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Until two decades ago, the social sciences adhered to the secularisation thesis that stressed the gradual obliteration of religion in the public domain. Recent events show the re-emergence of religions world-wide that has led scholars in challenging the narrative of the modern state and its progress from the religious to the secular domains. The changing place of religion in contemporary politics challenges older notions and concepts of the secular and secularisation process. Yet many initiatives and scholarly works have failed to assess the rise of religion in the context of democratic processes. This volume offers a conceptual, historical and empirical examination of some of these developments.

1. The context of social justice in modern India -- 2. Constituent assembly debates : the limits of liberal constitutionalism -- 3. Equality and non-discrimination -- 4. Expanding domains : democracy and the vernacularization of social justice -- 5. Higher education at crossroads -- 6. Reservations in private sector -- 7. Gender justice and quotas -- 8. De-clustering disadvantage : the case of religious minorities.

Social Justice is a concept familiar to most Indians but one whose meaning is not always understood as it signifies a variety of government strategies designed to enhance opportunities for underprivileged groups. By tracing the trajectory of social justice from the colonial period to the present, this book examines how it informs ideas, practices and debates on discrimination and disadvantage today. After outlining the historical context for reservations for scheduled castes and scheduled tribes that began under British colonial rule, the book examines the legal and moral strands of demands raised by newer groups since 1990. In addition the book shows how the development of quota policies has been significantly influenced by the nature and operation of democracy in India. It describes the recent proliferation of quota demands for reservations in higher education, private sector and for women and religious minorities in legislative assemblies. The book goes on to argue that while proliferation of demands address unequal incidence of poverty, deprivation and inequalities across social groups and communities, care has to be taken to ensure that existing justifications for quotas for discriminated groups due to caste hierarchies are not undermined. Providing a rich historical background to the subject, the book is a useful contribution to the study on the evolution of multiple conceptions of social justice in contemporary India. Publisher's note.

Abstract
Jacques Berlinerblau's "Secularism: The Basics" asks how much and what kind of state separation from religion is required to secure the multiple notions of secularism that have come to dominate debates on faith in the global context. By organizing the book around a distinct set of issues, including questions about the meanings of secularism and its appearance in different contexts that benefit liberal democracy, Berlinerblau implicitly gives voice to the continuity of the tradition of secularism for a large segment of the academic field that has been evolving for the last three decades. While opposing secularism as a monocultural phenomenon, he grapples with the normative pre-definition of political secularism that refers to legally binding actions of the secular state that seek to regulate the relationship between itself and religious citizens and between religious citizens.

The Supreme Court's recent judgment upholding the economically weaker sections (EWS) quota has given rise to the idea that reservations can be provided to economically vulnerable sections of the people. This expansion in the beneficiaries of affirmative action has triggered the perception that the reservation policy, which was earlier seen as promoting the principle of equal opportunity and providing compensation to historically marginalised castes, is now also a tool to overthrow poverty, unemployment and economic deprivation. This essay addresses this rebuttal by the court and clarifies that in the context of India, the implementation of reservation policies was based on the premise that the abolition of untouchability was not sufficient to secure equality of opportunity and the battle for social equality will remain as long as we are struggling to deal with caste discrimination. This essay explains why the EWS quota is likely to be a poor tool for achieving economic equality or redressing social discrimination.

Ashoke Kumar Sarkar and Abdus Samad Gayen (Eds.), Karl Marx, Bicentennial (1818–2018) Lectures. Kolkata: Seribaan, 2020, ₹90, ISBN: 978818749266

The controversy over political representation of marginalised groups and the implementation of quotas or reservations for historical injustice constitutes the most salient current battlefront in the conflict over the politics of social justice. Debates about the assumptions of theories of political representation tend to focus on political institutions, and for the most part, tend to debate them within nation-states. I begin by examining the debate on group representation in the Indian context. This article suggests that there is much to be gained in understanding how representation is challenged by following the politics of disadvantaged groups involved in this debate. To overcome the limitations in these theories we need to challenge the basic categories in thinking about political representation, that is about formation of interests, participation, sites of politics, and assertions of claims for representation. The second section focuses on formation of Dalit interests and the arguments for political representation. It examines the way representations of social divisions become problematic and resisted in institutionalized practices and political discourses. The third section point to limitations in our current thinking about theories of representation and the challenges they face. I argue that differences and disagreements within marginalised groups and the potential for intra-group conflicts of interests is challenging. Since shared membership of a disadvantaged group is not sufficient to have success in political representation, we argue that group justice depends in part on the ability to overcome differences and to forge a common political strategy. I argue that representations are eventually battles for meaning in politics through which social identities are constructed in ways that support or contest systems of inclusion and exclusion.

Verma compares Gandhi and Habermas. In recent decades, Habermas has had to grapple with questions of religion, due in part to the phenomenon of immigrant religion. He juxtaposes this development within Western critical theory to Gandhi's writings on religion and politics. Indeed for him, Gandhi anticipated the critique of secularism that Habermas has belatedly discovered. This gets to the core of the postsecular in its various modalities: a sense that certain political processes have lost their substance and that democracy has become at best merely procedural, at worst a matter of manipulation, and that therefore religious traditions become attractive as a source of renewed values. Adapted from the source document.