Q.Is secularism compatible with the following? — Subsidising a pilgrimage for a minority community. — Performing religious rituals in government offices.
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Start your 14-day free trial to unlock the full solution →Subsidising a pilgrimage for a minority community can be compatible with secularism if it is part of a genuinely principled, even-handed policy; performing religious rituals in government offices generally is not, since it gives one religion an implicit official status within a state institution.
Both questions are best answered using the idea of principled distance: the Indian state does not owe every religion identical treatment, but any differential treatment it does adopt needs a genuinely principled, even-handed basis rather than being arbitrary or purely politically convenient.
Subsidising a pilgrimage for a minority community can be understood as a form of positive engagement, similar in spirit to the state assisting minority-run educational institutions — compatible with secularism if it genuinely serves a justifiable purpose, such as correcting a real historical disadvantage or protecting a community's fundamental cultural or religious interest, and if it is applied as part of a consistent, principled policy rather than as an isolated gesture aimed simply at winning votes (which would edge it towards the vote-bank criticism examined elsewhere in this chapter). …
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