as an autonomous force during the

period of reformation and the French Revolution. However, he

continues to assume a dyad relationship between the secular

and the sacred. I propose that the secular was always an auton-

omous force, a creation science and reason, a search for a better

explanation of life. The dyad conceptualisation camouflages

the more basic process of functional differentiation. Recall

that functional differentiation took place not only between

religion and state craft but in all spheres of society. The familys

function to socialise and educate the next generation was

hived off to schools and systems of education, the economy

was differentiated from the family and the polity, and so on. It

is secular assertions which pressured functional differentia-

tion. By tying the secular and the sacred in a binary relation,

we overlook sources of oppression and obscurantism in institu-

tions other than religion. I illustrate as follows.

In early democracies, whether in ancient Greece or the pan-

chayats in India, specific categories of people: slaves, women,

immigrants, etc, were excluded from democratic discourse.

The robust democracies in the west excluded the colonies from

participating in the democratic process, the blacks in the US

were denied citizenship rights as late as in the middle of the

last century (the civil rights movement was at its peak only in

the 1960s) and the original inhabitants of that subcontinent,

the Native Americans are stil l in a state of limbo.Liberal democracies propelled by secular philosophy are

textured, deepened and created inch by inch by hitherto

excluded categories of people/issues making demands for recog-

nition and inclusion. Battles are won but the war is never over

since new issues af fecting new categories of people/situations

emerge. One may get some perspective on western liberal

democracies based on secular values in looking at the issue of

womens right to vote and the right to hold public office.

Liberty, equality fraternity was the motto of French secu-

larism, and yet, womens right to vote and stand for public

office was not granted in France until as late as 1944. The womens

suffrage movement started in France as early as the 1780s, ear-

lier even to the French Revolution (1787-99). It would seemthat for almost 200 years the battle for power, equality and in-

clusion was a battle only between men. The story is not so dif-

ferent in other European countries, possibly the most extreme

case is that of Switzerland. The first feminist association was

established in Switzerland in 1868, demanding civil rights and

the right to university education, but they were able to get vot-

ing rights and the right to hold public office only in 1971.

In stark contrast, in India Hindu women received all their

rights in 1956, although their sisters worshipping other gods

were denied civil rights (though not voting rights). The irony is

that Hindu women could leapfrog into modern personal and

family laws thanks to men who were intellectually nurtured in

the western liberal ethos. While it took much longer for the

institutionalised discrimination against blacks and women to

break down and take cognition of the emancipatory move-

ments in the west, India was the beneficiary of the spill-over

effect on the mindset of men and women who had just

emerged from fierce opposition to colonial oppression. The

central point is that the source of oppression and anti-secular

philosophy in the west was not always religion: no religion

per se discriminated against black people or women, and,

importantly, there has never been any hesitation to convert

people of colour. Discriminations were/are institutionalised to


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protect special concerns by people with power and authority.

Since in ancient times power and authority was fused with

religion, much of the discriminatory features, especially

against woman were laid at the door of religion.

Relationship between Religion and the Secular

How, then, are secular attitudes a challenge to religious in-

junctions? Consider that humanitarianism is not alien to reli-

gion. Indeed humanitarian values may be basic to all religious

discourse. Whereas welfare of the individual (man/woman/

child), here and now, is the measure of secular humanitarianism,

the culture of humanitarianism differs in different religions.

Humanitarian ethics of a particular religion is predictive of the

overall explanatory scheme which offers rationale for norms

and values for everyday life in that religion.

Different religions have institutionalised systems of philoso-

phy and practice to enable consciousness of god. Religion

encourages certain type of behaviour patterns and discourages

others, restrains and guides motivation and always grounds

these in ultimate existential questions which seek answers inthe transcendental. Religious values indicate the cosmic world

of imagination which in turn have an effect on culture and

psychology of the members of a community. Religions func-

tional imperative lies in the fact that while humans have infi-

nite creative potential, there is never a moment when he/she

can be conscious of being an absolute creator and absolutely

free to determine the course of events. Religion/faith provides

the explanatory framework for this core resistance to human

freedom. Secular questions do not seek answers for this core

unexplainable reality and only seek answers to the mysteries

of the natural/material world, and advocate freedom of the

individual to pursue his/her avocation in that world. The clash

of the sacred and the secular happens because each religionnot only depicts the world of gods but also the material world

and social organisation of men and women. The imagery of

religious language functions as a controlling mechanism aiming

to secure the material world consciousness to god conscious-

ness in a stable relationship. This stable relationship between

the world of god and the material world becomes vulnerable

with each scientific discovery, each new theoretical formula-

tion of the phenomenal world, resulting in new ways of adapt-

ing and coping with the vicissitudes of both the physical and

social environment. As new dimensions of reality are revealed

by science, the world requires new ways of defining relations

between man and his environment including his fellow men

and women. The religious reformation movements, new inter-

pretations of scriptures and new religious revelations are

attempts to restore equilibrium between consciousness of god

and the consciousness of the world. There is a clash between

secular values and religious values during the interim periods

of social change when religion must come to terms with new

visions of the world offered by scientific discoveries and secu-

lar interpretations of social relationships (Dutta 1971: 63-70).

The penetration of secular values into the religious sphere

is easier when functional/institutional differentiation be-

tween public and religious authority already exist as in the

new nations of Australia, the US and Canada. This did not

happen for hundreds of years when the very authority of kings

and emperors had divine sanction, as also when democratic

rights to assert were incipient vis--vis powerful warlords. The

reform movements and the French Revolution were a culmina-

tion of secular assertion. Thisparticular secularisation took place

in Christendom. The Immanent Frame, whether of Charles Tay-

lor (2011) or earlier as presented by Max Weber in his Protes-

tant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism10 thus involve the search

for the seeds of secular thought only in the Judeo-Christian tradi-

tion. However, the point being made here is that curiosity, com-

prehension, compassion and assertion are clearly propelled by

secular values and need not emerge from any religious tradition.

Religious and secular values involve different but not oppo-

sitional systems of philosophy. Secular values evolve from sci-

entific facts and are part of a philosophywhich neither denies

nor recognises the relevance of religious philosophy which, in

turn, is based on non-observable deities and faith-based facts/

values. Scientific humanism and religiosity can and do coexist.

It may be a matter of state craft and evolution of a legal frame-work which could protect the rights of both the individual and

that of the religious community.

The secular story is embedded in the story of mankind and

not in opposition to religion. I propose that the definition of

secular in the form of the dyad, namely, that which is not sa-

cred, suffers from a negative formulation whereas secular is in

fact a positive, autonomous value system.

Perils of Multiculturalism and Secularism

Multicultural values are of course essential to a secular state

since the individual is rooted in specific cultures which give

meaning to life. However, there is no built-in contradiction

between the culture/religion embedded individual and theunencumbered individual (unencumbered by differentials

of religion/race and other identity attributes), just as there is

no logical opposition between religion and secular philosophy.

However, the basic problem which has emerged today is the

pursuit of multicultural and secular values as ideologies and

adopted by nation states in their policy framework.

Multiculturalism and secularism are ideologies, as is evident

in the -ism attached to these terms. As ideologies these terms

motivate action. Multicultural and the secular are values; they

are a preferred way of societal life. There is no coercive ele-

ment underlining the concepts, multicultural and secular,

there is no assumption of a complicated bureaucracy to ensure

the vitality of ongoing multicultural or secular processes.

However, as with all ideologies, there are unintended conse-

quences, often negative, in the official adoption of multicultur-

alism and secularism.

As an ideology, multiculturalism encourages the state in

various anti-secular directions, the most pernicious of which is

identity politics. This is inevitable in electoral politics which is

the basis for a functioning liberal democracy. Religious lead-

ers, in particular, have an interest in maintaining boundaries

from the other and they are encouraged towards funda-

mentalist injunctions so as to keep the flock intact.


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Multicultural values at their best enable the evolution of

secular humanistic values through communication with other

cultures/religions. The syncretic movements in India which

were a blend of multiple religious beliefs involving a process of

cultural reciprocation is an illustration of the immense poten-

tial of the values of a multicultural regime. There was vibrant

sharing of cultural/religious traits between the communities

in the bhakti movement and those led by sufi saints. These

movements gave new directions to values and special empha-

sis to equality as a fundamental value. Both these movements

de-emphasised the role of the clergy and brought about syn-

thesis between Hindu and Muslim cultures. Other such syn-

cretic sects are the Lingayats, Syrian Christians in Kerala

which combine a Jewish heritage with Hindu traditions in

their Christian faith, and the Mahima which is a fusion of

Vedantism and Buddhism.

Spontaneous multicultural interaction and communication

deepens and strengthens a national culture. But multicultural-

ism destroys this impulse, especially in the context of electoral

politics. As an ideology it encourages the careful nurturing ofseparate identities, boundaries of cultures become less porous

and separatist mentalities emerge and, of course, by implica-

tion, internal reforms are discouraged.

Multiculturalism superimposed on race prejudiced nation

states has had tragic consequences. The July bombings in 2005

in London by second-generation Muslims, born and brought

up in England put a question mark on the British policy of

multiculturalism. In earlier decades, the policies of integration

and assimilation used to be in place in western democracies.

But the hegemony of national cultures began to be under-

mined by ghettoisation in housing and social activities. In the

US, Canada, Australia, the so-called new nations, the immi-

grant communities are dispersed over large territories and theproblems of ghetto formation are accordingly reduced. How-

ever, tiny Denmark (5.4 million people), for instance, suddenly

woke up to the pressure of 2,00,000 Muslim residents. France

has enormous problems integrating five to six million Muslim

immigrants from the former French colonies of north Africa.

Islamic militancy in the zones, the outer suburbs of Paris is

an every-day problem because these ghettos are home to the

most impoverished of French citizens. The story is the same in

Germany, Belgium and so on. The immigrants in the suburbs

of Paris are traditional and devout Muslims and live in an

ethos very different from the feminist and secular culture of

Paris, only a few miles away.

That the UKs policy of multiculturalism has not scratched

the surface of the problem of integrating immigrant communi-

ties became clear when for the first time terrorists had

emerged from the innards of a western nation. The 7 July 2005

suicide bombers were young (in their late teens and early 20s)

and born of immigrant parents. Among the men behind the

strike, at least two had fled Africa as children and had found

safety in the UK. Safety, yes, but multiculturalism obviously

did not create acceptance.

In the UK, as immigrants moved into lower or middle class

areas, the original inhabitants moved out. Immigrants took

over these neighbourhoods, built their own institutions, places

of worship and business places. The immigrant/migrant com-

munities are separated from national culture by structural fac-

tors such as housing, school education and lack of shared

spaces for imbibing the culture of the nation.

Multiculturalism emerged during the last three decades not

only in tune with postmodern liberal philosophy, but also be-

cause of the importance of the vote banks constituted by im-

migrant and minority communities. The lure of vote banks

and multiculturalism set in official trends in politically cor-

rect gestures which often enrage and offend the Christian

majorities. As discussed earlier there is resentment that the

official greeting card is a Happy Holiday card rather than a

Christmas card. Nativity plays and carol services are taboo

in state institutions, officially winter lights have replaced

Christmas lights in government institutions and some munici-

palities the Christmas tree is referred to as the Holiday Tree;

traditional Easter or Christmas rituals are cancelled in some

schools and institutions and substituted by interfaith events.

How is one to make sense of these politically correct niceties inthe context of ghetto neighbourhoods, unemployment and

poverty and the feeling of alienation and non-acceptance?

While multiculturalisms enthusiasm offends the majority

since the traditions they value are undermined, it does not

please the minorities sufficiently to engage their hearts and

minds with the national culture. Multiculturalism merely

communalises the political process.

Certainly multicultural values contribute to a more diverse,

rich national culture, but I would argue that multiculturalism

pursued as an ideology freezes communication between cultures/

religions and contributes to a divisive, alienated, strife ridden

national culture. Similarly secularism as an ideology has nega-

tive consequences. When ideologies (Marxism, socialism, cap-italism, communism, etc) are adopted and pushed at an offi-

cial level, there is a tendency to overreach and often defeat the

purpose for which they were adopted.

Secularisms Overreach

Secularisms overreach is evident when Denmark refuses per-

mission to build a mosque in Copenhagen, France passes a

secularism law in 2004 which prohibits the display of religious

symbols such as the hijab, the turban, the cross and the skullcap

(followed by Belgium and Germany amongst others) and the

Scandinavian countries monitor parenting skills by secular

standards. Questions have been raised as to whether these

are true measures of secularism or display the ethnocentrism

of the majority. Secularisms overreach is inevitable when a

vast bureaucracy is set up by a government to ensure stand-

ards of secularism without sufficient concern for the underly-

ing existential problems of individual and family. Much infor-

mation about such bureaucratic methods emerged during the

recent debates on the forcible removal of the Bhattacharya

children in Norway to a foster home. Without going into the

merits of that specific case one marvels at the information

available via the media as a result of that incident. The Child

Protection Service (CPS) in Norway provide foster parents with


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substantial benefits salary, pension, paid holiday, regular

time off from the foster children, home and car allowances

and so on. In addition, the CPS, which has an annual budget of

7.7 billion NOK, employs social workers, psychologists and

others. With such a sizeable budget to spend, it is not surpris-

ing that parents, particularly immigrants with different

child-rearing practices are caught in this industry. Twenty-

three per 1,000 children in foster care are non-immigrants, 35

per 1,000 are children born in Norway to immigrant parents

while 51 per 1,000 are the children of first generation immi-

grants (Naravane 2012).

I have given more illustrations regarding the perils of multi-

culturalism and secularism from western countries (rather than,

for instance, India) because on a scale of 10, western countries

would, by many commentators, be rated higher on most secu-

lar issues. As such, it is easier to pick on role models which are

at the top of the scale than those which are at the bottom.

Note the shining example of the recent appointment of a

Muslim woman, Hadia Tajik of Pakistani origin, as Norwegian

Culture Minister. Surely this is a secular response to the likesof Anders Breivik and the anti-secular diatribe of his ilk. The

appointment could be interpreted as signalling multicultural

value at its best and not necessarily the divisive multicultural-

ism as outlined above. Perhaps Hadia Tajik will enable more

communication between the majority indigenous communi-

ties and the minorities, and root multicultural values while

discouraging divisive multiculturalism.

Conclusions

It is interesting that in the seminal publicationRethinking Sec-

ularism, the authors who are most uncomfortable with the

binary conceptualisation of the secular and the sacred are

from the academic discipline of international political theoryand those who have written extensively on world politics and

are engaged in comparative studies across nations.

In studying religion-based humanitar ian aid workers in sev-

eral countries and continents, Lynch (2011) has a problem with

rigid secular-sacred binary. Similarly Juergensmeyer and

Hurd squirm in the secular-sacred straitjacket, the former in

looking at religious and secular aspects of violence (Juergens-

meyer 2011)and Hurd (2011) at the political processes in Iran

and Egypt. From a comparative study of fundamentalism,

Appleby (2011) concludes that fundamentalism is not anti-

secular. Talal Asad asks If blasphemy indicates a religious

limit transgressed, does it really have no place in a free, secu-

lar society?(2011: 282). He then goes on to illustrate with

other legal constraints on communication in a capitalist soci-

ety, such as copy right, patent, trademark, property rights on

works of art and ideas and goes on to ask: if a work of artis

publicly re-produced in a distorted form by someone other

than the original author with the aim of commenting on it

are legal conditions infringed?

I would like to suggest that all these questions which are be-

ing raised by scholars on secularism could be answered more

fruitfully if the dyad conceptualisation of the secular and sacred

were to be wiped clean from the slates of all dictionaries.

The dyad/binary depicts a pair, element having a valence

of two, a bonding/link between two, thus, secular and the

sacred is depicted as binaryexclusive of all other framework of

explanation or action. The contestation in this essay is that the

secular is multifocal as is the secular agenda.

The secular tryst with humanitarianism has to take into ac-

count not only the situation in the current multi-religious,

multicultural nation states but also the power and authority of

autonomous economic processes. The juggernaut of invisible,

invincible flow of capital and technology and ideas across

national boundaries is, perhaps, as powerful as any religion.

The technology driven global capitalist world is a different

planet compared to the medieval societies of the pre-18th century

era. The dyad conceptualisation of secular and the sacred was

perhaps useful for the priority concerns of an earlier time, namely,

the urgent need for the institutional differentiation between secu-

lar and sacred space. Today, the delinking of the two concepts

would enable more differentiated and realistic analysis of secular

assertions. Secular assertions tussle against entrenched interests

in the maintenance of the status quo whether of religion, power,authority, capital or culture. This is why secularism seems to cam-

ouflage different notions to interested parties: ethnocentrism to

some, Islamophobia to others, and in India it is alleged that it

fudges the reality of vote bank politics. Delinking the secular from

that which is not religious would release the concept from a nega-

tive formulation, and enable the concept to point to a positive,

powerful, autonomous value system.

In conclusion, I would like to make two points:

First, we witness today a vastly energised religiosity and at

the same time there is no alternative to secular principles of

governance. Further, religious organisations have robust and

deep roots, in comparison secular values are incipient espe-

cially in countries like ours where multiple personal laws arestill applied. Therefore, secular values and secularity require

nurturing, not as an ideology but as an attitude, not through

the political system but via the judiciary, the media, the educa-

tion system and the creative arts, all these have a role to play

in instilling secular habits in society.

Second in todays multicultural state systems, relativistic

ways of thinking and viewing things become or should be-

come habitual to all. Ethnocentric valuing of ones own culture

ought not to be necessarily accompanied by the devaluation of

other cultures. The evolved citizen inevitably learns to think

and feel in terms of more complex categories and the test of

our times is how and when these attitudes will filter down to

all sections of the population.

Notes

[An invitation from the University of Hyderabad to deliver a lecture in

their Distinguished Lecture series, titled Is Secular ism a Fairy Tale? on

22 August 2007 enabled the articulation of the seeds of this essay. I thank

the University for providing me that platform. I also thank Ambika and

Tulsi for reading the first draft and for cheering me on in writing this

piece. Tulsi in particular has been most generous in giving her time and

her support for this essay. She has been in continuous dialogue with me

on the issues raised and enabled the restructure and focus up front on

the problem of the definition of the secular. This helped me in cutting


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SPECIAL ARTICLE


out the peripherals to be used for a book length

work. I am also indebted to Tulsi for her edito-

rial help.]

1 Proceedings of the event were published inMendieta, Eduardo and J VanAntwerpen (ed.)and Af terword by C Calhoun (2011).

2 Taken from the title of Charles Taylors essayWhy we need a Radical Redefinition of Secu-

larism in Mendieta and VanAntwerpen (2011).3 For our home grown debate on the issue of sec-

ularism, see, Bhargava, ed. (1998).

4 Thales, Wikipedia the Free Encyclopedia,8 September 2012, viewed on 29 July 2012(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thales).

5 Strato of Lampsacus, Wikipedia the Free Ency-clopedia, 17 June 2012, viewed on 8 April 2012(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strato-of-Lampsacus).

6 Socrates, Wikipedia the Free Encyclopedia,viewed 13 September 2012 (http:// en.wikipe-dia.org/wiki/Socrates).

7 Protagoras, Wikipedia the Free Encyclopedia,29 August 2012, viewed on 17 July 2012(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protagoras).

8 Religious Views of Albert Einstein, Wikipediathe Free Encyclopedia, 19 September 2012,

viewed on 31 July 2012. The quotation is takenfrom Viereck, George Sylvester (1930): Glimpsesof the Great (London: Duckworth), pp 372-73.

9 Press TV news, Britain to become Secular in20 Years, 4 March 2012 (www.prestv.ir/

detail/22989878html). See also theDaily Mail,5 March 2012.

10 Weber (1905); Talcott Parsons (1930) transla-tion (London: Allen & Unwin). See my critiqueon this issue: Dutta (1968).

References

Appleby, R Scott (2011): Rethinking Fundamental-ism in a Secular Age in Calhoun et al (2011),pp 225-47.

Asad, Talal (2011): Freedom of Speech and Reli-gious Limitations in Calhoun et al (2011).

Barryman, Sylvia (2010): Democritus, The Stan-ford Encycloped ia of Philosophy, 25 August,viewed on 29 July 2012 (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/democritus).

Bhargava, Rajeev, ed. (1998): Secularism and ItsCritics (New Delhi: Oxford University Press).

(2011): Rehabilitating Secularism in Calhounet al (2011).

Calhoun, Craig, M Juergensmeyer and J VanAnt-werpen, ed. (2011): Rethinking Secular ism(New York: Oxford University Press).

Charles Taylor (2011) Why We Need a Radical Re-definition of Secularism in Mendieta andVanAntwerpen (2011).

Dutta, Ratna (1968): Values and Economic Deve-lopment,Economic & Political Weekly, Annu-al Number, January.

(1971): Values in Models of Modernisation(Delhi: Vikas Publication and Cambridge,

Massachusetts: Schenkman Publishing Co),pp 69-70.

Hurd, E S (2011): A Suspension of (Dis) Belief: TheSecular-Religious Binary and the Study ofInternational Relations in Calhoun et al (2011),pp 166-84.

Juergensmeyer, M (2011): Rethinking the Secularand Religious Aspects of Violence in Calhounet al (2011).

Lynch, C (2011): Religious Humanitarianism andthe Global Politics of Secularism in Calhounet al (2011), pp 204-24.

Margenau, Henry (1950): The Nature of PhysicalReality: A Philosophy of Modern Physics (NewYork: McGraw-Hill Book Company).

Mendieta, Eduardo and J VanAntwerpen, ed. andAfterword by C Calhoun (2011): The Powerof Religion in the Public Sphere (New York: Co-lumbia University Press).

Naravane, Vaiju (2012): One Tragic Story AmongMany in The Hindu, Op-Ed page, Friday,23 March.

Sen, Amartya (2009): The Idea of Justice (London:Allen Lane, published by Penguin Books).

Taylor, Charles (2007):A Secular Age (Cambridge,Massachusettwes: Harvard University Press).

(2011): Western Secularity in Calhoun et al(2011).

Weber, Max (1905): The Protestant Ethic and theSpirit of Capitalism, Talcott Parsons (1930)translation (London: Allen & Unwin).

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