Q.Do you agree with the following statements? Give reasons for supporting or opposing any of them.

Secularism protects religious identity, opposes inequality both within and between religions, and has genuine roots in Indian religious diversity as well as in western church-state separation. …

1. Secularism does not allow us to have a religious identity: this statement should be opposed. Secularism actively promotes religious freedom — an individual's right to profess the religion of their choice, and a community's right to maintain its own culture and institutions — so it protects religious identity rather than removing it. What secularism does reject are specific forms of religious identity that are dogmatic, violent, exclusivist, or that foster hatred of other religions; but rejecting those particular expressions is very different from denying religious identity as such.
2. Secularism is against inequality within a religious group or between different religious groups: this statement should be supported, since it is essentially a restatement of secularism's own core definition — opposition to intra-religious domination (inequality within a religious group) and inter-religious domination (inequality between different religious groups) together. …