REDIRECTING THE HISTORY OF INDIA FROM A SECULAR PERSPECTIVE
Keywords:
History of IndiaAbstract
This article has its origin in the following trilemma: if you ask a Muslim or a Sikh in India he or she is more likely than not to claim that although the Indian state claims to be a secular state, it is in effect a Hindu state; and if you were to ask a Hindu whether the Indian state is a secular state the likelihood is, an increasing day by day, that he or she would say: it claims to be one but in effect favours the minorities and discriminates against the Hindus. If, however, you asked the members of the legislatures, the bureaucracy, and the judiciary of the Indian state, they would in all likelihood assert that India is a secular state. This adds yet another dimension to the issue. The religious minorities form one horn; the religious majority the second, and the secularists the third horn of this dilemma – and, if I may be permitted to mix metaphors – the simultaneous claim by each that its ox is being gored constitutes the trilemma.
References
Michael Mason, “Developing Secularisation Theory” (unpublished paper), 4, presented at the International Conference on Religion, Melbourne, July 12-17, 1992;
K. P. Jayaswal, Hindu Polity, Bangalore: Bangalore Printing and Publishing Co., 1967;
Bhasker Anand Saletore, Ancient Indian Political Thought and Institutions, London: Asia Publishing House, 1963;
Harmut Scharfe, The State in Indian Tradition, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1989.
Indra Deva and Srirama, “The Articulation of Juridical concepts in later Smrtis” in Daya Krishna, ed., India’s Intellectual Traditions, New Delhi: Indian Council of Philosophical Research, 1987, 63-91.
Surendranath Dasgupta, A History of Indian Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1952, Vol. II, 504-507.
P. V. Kane, History of Dharmasastra, Poona: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 1962, Vol. V, Part II, 1637.
Jugmohan, My Frozen Turbulence in Kashmir, New Delhi: Allied Publishers Limited, 1991, 232; also see chapter VI.
T. N. Madan, “Secularism in Its Place,” Journal of Asian Studies 46, 4 (November 1987), 752.
Kasinath Pandurang Parab, ed., The Mrichchhakatika of Sudraka with the Commentary of Prthvidhara, Bombay: Nirnayasagar Press, 1094, 292.
Peter Berger, The Sacred Canopy, New York: Doubleday, 1969, 107.
Donald Eugene Smith, India as a Secular State, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1963, 117.
M. K. Gandhi, Hindu Dharma, ed. Bharatan Kumarappa, Ahmedabad: Navajivan Press, 1950, 381.
Percival Spear ed., The Oxford History of India, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967, 689.
A. M. Ghose, “Manu’s Conception of Man and Society” in Krishna, India’s Intellectual Traditions, 558.
Sakuntala Narasimhan, Sati: Widow Burning in India, New York: Doubleday, 1990.
K. M. Panikkar, The Foundations of New India, London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1963, 36-46.
Arvind Sharma et al., Sati: Historical and Phenomenological Essays, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1998, Chapter 11.
K. M. Panikkar, Hindu Society at Cross Roads, New Delhi: Asia Publishing House, 1961, 40-41.
M. Hiriyanna, The Essentials of Indian Philosophy, London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1949, 51-56.
S. Radhakrishnan, The Bhagavadgita, London: Allen & Unwin, 1948.
Thomas Luckmann “Theories of Religion and Social Change,” Annual Review of the Social Sciences of Religion 1 (1977), 17.
P. V. Kane, History of Dharmasastra, Vol. II, part II, 906; also see William Cenkner, A Tradition of Teachers: Sankara and the Jagadgurus Today, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1983.
