SPECIAL ARTICLE

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 and polity 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 (ratnanaidu73@yahoo.com) retired as Professor from the Department of Sociology, University of Hyderabad.
Economic & Political Weekly EPW

t 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 differed. However they all converged on the need for rapprochement between religion and politics. Taylor called for a radical redenition of secularism,2 Butler suggested that pushing religions to the private sphere may be a fugitive way for religion to survive (Mendieta et al 2011: 72), West called for secular thinkers (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 historical 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 of faith 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 synchronise 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 fraternity 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
53

january 19, 2013

vol xlviII no 3

SPECIAL ARTICLE

like to do, though, is to consider the traditional denition 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 conict 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 denition 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 redenition of the secular. I propose to dene secular as a value and in turn dene 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 dened as preferred modes of orientation to speciable categories of human experience (Dutta 1971). The source of values may be secular philosophy, religion, or traditions of art and culture. By these denitions, secularity is not in conict with the values of religion. One can be simultaneously both secular and religious since the roots which nourish these values are not in conict. Further, secularisation is the process of institutional differentiation between the secular 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 meaning 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 organisms 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 compassion. Having assigned meanings, there is the attempt at assertion to change the environment for a better quality of
54

life. Secular inquiry and outlook must, therefore, be as old as the human race but had momentum in western civilisation 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 rmly laid as early as 600 BCE. Scientic 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 called hedge fund investing, is well known. He would put down deposits 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 scofng at human follies) is recognised for the formulation of atomist physics and was the rst also to state the principle of causality. Referring to cause and effect relations 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) acknowledged as the founder of geology, observed the ow of rivers and the consequent change of the landscape by the accumulation of mud and soil in different locations. He observed that falling bodies accelerate by observ ing the ow 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 methodology puts constant pressure not only on the renement 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, scepticism 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.
january 19, 2013 vol xlviII no 3
EPW Economic & Political Weekly

SPECIAL ARTICLE

They were, perhaps, not interested, specically, in demolishing 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 specic evidence of their attitude towards the transcendental. As for later day scientists, Newton was a conforming 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 difcult in the world. It is not a question that I can answer simply with yes or no. I am not an Atheist. I do not know if I can dene myself as a Pantheist. The problem involved 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 secular 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 assessing 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 countries, the reality is replete with deviations from these ideal types and these deviations create conict about the validity of the secular ideal. However, to some extent these conicts are due to the very limiting and narrow nature of the denition of the secular in relation to the sacred.
The Wall of Separation between the State and Religion

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 fundamental ways which makes one wonder whether the Wall ever did, really, exist in any nation state. The French Revolution 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 necessary to establish the authority of the state vis--vis the allencompassing 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 not exist 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 dened 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 has been a full ow of inuences 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 funding since it results in serious deviations from the ideal type of a secular state.
Neutrality

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
Economic & Political Weekly EPW

The second aspect of the relation between the state and religious organisation is the notion of neutrality: that it is politically 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
55

january 19, 2013

vol xlviII no 3

SPECIAL ARTICLE

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 relations and the abiding need for communal peace and fruitful collaboration 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 the stake for heresy in Rome in 1600 even as Akbar was making his pronouncements on religious tolerance in Indiaalso arranged systematic 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 rst gained currency in Canada 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 hierarchy and there is no demand from various minorities for equal space in the public domain. Multicultural policies netune the process of democracy and offer equal space to all culture 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 religious organisations for recognition in the process of electoral politics. This is in tune with the postmodern celebration of diversities. 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. A lthough 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 reect 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 signicant 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
56

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 context of a vibrant democracy, Muslims now constitute signicant 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 distance. 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 with the 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 rooting of secular values, namely, the evolutions of civil/procedural laws designed to ensure the enforcement of neutral application 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 encrusted with aws of privilege and discrimination which limited their neutrality in application to the citizens of the state; hence the signicance of the French Revolution. The French Revolution made frontal attacks on privilege and discrimination. The slogan: liberty, equality, fraternity not only changed family relations 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 western democracies followed this ideal making the citizens free from religious and other organisations which lacked secular accountability. Citizens do not have to follow multiple personal 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, despite strong resistance from religious fundamentalists. The Hindu Code Bill brought many of the systemic benets enjoyed by women in the west to Hindu women in India. But the neutral 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
january 19, 2013 vol xlviII no 3
EPW Economic & Political Weekly

SPECIAL ARTICLE

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 husband who divorced her. The judgment was contested by community 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 deviation 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 activities, the states neutral stance towards all religious establishments 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 specic time and space, a sedimented product of the history of particular nation states. Liberal democracy is both a form of government 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 humanitarianism (and now, it seems, all living creatures and the planet itself) 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, exclusion, etc. I would argue that such endorsements have been made also by sources other than religion throughout history. In all dictionaries the meaning of secularism is given in relation 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 placing 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 autonomous force, a creation science and reason, a search for a better
Economic & Political Weekly EPW

explanation of life. The dyad conceptualisation camouages 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 differentiation. By tying the secular and the sacred in a binary relation, we overlook sources of oppression and obscurantism in institutions other than religion. I illustrate as follows. In early democracies, whether in ancient Greece or the panchayats in India, specic 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 still 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 recognition and inclusion. Battles are won but the war is never over since new issues affecting 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 ofce. Liberty, equality fraternity was the motto of French secularism, and yet, womens right to vote and stand for public ofce was not granted in France until as late as 1944. The womens suffrage movement started in France as early as the 1780s, earlier even to the French Revolution (1787-99). It would seem that for almost 200 years the battle for power, equality and inclusion was a battle only between men. The story is not so different in other European countries, possibly the most extreme case is that of Switzerland. The rst feminist association was established in Switzerland in 1868, demanding civil rights and the right to university education, but they were able to get voting rights and the right to hold public ofce 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 movements in the west, India was the beneciary of the spill-over effect on the mindset of men and women who had just emerged from erce 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
57

january 19, 2013

vol xlviII no 3

SPECIAL ARTICLE

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 injunctions? Consider that humanitarianism is not alien to religion. 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 philosophy 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 in the 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 functional imperative lies in the fact that while humans have innite 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 religion not 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 consciousness in a stable relationship. This stable relationship between the world of god and the material world becomes vulnerable with each scientic discovery, each new theoretical formulation of the phenomenal world, resulting in new ways of adapting 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 dening relations between man and his environment including his fellow men and women. The religious reformation movements, new interpretations 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 scientic discoveries and secular interpretations of social relationships (Dutta 1971: 63-70). The penetration of secular values into the religious sphere is easier when functional/institutional differentiation between public and religious authority already exist as in the
58

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 culmination of secular assertion. This particular secularisation took place in Christendom. The Immanent Frame, whether of Charles Taylor (2011) or earlier as presented by Max Weber in his Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism10 thus involve the search for the seeds of secular thought only in the Judeo-Christian tradition. However, the point being made here is that curiosity, comprehension, 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 oppositional systems of philosophy. Secular values evolve from scientic facts and are part of a philosophy which neither denies nor recognises the relevance of religious philosophy which, in turn, is based on non-observable deities and faith-based facts/ values. Scientic humanism and religiosity can and do coexist. It may be a matter of state craft and evolution of a legal framework 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 denition of secular in the form of the dyad, namely, that which is not sacred, 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 specic cultures which give meaning to life. However, there is no built-in contradiction between the culture/religion embedded individual and the unencumbered 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 element 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 consequences, often negative, in the ofcial adoption of multiculturalism 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 leaders, in particular, have an interest in maintaining boundaries from the other and they are encouraged towards fundamentalist injunctions so as to keep the ock intact.
january 19, 2013 vol xlviII no 3
EPW Economic & Political Weekly

SPECIAL ARTICLE

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 potential 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 su saints. These movements gave new directions to values and special emphasis to equality as a fundamental value. Both these movements de-emphasised the role of the clergy and brought about synthesis between Hindu and Muslim cultures. Other such syncretic 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 multiculturalism destroys this impulse, especially in the context of electoral politics. As an ideology it encourages the careful nurturing of separate identities, boundaries of cultures become less porous and separatist mentalities emerge and, of course, by implication, 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 undermined by ghettoisation in housing and social activities. In the US, Canada, Australia, the so-called new nations, the immigrant communities are dispersed over large territories and the problems of ghetto formation are accordingly reduced. However, 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 ve 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 communities became clear when for the rst 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 ed 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
Economic & Political Weekly EPW

over these neighbourhoods, built their own institutions, places of worship and business places. The immigrant/migrant communities are separated from national culture by structural factors 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 because of the importance of the vote banks constituted by immigrant and minority communities. The lure of vote banks and multiculturalism set in ofcial trends in politically correct gestures which often enrage and offend the Christian majorities. As discussed earlier there is resentment that the ofcial greeting card is a Happy Holiday card rather than a Christmas card. Nativity plays and carol services are taboo in state institutions, ofcially winter lights have replaced Christmas lights in government institutions and some municipalities 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 in the 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 sufciently 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 negative consequences. When ideologies (Marxism, socialism, capitalism, communism, etc) are adopted and pushed at an ofcial 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 permission 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 standards of secularism without sufcient concern for the underlying existential problems of individual and family. Much information 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 specic 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
59

january 19, 2013

vol xlviII no 3

SPECIAL ARTICLE

substantial benets 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 surprising that parents, particularly immigrants with different child-rearing practices are caught in this industry. Twentythree 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 rst generation immigrants (Naravane 2012). I have given more illustrations regarding the perils of multiculturalism 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 secular 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 likes of 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 multiculturalism as outlined above. Perhaps Hadia Tajik will enable more communication between the majority indigenous communities and the minorities, and root multicultural values while discouraging divisive multiculturalism.
Conclusions

It is interesting that in the seminal publication Rethinking Secularism, the authors who are most uncomfortable with the binary conceptualisation of the secular and the sacred are from the academic discipline of international political theory and those who have written extensively on world politics and are engaged in comparative studies across nations. In studying religion-based humanitarian aid workers in several 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 (Juergensmeyer 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 antisecular. Talal Asad asks If blasphemy indicates a religious limit transgressed, does it really have no place in a free, secular society? (2011: 282). He then goes on to illustrate with other legal constraints on communication in a capitalist society, 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 being 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.
60

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 binary exclusive 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 account 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 ow 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 secular 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 camouage 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 negative 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 especially in countries like ours where multiple personal laws are still 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 education 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 become 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 lter 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 Secularism 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 rst 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 denition of the secular. This helped me in cutting
january 19, 2013 vol xlviII no 3
EPW Economic & Political Weekly

SPECIAL ARTICLE
out the peripherals to be used for a book length work. I am also indebted to Tulsi for her editorial help.]
1 Proceedings of the event were published in Mendieta, Eduardo and J VanAntwerpen (ed.) and Afterword by C Calhoun (2011). 2 Taken from the title of Charles Taylors essay Why we need a Radical Redenition of Secularism in Mendieta and VanAntwerpen (2011). 3 For our home grown debate on the issue of secularism, 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 Encyclopedia, 17 June 2012, viewed on 8 April 2012 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strato-ofLampsacus). 6 Socrates, Wikipedia the Free Encyclopedia, viewed 13 September 2012 (http:// en.wikipedia.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, Wikipedia the Free Encyclopedia, 19 September 2012, viewed on 31 July 2012. The quotation is taken from Viereck, George Sylvester (1930): Glimpses of the Great (London: Duckworth), pp 372-73. 9 Press TV news, Britain to become Secular in 20 Years, 4 March 2012 (www.prestv.ir/ detail/22989878html). See also the Daily Mail, 5 March 2012. 10 Weber (1905); Talcott Parsons (1930) translation (London: Allen & Unwin). See my critique on this issue: Dutta (1968). Massachusetts: Schenkman Publishing Co), pp 69-70. Hurd, E S (2011): A Suspension of (Dis) Belief: The Secular-Religious Binary and the Study of International Relations in Calhoun et al (2011), pp 166-84. Juergensmeyer, M (2011): Rethinking the Secular and Religious Aspects of Violence in Calhoun et al (2011). Lynch, C (2011): Religious Humanitarianism and the Global Politics of Secularism in Calhoun et al (2011), pp 204-24. Margenau, Henry (1950): The Nature of Physical Reality: A Philosophy of Modern Physics (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company). Mendieta, Eduardo and J VanAntwerpen, ed. and Afterword by C Calhoun (2011): The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere (New York: Columbia University Press). Naravane, Vaiju (2012): One Tragic Story Among Many 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 the Spirit of Capitalism, Talcott Parsons (1930) translation (London: Allen & Unwin).

References
Appleby, R Scott (2011): Rethinking Fundamentalism in a Secular Age in Calhoun et al (2011), pp 225-47. Asad, Talal (2011): Freedom of Speech and Religious Limitations in Calhoun et al (2011). Barryman, Sylvia (2010): Democritus, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 25 August, viewed on 29 July 2012 (http://plato.stanford. edu/entries/democritus). Bhargava, Rajeev, ed. (1998): Secularism and Its Critics (New Delhi: Oxford University Press). (2011): Rehabilitating Secularism in Calhoun et al (2011). Calhoun, Craig, M Juergensmeyer and J VanAntwerpen, ed. (2011): Rethinking Secularism (New York: Oxford University Press). Charles Taylor (2011) Why We Need a Radical Redenition of Secularism in Mendieta and VanAntwerpen (2011). Dutta, Ratna (1968): Values and Economic Development, Economic & Political Weekly , Annual Number, January. (1971): Values in Models of Modernisation (Delhi: Vikas Publication and Cambridge,

SAMEEKSHA TRUST BOOKS

Global Economic & Financial Crisis

Essays from Economic and Political Weekly
In this volume economists and policymakers from across the world address a number of aspects of the global economic crisis. One set of articles discusses the structural causes of the financial crisis. A second focuses on banking and offers solutions for the future. A third examines the role of the US dollar in the unfolding of the crisis. A fourth area of study is the impact on global income distribution. A fifth set of essays takes a long-term view of policy choices confronting the governments of the world. A separate section assesses the downturn in India, the state of the domestic financial sector, the impact on the informal economy and the reforms necessary to prevent another crisis. This is a collection of essays on a number of aspects of the global economic and financial crisis that were first published in the Economic & Political Weekly in early 2009.

Pp viii + 368

2009

Rs 350

1857
Essays from Economic and Political Weekly
A compilation of essays that were first published in the EPW in a special issue in May 2007. Held together with an introduction by Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, the essays that range in theme and subject from historiography and military engagements, to the dalit viranganas idealised in traditional songs and the unconventional protagonists in mutiny novels converge on one common goal: to enrich the existing national debates on the 1857 Uprising. The volume has 18 essays by well known historians who include Biswamoy Pati, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Peter Robb and Michael Fisher. The articles are grouped under five sections: Then and Now, Sepoys and Soldiers, The Margins, Fictional Representations and The Arts and 1857.

Pp viii + 364

2008 Available from

Rs 295

Orient Blackswan Pvt Ltd

Mumbai Chennai New Delhi Kolkata Bangalore Bhubaneshwar Ernakulam Guwahati Jaipur Lucknow Patna Chandigarh Hyderabad

Contact: info@orientblackswan.com
Economic & Political Weekly EPW

january 19, 2013

vol xlviII no 3

61