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Minimal Secularism: Lessons for, and from, India

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 September 2020

CÉCILE LABORDE Open the ORCID record for CÉCILE LABORDE [Opens in a new window]
CÉCILE LABORDE*
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
*
Cécile Laborde, Professor of Political Theory, Nuffield College, University of Oxford, cecile.laborde@nuffield.ox.ac.uk.
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Abstract

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.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 115 , Issue 1 , February 2021 , pp. 1 - 13
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Political Science Association

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Footnotes

Earlier versions of this text were presented as the James A. Moffet Lecture in Ethics at Princeton University on April 4, 2019, at the “Secularism” workshop in Constanz on June 29, 2019, at the “Secular University” seminar in Cambridge on June 12, 2019, at the Annual Legal and Political Philosophy (ALPP) Conference in Cambridge on September 22, 2019, and at the “New Political Imaginaries” conference at Nuffield College, Oxford, on February 12, 2020. Many thanks to the participants in these events. For invaluable written comments, I am grateful to Alexis Artaud de la Ferrière, Farrah Ahmed, Udit Bhatia, Arudra Burra, Samuel Bagg, Cécile Fabre, Humeira Iqtidar, Niraja Gopal Jayal, Tarun Khaitan, Rae Langton, and Yves Sintomer. Thanks to Olivier Chiron and Madhav Khosla for crucial bibliographic advice and to Elise Rouméas for editorial assistance.

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