New Perspectives on India and Turkey by Jassal Smita Tewari; Turan Halil;

Author:Jassal, Smita Tewari; Turan, Halil;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Published: 2018-02-19T00:00:00+00:00

On secular states and secularism

Nehru says, “The word ‘secular’ is perhaps not a happy one. And yet for want of a better term, we use it and call our state a secular state” (2003a: 192). Here, too, since the term “secular” had come to mean different things in different societies, what was his conception of the secular state?

For a start, no matter how great one religion might be in the first sense (A), the state cannot identify with it or with any other. It cannot attach itself to any one religion and declare it a state religion. The state may be nourished by all or by none. Even if the majority in a country owes allegiance to one religion, so that (as in the case of India) the general climate is coloured with the Hindu ethos, the state should not be Hindu (2003a: 194–5). Particularly critical of the “Hindu Rashtra” or Hindu nation-state, Nehru argued:

It may sound very nice to some people that we will create a Hindu Rashtra but I cannot understand what it means. Hindus are in the majority in this country and whatever they wish will be done. But the moment you talk of a Hindu Rashtra, you speak in a language which no other country except one can comprehend and that country is Pakistan, because it is familiar with this concept. It can immediately justify the creation of an Islamic nation by pointing out that we are doing something similar.6 … Hindu rashtra can only reduce the status of those who are not Hindus…. You may say patronizingly that you will look after the Muslims or Christians or others … but do you think any race or individual will accept for long the claim that they are looked after while we sit high above them?

(2003a: 186)

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