Secularism in India

India's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru is credited with the formation of the secular republic in the modern history of the country.

[4][19] Supporters state that any attempt to introduce a uniform civil code, that is equal laws for every citizen irrespective of his or her religion, would not impose majoritarian Hindu sensibilities and ideals.

[25] Ellora cave temples built next to each other between 5th and 10th centuries, for example, shows a coexistence of religions and a spirit of acceptance of different faiths.

[26][27] There should not be honour of one's own (religious) sect and condemnation of others without any grounds.This approach to interfaith relations changed with the arrival of Islam and establishment of Delhi Sultanate in North India by the 12th century, but it was not the only cause the enmity in minds of Hindu lower caste had risen to the top because of the discimination by Brahmins followed by Deccan Sultanate in Central India.

As with Levant, Southeast Europe and Spain, Islamic rulers in India treated Hindus as dhimmis in exchange of annual payment of jizya taxes, in a sharia-based state jurisprudence.

[30][31] However, the descendants of Akbar, particularly Aurangzeb, reverted to treating Islam as the primary state religion, destruction of temples, and reimposed religion-based discriminatory jizya taxes.

[32] By the mid-19th century, the British Raj administered India, in matters related to marriage, inheritance of property and divorces, according to personal laws based on each Indian subject's religion, according to interpretations of respective religious documents by Islamic jurists, Hindu pundits and other religious scholars.

The Jamiat-ul-Ulema-i-Hind, the greatest Moslem religious body has supported the demand and invited the attention of all concerned to the urgent necessity of introducing a measure to this effect.Although the British administration provided India with a common law, its divide and rule policy contributed to promoting discord between communities.

In the first half of 20th century, the British Raj faced increasing amounts of social activism for self-rule by a disparate groups such as those led by Hindu Gandhi and Muslim Jinnah; the colonial administration, under pressure, enacted a number of laws before India's independence in 1947, that continue to be the laws of India in 2013.

[10] According to R.A. Jahagirdar, in the Indian context, secularism has been interpreted as the equality before law, including of all religions, while the state is neutral.

[13][63] Indian concept of secularism, where religious laws are applicable to certain minorities and the state is expected to even-handedly involve itself in religion, is a controversial subject.

[45] In 1978, the Shah Bano case brought the secularism debate along with a demand for uniform civil code in India to the forefront.

Along with alimony, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of India wrote in his opinion just how unfairly Islamic personal laws treated women and thus how necessary it was for the nation to adopt a Uniform Civil Code.

Muslim opponents argue that any attempt to introduce Uniform Civil Code, that is equal laws for every human being independent of his or her religion, would reflect majoritarian Hindu sensibilities and ideals.

[citation needed]India has no legal mechanism to accept or enforce the demands of these Islamic feminists over religious law.

[citation needed] Some religious rights granted by Indian concept of secularism, which are claimed as abusive against Indian women, include child marriage,[64] polygamy, unequal inheritance rights of women and men, extrajudicial unilateral divorce rights of Muslim man that are not allowed to a Muslim woman, and subjective nature of shariat courts, jamaats, dar-ul quzat and religious qazis who preside over Islamic family law matters.

Goa is an exception to that rule, in that a single secular code/law governs all Goans, irrespective of religion, ethnicity or linguistic affiliation.

He writes that the flawed understanding of secularism among India's left wing intelligentsia has led Indian politicians to pander to religious leaders and preachers including Zakir Naik, and has led India to take a soft stand against Islamic terrorism, religious militancy and communal disharmony in general.

The idea here in its weaker publicly reiterated form was that the government would not interfere in 'personal' religious matters and would create circumstances in which people of all religions could live in harmony.

The idea in its stronger, unofficially stated form was that in order to modernise, India would have to set aside centuries of traditional religious ignorance and superstition and eventually eliminate Hinduism and Islam from people's lives altogether.

[75]Amartya Sen, the Indian Nobel Laureate, suggests[76] that secularism in the political – as opposed to ecclesiastical – sense requires the separation of the state from any particular religious order.

This, claims Sen, can be interpreted in at least two different ways: "The first view argues the state be equidistant from all religions – refusing to take sides and having a neutral attitude towards them.

Sen argues that the first form is more suited to India, where there is no demand that the state stay clear of any association with any religious matter whatsoever.

[77] Sen does not claim that modern India is symmetric in its treatment or offer any views of whether acceptance of sharia in matters such as child marriage is equivalent to having a neutral attitude towards a religion.

[78] Professor of Medieval History at Jawaharlal Nehru University and The Hindu columnist Harbans Mukhia suggests that there was a dichotomy between secularism and communalism that took centerstage during India's freedom struggle.

In Mukhia's view, while secularism and communalism were each other’s negation historically, with the Congress embodying the former and the Muslim League the latter, conceptually they both shared the category of community.

Matters came to a head when the locks on the Babri Masjid were opened and the very humane judgment of the Supreme Court in the Shah Bano case was overthrown through a regressive legislation.

It is this dual surrender that gave a spurt to the BJP’s challenge to the Congress’s secularism and to the recentring of communal antagonism in the polity.