How the indian concept of secularism is different from the western model of secularism? Discuss?
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What are the major differences between Indian secularism and Western secularism? What are the pros and cons of both definitions of secularism?
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Shankar Sardar
Shankar Sardar, Indian
Answered Feb 3, 2016
Western idea of secularism is more a classical liberal idea where you accept that people may have different values and that state must not promote or protect any specific ideas. Also, religion remains and individual value and state offers no protection from others criticizing your religion.
Under secular liberalism it would be unacceptable to pass a law that says "Muslims must be governed by Sharia law and Hindus must be governed by Hindu Civil Code".
A typical secular constitution would simply make a law like above completely unconstitutional. Also, you can organize as many "Draw a Prophet" events and state is duty-bound to protect you.
Indian secularism is basically an extremely fuzzy notion. It borrows heavily from Gandhi's idea of "sarv-dharm-samabhava" means the state must treat all religions equally with respect which means state must make laws that not only acknowledge religious groups but actively pass laws to promote and protect all of them.
The term was never debated or defined and was forcibly put into Indian constitution (by imposing emergency rule) and hence remains an open issue when it comes to domain of law.
In practice it leads to laws that are partisan in nature and protect special interest groups in different ways (often based on how big is the vote bank).
Indian secularism leads to laws like the following:
- It is a punishable criminal offence to criticize any religion or prophet even if the criticism is factual and supported by facts.
- It is a punishable offence to engage in activity that others might claim to offend their religion sensibilities.
- Crimes against a person of SC/ST origin has a different set of laws than crimes agains average individual. For example if you hit a person with Sc/ST origin the punishment will be more stricter.
- All Christian and Muslims educational institutions can receive public funding and yet be totally exempt from all government regulations including atrocious laws like RTE. But Hindus schools which are 100% privately funded do not have the freedom even decide their admission criteria.