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The Constitution of India envisages India as a Sovereign Socialist Democratic Republic with emphasis on ensuring justice, liberty, equality and freedom. It is often visualized that India has been threatened by the invasion of diverse religious cultures which have disintegrated the secular character. The 42nd amendment to the Constitution added the word \"secular\" and emphasized that state has no religion nor does it propagate any religion. Each individual has freedom of choice to practice profess, and propagate any religion and it has been granted by Article 25 of the Constitution of India. The conflict since between religions and people practicing the faith continue in an attempt to allure people from other faiths into one\'s own religion by convincing them, forcing them, to convert. The moot/ core issue: 1. Weather conversion is valid, permissible within the purview of Article 25 of the Constitution of India 2. Weather conversion is anti- religious and amounts to excommunication from the society. The researchers have analyzed Article 25 of the Constitution of India and its various implications to evolve few conclusions in support of the statement that everyone has Freedom of religion.

This paper discussed the encounter of Indonesian Muslims toward the idea of secularism. Secularism since its rise in Europe in the 18th century has spread all over the world. Supporters of secularism have assumed that secularism is undeniable. People eventually will hold it and apply it in their life, including in the public space. However, in the context of the relationship between Islam and state in Indonesia, secularism thesis has been proven failed. During the Indonesian history, the relationship between Islam and state has been a hot discourse even until recently. Yet, this paper concluded that one thing is clear; Indonesian people, especially Indonesian Muslims, have rejected secularism. In the meantime, some have rejected theocratic state either. Muslims then have endlessly endeavored to reformulate a viable synthesis on the relationship between Islam and state in Indonesia. What Indonesia has now is among the efforts of Indonesian Muslims to have a better formulation on how Islam plays its role in the public space, including in the political sphere.

Mrs. Lautsi challenged the board of her children's school and consequently the Italian Republic for the legally obligatory presence of a crucifix in the school's classroom. She argued that this violated the principle of secularism. After unsuccessful attempts in regional and national courts she appealed to the European Court of Human Rights in 2006 which initially ruled in favor , but after an appeal of the Italian Government to the High Chamber, ruled against her. The Lautsi case provoked significant societal debate concerning the role of religion in public space. One of the key players in this debate is Professor Joseph Weiler, who intervened in the case on behalf of several third party states. Weiler's argumentation will be subject to Analytical Discourse Evaluation in this paper. The goal of Weiler's argument is to prove that the Chamber's initial ruling, before Italy's appeal, was based on a conceptual error of what can be regarded as 'state neutrality'. Professor Weiler argues that secularism is mistaken to be defined as neutral and Italy should be allowed to prescribe crucifixes in classrooms. The analysis shows that Professor Weiler's argumentation is flawed and this paper will present a more viable, alternative argument.

The victory of a Tunisian Islamist party in the elections of October 2011 seems a paradox for a country long considered the most secular in the Arab world and raises questions about the nature and limited reach of secularist policies imposed by the state since independence. Drawing on a definition of secularism as a process of defining, managing, and intervening in religious life by the state, this paper identifies how under Habib Bourguiba and Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali the state sought to subordinate religion and to claim the sole right to interpret Islam for the public in an effort to win the monopoly over religious symbolism and, with it, political control. Both Bourguiba and Ben Ali relied on Islamic references for legitimacy, though this recourse to religion evolved to face changing contexts, and both sought to define Islam on their own terms. Bourguiba sought to place himself personally at the summit of power, while under Ben Ali the regime forged an authoritarian consensus of security, unity, and 'tolerance'. In both cases the state politicised Islam but failed to maintain a monopoly over religious symbolism, facing repeated religious challenges to its political authority.

This Note discusses analogous themes in two religious public display cases, Lautsi v. Italy, recently decided by the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), and Salazar v. Buono, recently handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court. Broader critiques of ECHR religious jurisprudence are addressed in the context of the interpretation and application of the principle of neutrality and the argument that secularism is not a necessary postulate of this demand. It is this theme of the relationship between neutrality and secularism that is also prominent in the American discussion about the relationship between government and religion. Finally, this Note returns to Lautsi's themes as they are present in the American context to contend that applications of secularism and neutrality to the public square work against a preferable notion of constitutional pluralism that favors neither religious nor nonreligious public displays. The debate surrounding the Lautsi decision, particularly in its earlier iteration before the Grand Chamber's most recent decision, provides a valuable lens for scrutinizing U.S. neutrality. True pluralism maintains an equivocal demeanor with respect to both religious and nonreligious public displays. This Note offers the Lautsi case's context as a useful space in which to gain an outsider perspective with respect to how pluralism functions in U.S. religious display cases.

The study of the theories of secularization has been marked by extensive debates about the shortfalls of religion and its inability to keep up with theories of gender equality. In these debates, considerably less attention has been given to the theoretical premises associating secularism with gender equality and the implications of their interrelation. The present paper seeks to undertake a re-examination of secularism as an emancipatory frame of reference for women, particularly but not exclusively Muslim ones, by exploring the concept within its complex and changing contexts and in light of recent feminist critiques of its narrative. It also aims to investigate the problematic positionality of Muslim women in the secular discourse as a way of shedding more light on the limitations and ideological contradictions of the premised interdependence between secularism and gender equality. The paper proposes that more effort needs to be made to recasting the secular narrative on gender equality and the place of Muslim women within it. Consequently, it seeks to bring more scholarly attention to the gender dimensions of secularism and its renewed significance as a political, social, and cultural force that impacts Muslim women's lives in the West and Muslim majority societies as well.

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 ...

The concept of secularism or laicité is expressed in political discourses in various ways by the French presidential candidates in the 2017 campaign. Both candidates, Emmanuel Macron (EM) and Marine Le Pen (MLP) used specific forms and lingual expressions to explain secularism and national identity, especially those related to 'Islam', 'immigration' and 'terrorism'. This study uses critical discourse analysis linked to their parties' ideologies based on identity, activities, goals, norms, and values. In the discourses presented by EM and MLP, Islam is associated with religion, Muslims, jihad, Islamic fundamentalists, the burqa, and secularism. The results of discourse analysis show that EM's and MLP's discourses on secularism and Islam are notably different. MLP views secularism in France as being under threat due to external threats, namely immigrants and in particular Muslim immigrants. In contrast, EM views secularism as a concept to support and protect the identity of the nation and to support and to add to the diversity of French culture and identity. The findings of this research is that French concepts of national identities, which is closely related to secularism, correlates to the ideologies of the respective presidential candidates' parties. The relationships between the parties' ideologies, national identities, and discourses investigated in this research can be used as a methodology for political discourses, especially French political discourses.

Institutionally and culturally, Australia bridges Britain and the United States, the Old and New Worlds. Its federal parliamentary democracy borrowed aspects from both Westminster and Washington. Yet, Australia rejected both England's established church and the US's 'high wall of separation' between church and state. Australia is often compared with the US and Canada as one of the great immigrant democracies. Like Canada, it adopted multiculturalism as state policy in the 1970s. Yet, it more closely resembles many European countries and perhaps even Québec in the precedence it grants to the established (Anglo-Australian) majority culture. Australia thus combines Old and New World patterns and concerns, offering a unique vantage point on the governance of religious diversity in relation to secularism. We are accustomed to thinking that political secularism and multiculturalism – arguably, the two greatest liberal responses to religious and cultural diversity – press in opposite directions. Whereas secularism separates state and religion, multiculturalism involves the state affirmation of cultural identity. Australia presents a case where these two models genuinely complement and indeed begin to merge into each other. Indeed, I argue that Australian multiculturalism extended the approach to diversity already established by Australia's version of secularism. However, secularism and multiculturalism in Australia face a common challenge from attempts to reassert national identity. Perhaps unexpectedly for the twenty-first century, religion has become the favored vehicle for this reassertion. The paper begins with some remarks on the constitutional context and the operative political culture. The second section discusses the place of religion in multicultural Australia. The third section canvasses how religion has been reasserted in recent years as a trope for reinforcing Anglo-Australian institutions and culture as the core of Australian national identity. The paper concludes by identifying some of the key challenges these dynamics pose for Australians.