Religious Pluralism and the Theory and Practice of Secularism: Reflections on the Indian Experience

In: Journal of Asian and African studies: JAAS, Band 24, Heft 3-4, S. 199-212

Abstract

Despite India's long history of religious pluralism and relativistic patterns of thought and its declared policy of creating a secular and democratic society, religious strife has characterised all the major social upheavals in modern India. This paper examines the nature of Indian pluralism and secularism with a view to understanding why and how the two are not as congruent as they are held to be in the West. It focuses special attention on hierarchy as the specific modality of India's traditional pluralism, legitimated within the framework of a religiously sanctioned ideology. It argues that the present crisis in India's secularism is at on ce a crisis in India's hierarchical structure and a crisis in its religious culture. A genuinely democratic and socialist India requires a secularism that transcends the traditional Indian theory and practice of tolerant hierarchical pluralism and embraces a more universalistic, rational, humanistic, and nonreligious culture.