Suchergebnisse

Professor Smith has produced a comprehensive survey1 of the relations between state and religion in India which will be of great value to students of modern Indian government and politics as well as of religion. Moreover, this useful, stimulating and very readable study raises questions of compelling, interest for all who are concerned with problems of "church and state". India, the seat of a civilization renowned for elaboration of religious thought and pervasiveness of religious observance has, even by Professor Smith's rigorous standards, successfully established a secular state. In this volume, Professor Smith has undertaken to explain how this has come about, to analyze the Indian achievement and the problems that accompany it and, finally, to indicate how India may advance to the full realization of that "true secularism" which he so enthusiastically endorses.

I am greatly indebted to Professor Marc Galanter and Professor John T. Flint for their detailed and thoughtful reviews of India as a Secular State. One of the important objects of the book was to stimulate precisely this kind of serious discussion of problems, problems of both scholarly analysis and public policy. The two reviews are useful in sharpening certain of the issues, and I am grateful for this opportunity to comment on them.

The Anglo-Indians are the only community which is constitutionally defined in India without any regional antecedent. They must be born of a habitually resident European in the paternal line, no matter from which part of India the maternal contribution is. The sudden withdrawal of the British from India left this community in a whirlpool of stresses & strains necessitating drastic emotional adjustment. Cultural values for the community had always been borrowed from the West, & in the wake of swara.j, such values started falling out of general Indian favor. Consequently, in certain aspects of their SE life the Anglo-Indians were directly faced with an ultimatum to either follow the Indian rubric or migrate. To those considering this situation as a relegation to a Ls, migration is the alternative. As a result, the remaining community is surviving by resigning itself to a number of unsolved problems. In the spheres of housing & employment, they have chosen the peripheral areas. In the areas of the fam & marriage, a strong tendency toward imbalance is noted re both the age of the partners & age at marriage. Re food, language & dress the Anglo-Indians have already attempted a compromise. Earlier res on this group has found that they have been disowned by both the British & Hindus (Indians). This res, though based on a survey from Bombay alone, points out that in the wake of secularism & industr' ization in India the selective disowning of this community, just because `Hindus ascribe status by birth rather than through achievement,' is no longer tenable. The Anglo-Indians have remained as one of the marginal groups because they built a shell around themselves. The leadership pattern under the constitutional provision regards the community more in a physical sense than in an emotional one. Modified AA.