Hindu Nationalism and Secularism
The deep tension between India's constitutional commitment to secularism and the rise of Hindu nationalist politics, the ideological roots of Hindutva, and what this means for India's pluralist democracy.
India's Constitutional Secularism
The Indian Constitution, adopted in 1950, establishes India as a secular republic. The word 'secular' was explicitly added by the 42nd Amendment in 1976, but the principle was embedded from the beginning through guarantees of religious freedom, equality before the law regardless of religion, and the prohibition of religious discrimination. Indian secularism differs from the French laicite model: rather than separating religion from the state entirely, it aims for equal respect and engagement with all religions.
This model was shaped by India's traumatic partition in 1947, which split British India into Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan along religious lines, causing roughly one million deaths and displacing 15 million people. Jawaharlal Nehru and the Congress party's founders believed that only a secular state could hold together a country with hundreds of millions of Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Buddhists, and others.