Western Import

A second criticism is that secularism is a western concept and, for that reason, unsuited to Indian conditions. On the surface this is a strange complaint — millions of things used in India every day, from trousers and the internet to parliamentary democracy itself, originated in the west. Has anyone ever heard a European complain that, since the concept of zero was invented in India, Europeans should refuse to use it? So what if an idea originated somewhere else?

But this quick 'so what' response, while not wrong, is a little shallow. The more serious and relevant point is this: for a state to be genuinely secular, it needs to have ends of its own. Western states became secular specifically at the moment they challenged the control that organised religious authority had over social and political life. Even 'mutual exclusion' — often assumed to be THE defining feature of every western secular society — is not, on closer inspection, the defining feature of secularism as such; the very idea of separation between religion and state can be, and has been, interpreted differently by different societies. A secular state may keep a principled distance from religion in order to promote peace between communities, and it may equally choose to intervene, where needed, to protect the rights of specific communities. …