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Fundamentalism is the belief in ancient and traditional forms of worship, as well as the belief that whatever is written in a holy book is correct. It was especially noticeable in the twentieth century, which sought to recover and publicly institutionalise aspects of the past that had been obscured by modern life. Fundamentalism has seen a meteoric rise in the twenty-first century, with fanaticism and international terrorism on the rise as well. Fundamentalists consider secular states to be their primary adversary because their goals do not always coincide with one another. All of these goals, according to the fundamentalists, are obstacles to t their ultimate goal of preserving the spiritual dimension of human life. Fundamentalism is an ideology that has not only taken hold in poor and underdeveloped countries, but has also taken hold in developed, liberal, and democratic countries. The primary goal of this research is to demonstrate that fundamentalism is on the rise at a time when secularism is under threat.

Does liberal democracy require a strict separation between state and religion? In Anglophone liberal political theory, the separationist model of the First Amendment of the US Constitution has provided the basic template for the rightful relationship between state and religion. Yet this model is ill suited to the evaluation of the secular achievements of most states, including India. This Article sets out a new framework, minimal secularism, as a transnational framework of normative comparison. Minimal secularism does not single out religion as special; and it appeals to abstract liberal democratic ideals such as equal inclusion and personal liberty. Actual debates about secularism in India are shown to revolve around these ideals. The study of recent Indian controversies - about the Uniform Civil Code, the status of Muslims and the rise of BJP nationalism - also sheds light on some blind spots of western secularism and the conception of sovereignty and religion it relies on.

An impetus was given to the discussion on whether or not Indian secularism is a myth or a reality. A secular society is one in which individuals are free to practise their religion of choice. The Constitution of India recognises and upholds the principle of religious toleration, making India a nation that is home to a number of distinct faiths. The term "secular" was not included in the original version of the Indian Constitution; nevertheless, it was added in 1976 as part of the 42nd Amendment. Nevertheless, the values of secular character have always been a part of the constitutional fabric of India, and this has been the case since the very beginning. The Judiciary has, on numerous occasions, drawn attention to this particular facet as well. It is possible to state with absolute certainty that secularism is one of the guiding principles of the Constitution and that this position will never be subject to revision. Nonetheless, there have been cases where the state has been seen to favour a specific religion over the concept of secularism. In order to better understand Indian secularism, we've written this piece. Secularism in India is described as a myth or reality and the issues related with it are discussed.

The oratio is by Werner Menski of the School of Law, University of London, speaking in June this year at the University of London in a Religare Conference. Showing his distaste for fuzzy law, he argues that "moderate secularism" is not merely another fuzzy concept, but it is "super-fuzzy," and that lawyers claiming to love certainty "have a tendency to sit in judgment over matters and even pre-judge things they know little about, including legal pluralism" leading to much irritation.

This article engages with the emergent ethnographical study of secular practice by focusing on how local bureaucracies manage the Muslim public presence in the Netherlands, particularly the construction of new mosques and the amplifying of the Muslim call to prayer. We argue that what started as the 'Islam debate', itself provoked by growing populist articulations of the fear of Islam, has gradually developed into a conflict in the practice of local governance about the meaning of secularism. Whereas the public and political debate about mosque issues is often dominated by what we call a 'culturalist' or 'nativist' form of secularism, in practice bureaucrats are often led by a 'constitutional secularism' that protects the constitutional rights of Dutch Muslims. Thus, in its ractical application, constitutional secularism is one way of tackling Islamophobia and protecting the rights of religious minorities in general. Moving beyond the genealogical study and the deconstructivist critique of secularism by such authors as Talal Asad and Wendy Brown, we show that the ethnographic study of actual secular practice remains crucially important to avoiding monolithic text-based understandings of the secular as inherently dominating the religious.

In 2003, anthropologist and theorist Talal Asad published Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity. This influential work presents a genealogy of "the secular," the dialectic nature of that genealogy vis a vis that of the set of knowledges, sensibilities, policies, and affects that constitute the modern, and a response to the eminent philosopher, Charles Taylor's "Modes of Secularism" (1998). Asad focuses the project by asking, "What is the connection between the secular as an epistemic category and secularism as a political doctrine? Can they be objects of anthropological inquiry? What might an Anthropology of secularism look like?"This thesis attempts, in a preliminary fashion, to address the questions put forth by Asad within the context of the social, political, and religious landscape of contemporary Japan. Having noted a reductive tendency among certain scholars of Japanese religion and culture to apprehend the secular through simple negation of the religious, my purpose is to begin to problematize the construction of "secular" as a valid and encompassing category through a detailed investigation of the conditions and consequences that pertain to secularism as a political doctrine in contemporary Japan. This thesis will show that Japan's project of secularization is mediated by a complicated politics of memory relating to categories of conflict and national identity. Through a close historiographic analysis of primary and secondary source material related to court cases, legislation, and the political and social issues surrounding Yasukuni Shrine, I propose to articulate "the secular" as a dimension of modernity that acts not in opposition to, but in dialogue with, "the religious." Put simply, the project seeks to develop a framework of central concepts and conditions from which Asad's exploration of the potential for an "Anthropology of secularism" might be extended to Japan.

My dissertation explores the intricate relationship between secularism and identity in South Asian minority writing. Though India and Sri Lanka were founded as secular states in the 1940s, they have consistently failed to protect the rights of religious and ethnic minorities since the 1980s. Thus, critics have been debating whether secularism as a political doctrine--one that separates religion from the state to protect minority communities--is still relevant. However, this debate only assumes that secularism protects minorities, while I argue that secularism has actively shaped minority identity and experience. I consider secularism to be a process that facilitated the modernization of societies across the globe and consequently transformed communities in South Asia into "national-majorities" and "minorities." I argue that while secularism as a political doctrine is not always present in minority writing at the level of content, the process of secularization (mentioned above) shapes and influences minority writing at the level of form and aesthetics. I develop this argument by examining the fiction and autobiographies produced by writers belonging to five minority communities in India and Sri Lanka--Muslims, Anglo-Indians, Burghers, Parsis, and Dalits (earlier described as "untouchables"). I demonstrate that minority writing cannot insert the narrative of the minority--either the individual character or the community--into the larger narrative of the nation (or the majority community). Some minority writers try to incorporate minority experience into the larger narrative of majoritarian-nationalism, and fail to do so. This failure is apparent in the tension within the aesthetics or the formal aspects of their texts. For instance, carnival and postmodern parody become strategies to counter realism and historicism, respectively, or there is a conflict between the confidence in the nation's progress and the fragmentation of the individual's experience. However, other writers avoid this conundrum by refusing to ...