Collection of essays that focuses on the effects of the secular state government on religious minorities in India.

Anuradha Dingwaney Needham and Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, eds.

Preface vii
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction / Rajeswari Sunder Rajan and Anuradha Dingwaney Needham 1
I. Secularism’s Historical Background
Reflections on the Category of Secularism in India: Gandhi, Ambedkar, and the Ethics of Communal Representation, c. 1931 / Shabnum Tejani 45
A View from the South: Ramasami’s Public Critique of Religion / Paula Richman and V. Geetha 66
Nehru’s Faith / Sunil Khilnani 89
II. Secularism and Democracy
Closing the Debate on Secularism: A Personal Statement / Ashis Nandy 107
Living with Secularism / Nivedita Menon 118
The Contradictions of Secularism / Partha Chatterjee 141
Secular Nationalism, Hindutva, and the Minority / Gyan Prakash 177
III. Sites of Secularism: Education, Media, and Cinema
Secularism, History, and the Contemporary Politics in India / Romila Thapar 191
The Gujarat Experiment and Hindu National Realism: Lessons from Secularism / Arvind Rajagopal 208
Secularism and Popular Indian Cinema / Shyam Benegal 225
Neither State nor Faith: The Transcendental Significance of the Cinema / Ravi S. Vasudevan 239
IV. Secularism and Personal Law
Siting Secularism in the Uniform Civil Code: A “Riddle Wrapped Inside an Enigma”? / Upendra Baxi 267
The Supreme Court, the Media, and the Uniform Civil Code Debate in India / Flavia Agnes 294
Secularism and the Very Concept of Law / Akeel Bilgrami 316
V. Conversion
Literacy and Conversion in the Discourse of Hindu Nationalism / Gauri Viswanathan 333
Christian Conversions, Hindutva, and Secularism / Sumit Sarkar 356
Appendix: Chronology of the Career of Secularism in India / Dwaipayan Sen 369
Works Cited 373
Contributors 397
Index 401