Content uploaded by Gurharpal Singh
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Gurharpal Singh on May 24, 2021
Content may be subject to copyright.
1
5UPA and secularism
Gurharpal Singh
Introduction
In contrast to the rich theoretical discussion of secularism and the Indian state (Bhargava
1998) there is a major hiatus in the literature on its political practice. This ambiguity,
according to Brass (2006), arises from fact that secularism occupies a peculiar position in the
discourse in India politics because not only does it encompass state-religion relations in the
conventional sense, but it is also intimately interwoven into the fabric of competing visions of
nationalism, the role of religious minorities, especially Muslims, in public life, and the belief
that a strong centralised state is need to act as buffer between India’s religious communities
that have a high propensity for communal conflict. These complexities, moreover, are shot
through with sharp political differences between the Congress and the BJP in their
contrasting conceptions of the national idea and the place of secularism within it – differences
which, arguably, represent clear blue water between the UPA and the NDA. Secularism in
contemporary India therefore is much more than simply an issue of state-religion
relationship: it is about highly contested political practices, ‘a mentality’, a ‘discourse’, and
above all, different constructions of Indian nationalism that have been strongly influenced by
division of the country in 1947 (Brass 2006).
This chapter, which introduces subsequent ones by Wilkinson and Rochana Bajpai on
related themes, has three objectives. First, using the expansive definition of secularism
outlined above, it elaborates the Nehruvian normative ideal of the concept and how it has
changed, particularly with reference to its political practice. Second, in response to these
changes it then discusses the UPA’s Common Minimum Programme (CMP) and the policies
that were followed between 2004 and 2009. Finally, it offers some perspectives on how the
record of the Congress-led UPA on the subject might be better understood.
Nehruvian state secularism and after
The starting point for any meaningful discussion of state secularism in India is the normative
ideal established by the Constitution of India. Although the term secularism is absent in the
text - it was inserted in 1976 as result of a constitutional amendment- the constitution does
not recognise an official religion. The individual’s relationship to the state was defined as a
2
citizen rather than as a member of a religious group, and individual and collective freedom to
worship and propagate religion was guaranteed. Taken together these provisions fulfilled at
least three essential requirements of the secular state: religious equality, religious liberty and
state neutrality (Smith 1967: ch.4). And though no clear ‘wall of separation’ was established
between religion and the state, Indian secularism came to be characterised by what Smith has
called the ‘non-preference doctrine’ in which no ‘special privileges were to be granted to any
one religion’ (Smith:381). This doctrine, or what Bhargava (1998) terms ‘principled
distance’, summed up in the credo sarvadarma sabha (‘good will towards all religions’)
‘share the liberal imagination, even though the ideals cherished by liberals are realised
somewhat differently in the Indian context’ (Mahajan and Jodhka 2009: 6).
The Constituent Assembly rejected demands from religious minorities for political
reservation, but it went a long way to conceding their cultural and linguistic claims (Mahajan
2010). The provision of Muslim Personal Law was conceded but with a constitutional
commitment to move eventually towards a unified civil code that would embrace all religious
communities. In addition the recognition of affirmative action for Schedule Castes and
Schedule Tribes (and, subsequently, Other Backward Castes and classes) introduced an
element of group rights but with a clear understanding that this was aimed at eradicating
disadvantage and discrimination.
It is generally recognised that the Constitution established a form of democratic
citizen-centred idea of state secularism ((Bajpai 2002) and public policy thereafter was based
on the precept ‘of the cultural rights of faith based communities and development rights of
the structurally and historically deprived groups within every community of faith’ (Seth 2010:
55, emphasis original). However, the last 30 years have witnessed a serious erosion of this
ideal because of the blurring of the distinction between cultural and religious rights of
religious minorities in national and provincial social policy. Central to this development has
been the demise of the Congress and its original commitment to secularism as an ideology
which ‘has been battered and largely displaced with the rise of Hindu nationalism’ (Brass
2010: 2). Simultaneously the meteoric rise of the BJP and associated Hindutva forces, on the
other hand, has been accompanied by calls for ‘genuine secularism’ in which religious
minorities would be assimilated into Hindu rashtra (nation) (Singh 2000: ch.1). But
underpinning these changes has been the seismic shift in Indian politics introduced by the
implementation of the Mandal Commission Report in 1990 which has extended reservation
3
to OBCs, thereby unleashing the mobilisation of Dalit parties in northern India. This broad
extension of affirmative action programmes has raised basic questions about whether these
programmes can continue to exclude religious minorities (i.e. non-Hindus), and if so, whether
alternative provisions are required for them, for example, such as Muslims, who have
singularly failed to share in the development achievements of the Indian state. In sum, the
loss of Congress’s hegemony, the rise of the BJP and the Dalitisation of Indian politics
appear to have fundamentally redefined the assumptions on which Nehruvian state secularism
was based.
These complex and intersecting developments pose a range of questions: how has
state secularism in India fared under the Congress-led UPA since 2004? Is it, as some argue
(Seth 2010), now defined essentially by a form of religious pluralism? To what extent did the
policies of the UPA government (2004-09) arrest or hasten this process? The rest of this
chapter aims to address these concerns, firstly, by examining the UPA’s policies and how
they were implemented and, secondly, by offering some perspectives on how these
developments might be better understood.
UPA’s Common Minimum Programme and secularism
The UPA’s CMP gave major prominence to secularism. Of its ‘six basic principles of
governance’, two included a commitment:
to persevere, protect and promote social harmony and to enforce the law without fear
or favour to deal with all obscurantist and fundamentalist elements who seek to
disturb social amity and peace, [and ] to provide full equality of opportunity,
particularly in education and employment for Schedule Castes, Schedule Tribes,
OBCs and religious minorities (GOI 2004: 2-3).
These overarching objectives were set within specific proposals that included measures to:
reverse the communalisation of education under the NDA, especially in higher education;
‘implement the Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act, 1992 and seek a negotiated
settlement on Ayodyha’; enact a comprehensive law to deal with communal violence;
‘establish a Commission for Minority Educational Institutions that will provide direct
affiliation for minority professional institutions to central universities’; achieve the social and
economic empowerment of minorities through education; establish a national commission to
address the welfare of socially and economically backward religious and linguistic minorities
(including the possibility of reservation); adequately fund the national Minorities
Development Corporation; ‘provide constitutional status to the Minorities Commission and
4
the recognition of Urdu under Article 345 and 347 of the Constitution’; ‘ revive the National
Integration Council so that it meets at least twice a year’; and, ‘to take the strictest possible
action, without fear or favour, against all those individuals and organizations, who spread
social discord, disturb social amity, and propagate religious bigotry and communal hatred’
(GOI 2004:5-11).
Many of the above proposals were also present in the Congress’s manifesto. The
Congress, it declared:
...believes in affirmative action for all religious and linguistic minorities. The
Congress has provided for reservations for Muslims in Kerala and Karnataka in
government employment and education on the grounds that they are a socially end
educationally backward class. The Congress is committed to adopting this policy
for…Muslims and other religious minorities on a national scale (INC 2004: emphasis
added).
This proposal, moreover, was set against a background in which secularism was identified as
the ‘key issue’ because the BJP was ‘systematically undermining the very essence of Indian
civilization and destroying the very idea of India’. ‘The Congress’, the party’s manifesto
warned, ‘recognises that this is not a moment for a narrow pursuit of power’: rather, it was ‘a
moment to consolidate all forces subscribing to the fundamental values of our Constitution’
(INC 2004: emphasis added).
In short, directly or indirectly, state secularism featured prominently in the UPA’s
CMP and the Congress’s manifesto and was tied to three commitments: to ‘de-communalise’
some of the policy initiatives of the previous NDA; to develop policies to empower
(religious) minorities; and to ensure effective and impartial governance that upheld state
secularism. To what extent these objectives were realised in the policies of the UPA is the
subject we turn to next.
Table 5:1 below summarises the policy initiatives take by the UPA. We have
excluded those elements of affirmative action provision for SCs, STs and OBCs in so far as
they relate to secularism because these are discussed in some detail in Rochana Bajpai’s
chapter (see Chapter 7). The broad implications of her paper for understanding changes in the
evolution of Indian state secularism, however, will be discussed in the final section of the
chapter.
5
Table 5:1
UPA’s Policies and Secularism
Decommunalisation
Empowering Religious
Minorities
Governance
De-communalisation of text
books(2004)
National Commission for
Minority Education (2004)
Aftermath of Gujarat riots 2002
‘Secular’ appointments to
NCERT, UGC, ICSSR
Ministry of Minority Affairs
(2006)
Nanavati Commission Report
into anti-Sikh riots (2005)
Deregulation of religious
deemed universities
Sachar Committee Report
(2006)
Communal Violence (Prevention,
Control and Rehabilitation of
Victims) Bill (2005)
PM’s 15 Point Programme for
Welfare of Minorities (2006)
Anti-Christian riots in Orissa
(2008)
Introduction of a Bill to give
Minorities Commission
constitutional status (2006)
Liberhan Commission Report
on the demolition of Babri
Masjid mosque (2009)
Mishra Commission on
Religious and Linguistic
Minorities (2007)
UPA and anti-conversion
legislation in the states
Executive action to monitor and
target employment of minorities
in national government service
(2007)
Menon Committee on Equal
Opportunities Commission
(2007)
Kundu Committee Report on
Diversity Index (2008)
De-communalisation
In 2002 the NDA government changed the National Council for Education and Research and
Training (NCERT) school textbooks through a new National Curriculum Framework.
Ostensibly these changes were designed to ‘saffronise’ public education by raising the profile
of Hindu cultural norms, views and historical personalities in school textbooks by portraying
other religions negatively. At the time the BJP argued that its aim was to overhaul
institutions like NCERT and free them from the ‘dynastic control’ of the Congress and the
Communists to present a more ‘accurate’ picture of Indian history and culture.
One of the first initiatives of the UPA administration was to set up a three-member
panel by the minister for Human Resource Development to review the history textbooks to
replace ‘objectionable portions, distortions and factual errors with historical facts’
(AsiaNews.it, 7th January 2004). For this task it chose three historians from well-known
Indians universities, and in addition, drew on the Delhi Research Council of Educational
6
Research and Training, the Ratan Tata Trust and scholars from the University of Oxford to
review Hindi, English, History and Maths books. Overall, these reviews resulted in new
textbooks, but not without opposition from Hindutva and non-Hindutva groups that the new
offerings were now equally biased, if not full of more errors.
One area in which the UPA was able to make immediate impact was in the
appointment of senior academics administrators. During Murli Manohar Joshi’s tenure at the
Ministry of Human Resource and Development the NDA had imposed its own nominees to
leading academic appointment such as the chair of Universities Grants Commission (UGC),
NCERT and the Indian Council for Social Science Research (ICSSR) and extend the
framework of religious based university education by creating deemed universities (Nanda
2004). In response the UPA made its own high profile appointments such as Prof. Javeed
Alam as the Chair of ICSSR and Prof. Sukhadeo Thorat, as the chair of UGC, while also
instituting an inquiry into the working of the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies at Shimla ,
though these initiatives were less well trailed than its efforts in schools.
Empowering religious minorities
Whereas de-communalisation of education was seen as the necessary corrective step, more
bold measures were taken to empower religious minorities as outlined in the CMP above.
These initiatives included: enhanced educational provision for religious minorities, a new
administrative framework for the management and promotion of religious minority affairs,
the commission of new research to assess the socio-economic status of religious minorities as
well as the case for a more robust framework for equal opportunities, and the use of executive
action to monitor and target better employment recruitment to central government services.
That education was seen as the key driver of minority religious empowerment was
signaled by the creation of the National Commission for Minority Educational Institutions
Act (2004). The main objective of the measure was to ensure that educational provisions
enshrined in Article 30(1) of the Constitution, which gave minorities the right to establish and
administer educational institutions of their choice, are accessible to the members of religious
minority communities without unnecessary administrative encumbrance. To this effect the
commission was established as an executive authority to oversee, among other things, the
affiliation of minority institutions to any university of their choice as long as they fulfilled the
necessary requirements. It also seeks to overcome vexatious disputes relating to the status of
7
minority educational institutions that have all too frequently ended up in the courts, often to
the detriment of minority communities themselves (Gill 2001).
The emphasis on educational empowerment was also accompanied by a new
administrative framework for the management and promotion of religious minority affairs. In
January 2006 the Ministry of Minority Affairs (MoMA)was created to ‘ensure a focused
approach to the issues related to minorities and to play a pivotal role in the overall policy,
planning, coordination, evaluation and review of regulator and development programmes for
the benefit of the minority communities (Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Buddhists and
Zoroastrians)’ (GOI: 2010).
1
The main purpose of the ministry is ‘overall policy, planning,
coordination, evaluation and review of the regulatory and developmental programmes of the
minority communities’ (GOI 2010). In particular, during the UPA’s tenure MOMA has been
tasked with the function to coordinate a range of programmes targeted at minority religious
communities (principally Muslims) in the fields of education and development by drawing on
resources formerly allocated to other ministries such as the Ministry for Human Resource
Development. Of particular note has been the coordination of the Prime Minister’s New 15-
Point Programme for the Welfare of Minorities also launched in January 2006 which is
focused in four areas: improving education opportunities; ensuring an equitable share for
religious minorities in economic activity and employment; improving the living condition of
minorities; and preventing and control of communal riots (GOI 2010). This initiative draws
on resources allocated to other programmes, and where possible, aims to ensure that 15 per
cent of the total outlay is earmarked for minorities. In addition, in 2007-8 the MOMA
identified 90 Minority Concentration Districts (MCDs) for socio-economic backwardness
for which a multi-sector development programme (MSDP) was launched in 2008-9 to address
the ‘“development deficit” in education, skill development, employment, sanitation, housing,
drinking water and electricity supply for these districts’ (GOI 2010). Although the range and
number of programmes managed by the MOMA is bewilderingly complex, and frequently
overlaps with other initiatives by the UPA in fields of education and development, the
creation of MOMA has for the first time provided a new administrative focus to minority
affairs by creating a major institutional space within central government.
The MOMA’s task has been further underwritten by the findings of several reports
commissioned by the UPA. Foremost among these was the Sachar Committee Report
(2006), which provided the intellectual and ideological ballast for the whole raft of policies
coordinated by the ministry from 2006 onwards. The Sachar Committee was set up to provide
8
systematic information on Muslims’ socio-economic status and public and private
opportunities compared with other communities’, and to ‘to identify areas of intervention by
the government to address relevant issues relating to the social, economic and educational
status of the Muslim community’ (Sachar Committee Report 2006: vii). Given the subject
matter, it was perhaps to be expected that the report’s findings and recommendations became
the focus of a heated national debate. While these are discussed at some length in the
subsequent chapter by Wilkinson, here I want to highlight two aspects that are likely to have
a more long-term impact.
First, the report marks a deceive shift in understanding the condition of Indian
Muslims from politics of identity to politics of development. For much of the post-1947
period the political management of religious diversity in India has been articulated in terms of
creating a framework for the recognition of religious and cultural rights of minorities while
maintaining the distinction between them. Yet since the 1980s, coincidently with the rise of
the BJP, some of these identities have been pathologised as anti-national, with a consequence
that some minorities have struggled to articulate their demands in non-religious language. By
providing systematic data on the socio-economic condition of India’s Muslims, the Sachar
report demonstrates that Muslims ‘suffer from deprivation on every front…and are generally
extremely backward and live in the shadow of poverty’ (Robinson 2007:842). This
recognition has, to some extent, been accompanied by a wider public acknowledgement that
public policy can no longer overlook large sections of the Indian population merely because
of their religion.
Second, the report - and its subsequent policy recommendations - has conceptually
introduced the language of equality of opportunity and anti-discrimination into Indian
politics. To be sure, this has always been present in some measure, but theses new
innovations are to be found in its recommendations for an equal opportunities commission
and diversity index in living, education and work spaces. These issues were subsequently
examined in detail by two committees. The Menon Committee Report (2008) proposed an
Equal Opportunities Commission Bill to prohibit discrimination against ‘deprived groups’
defined on grounds of sex, disability, religion, caste, and language. The Kundu Committee
Report (2008) recommended the constitution of a Diversity Commission to oversee the
encouragement of diversity in education institutions, employment and housing societies.
Taken together both these reports’ recommendations represent a noticeable shift in India’s
9
approach to equality, one which moves beyond an exclusive focus on reservations to explore
a combination of anti-discrimination and diversity promotion measures in pursuit of social
justice. They also recognise that discrimination is not merely the outcome of social identity
(e.g. caste or religion) but can take place on multiple and intersecting grounds and that
compartmentalising it by group-specific measures may well result in the politics of
resentment and competition. Finally, both these reports appear to have borrowed extensively
from the new equalities legislation in the United Kingdom, Canada and South Africa, and in
introducing the concept of indirect discrimination, mark a radical departure that is likely to
have significance impact if enacted into legislation (Hasan 2009).
Equally profound were the findings and recommendations of the Mishra Commission
on Religious and Linguistic Minorities (2007). This commission was set up in 2004 with a
threefold objective to: establish a criteria for identifying social backward sections among
religious and linguistic minorities, recommend measures for their welfare, including
reservation in education and government employment, and examine the necessary
constitutional and administrative changes required to implement these changes (GOI 2007:
1). Key among its recommendations were the proposals for 15per cent reservation in non-
minority educational institutions and central and state government jobs for all religious and
linguistic minorities, of which Muslims would be given 10 per cent reservation
(commensurate with their 73 per cent share in the total minority population in India) and the
remaining 5 per cent to other minorities. It also called for using the same criteria for
identifying backwardness among minorities as among members of the Hindu community and
recommended the inclusion of Muslims and Christians Dalits in the Scheduled Caste list for
reservation – a provision which had been denied to these groups on grounds of religion
(GOI:144-55).
Perhaps because of its potentially contentious nature the Mishra report was only
tabled in Parliament in 2009. As Wilkinson and Rochana Bajpai note (see Chapters 6 and 7),
there has been a significant opposition to the proposal from the BJP and, indeed, some
Schedule Caste groups who fear the dilution of their quotas. Most of the recommendations of
the report remain to be acted upon, though despite intense pressure from Dalit and Muslim
groups, the UPA continues tread wearily in translating these proposals into legislation.
Finally, as noted by Rochana Bajpai (see Chapter 7), the UPA’s policy of
empowering religious minorities was addressed more directly through executive action. In
10
January 2007 to ensure a better representation of religious minorities in government service,
including banks, financial institutions and the railways, monitoring and targeting were
introduced by the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions. To what extent
these measures have had the desired effect however remains to be systematically evaluated.
Governance
In some ways the real litmus test of secularism for any government in India is its protection
of religious minorities and the effective prosecution of those involved in acts of communal
violence. Again as this subject is discussed at length by Wilkinson (Chapter 6), here we map
out the broad parameters of UPA’s record; namely, its response to the aftermath of the
Gujarat riots (2002) and other episodes of communal violence, the inquires into the anti-Sikh
riots of 1984, the inquiry into the destruction of the Babri mosque and the government’s
record in defending the freedom of religion.
Notwithstanding the UPA’s tough stance against communal riots in Gujarat, its efforts
to bring the perpetrators of violence to book were at best insipid. Despite the fact that there
were cases pending against some of the accused, and legal precedent precluded the
imposition of President’s Rule, a more interventionist policy would have demonstrated clear
political intent. In the event, the Congress-led UPA preferred to skirt around the Gujarat’s
Chief Minister Narendra Modi than directly confront him. And this was in no little measure
due to the Congress’s electoral weakness in the state where the party has to tread carefully in
not appearing to appease Muslim voters at the expense of its Hindu constituents.
Similar political considerations also appear to have been in play in the coalition’s
management of anti-Christian violence in Orissa (2007-8). This began at the end of 2007 but
new waves of attacks against Christians were triggered in August 2008 by the killing of a
Hindu leader, Swami Laxanananda Saraswati, along with five other people at Tumudibandh,
Kandhamal District. Reports from various sources suggested that at least fifty thousand
Christians in Orissa were displaced, hundreds fled their homes and took refuge in forests and
many others were said to be living in relief camps. The nature of the violence and the
inadequate response of the local state administration called into question the ability of the
Centre to ensure basic law and order in the states (USCIRF 2010:241-54). Again, as
Wilkinson (see Chapter 6) convincingly demonstrates, it was electoral and political
consideration which seems to explain the Centre’s vacillation and the ineffectiveness of the
11
state government in dealing with the violence (the BJP was in coalition with the ruling party
in the state).
Such vacillation and partisanship from the Congress –led UPA leadership was also
evident in its handling of two long-running inquires: the anti-Sikh riots and the Liberhan
Commission and their fallout. The inquiry into anti-Sikh riots in Delhi in 1984 was
completed by the Nanavati Commission report in February 2004. Although the commission
was established by the NDA, its findings clearly embarrassed the UPA led by Dr. Manmohan
Singh, a Sikh Prime Minister, who had to publicly apologise to the Sikh community for
Operation Blue Star. The report indicted very senior Congress politicians such as Jagdish
Tytler who had played an active role in instigating the riots. In the aftermath the government
reluctantly asked the CBI to investigate seven cases. But in March 2007 the CBI gave Tytler
a clean bill of health and closed the case against him. However this was not the end of the
matter. Congress’s decision to nominate Tytler for a Delhi constituency in the general
elections (2009) led to the famous shoe-throwing incident in which the party had to backtrack
from Tytler’s candidature and suffered some political damage in Delhi and Punjab (see Singh
2009).
The Liberhan Commission report was completed in June 2009. However some of its
findings, which implicated the BJP leadership in the demolition, were selectively leaked to
the press in November 2009, forcing the UPA government to table the report before
Parliament. The political furore which accompanied this act led to allegations from the BJP
that the UPA was deliberately using the report to attack the party and deflect criticism from
its unpopular policies (Tandon and Tuteja 2009). To-date none of those identified by the
report have been prosecuted.
It is in light of these political ambivalences within the Congress-led UPA that we
have to view the failure of its flagship measure: the Communal Violence (Prevention, Control
and Rehabilitation of Victims) Bill (2005). The Bill was framed as a piece of model
legislation that would prevent communal violence and, in the event of such incidents, ensure
the rehabilitation of victims. Its provisions included giving more powers to the police to deal
with rioters and effective measures to bring the guilty to book, including the provision of
special court. Authorities were to be empowered to declare certain areas as communally
disturbed and constitute them into a single judicial zone in which the police could take
12
preventive measures such as controlling the movement of vehicles and people in such areas.
The Bill also placed heavy sanctions on police officers for neglect of duty while doubling the
rates of punishment under the Indian Penal Code (The Times of India, 24 August 2008).
Yet despite these provisions this proposal faced universal opposition from social
activists and lawyers on the grounds that it was not the lack of legislation which prevented
the control of communal conflict but the absence of political will. The Bill made no serious
provisions for making the concerned authorities liable for the non-exercise of powers to
prevent or control communal violence. Fifty prominent personalities, including the Chief
Justice of India, rejected the ‘bill in its entirety’ concluding that its assumptions were so
‘flawed that it cannot be remedied by amending a few components’ (The Tribune, 17 June
2008).
Finally, we need to mention the weathervane indicator of Indian secularism: the status
of religious freedom. Following the Gujarat riots, the United States Commission on
International Religious Freedom placed India on its Countries of Particular Concern List. In
subsequent years this was demoted to the Watch List as result of the Orissa riots and the
increasing erosion of freedom of religion through anti-conversion legislation passed by
several states (Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh and Chhattisgarh). Much of this legislation
excludes‘re-conversions’ to ‘one’s forefather’s religion’ while imposing heavy sanctions on
proselytising traditions for seeking new converts. This legislation, once again, raises difficult
issues about the general trend to prohibit conversions. Arguably, if freedom of religion is to
be taken seriously as pillar of Indian secularism then there is need for a ‘shift from formal to
substantive equality, and from majoritarianism to a recommitment to [a] liberal democracy
with sufficient protection for minority rights’ (South Asian Human Rights Documentation
Centre 2008:68) .
Assessment
Given the range and extent of UPA’s policies on secularism, it is perhaps premature to offer a
wholesale assessment, especially as many of the measures have yet to demonstrate their
effectiveness as their policymakers intended. While the latter is, no doubt, a task for further
research, it is worth reflecting on some of the general perspectives on these developments,
two of which also examined in detail in subsequent chapters.
13
The first perspective accuses the UPA administration of wasting an historic
opportunity to restore the Nehruvian ideal of Indian state secularism (Seth 2009:15). Far from
returning to the Congress of the old, it is argued, the measures taken by the Congress-led
UPA administration have moved the country towards new political framework of inter-
religious relations that is now characterised by ‘religious pluralism’ in which the political
commitment to ‘secularisation’ has now been displaced by ‘communalisation’ (Seth 2010:
38). The result of UPA’s policies aimed at minorities like the Muslims, it is contended, has
shifted the conventional tradition of focusing on ‘backwardness’ (identified with caste or
socio-economic indicators) to undifferentiated total ‘communities’ a la Sachar Committee.
Consequently, this has led to the reframing of Indian state secularism in a way in which the
state cans ‘legitimately abet, even aid, the communal practices of a religious group’ so that
now ‘membership of the state is constituted not of citizens qua citizens but of citizens-in-
communities’ (Seth 2010: 48). Paradoxically, this religious pluralism is likely to have the
opposite effects from what was intended: notably, the resurgence of communal identity
among the majority Hindu community which now also has an incentive to represent itself as
‘total’ community.
For Wilkinson (see Chapter 6) the UPA’s record is best understood as the product of
the compulsions of practical politics, particularly, though not exclusively, the need to win
elections. State secularism according to him has always had to operate within the context of
popular ‘soft’ Hindutva values among the electorate. Thus although the UPA and the
Congress have utilised the rhetoric of secularism to introduce the policies discussed above, a
careful evaluation of how these policies were selected and implemented suggest that they
were primarily intended for maximum political impact among the Muslim vote. Much more
seriously, however, the UPA’s sins of omission and commission in governance continue to
betray a political ambivalence that has characterised Indian secularism since its birth.
Ironically, despite the extensive measures taken by the UPA to address the Muslim
‘development deficit’, Wilkinson is pessimistic about the overall potential of these polices
because of their narrow focus which does not mainstream the community but further
segments its concerns. Such an exclusive focus, according to him, could provide the ideal
breeding ground for political radicalisation, especially if these policies are perceived by its
opponents as an effort to rebuild the Congress’s traditional Muslim votebank.
14
In contrast to Wilkinson, Rochana Bajpai (see Chapter 7) offers an alternative reading
based on an extensive review of affirmative action provision during the UPA administration,
including the extension of reservation to religious minorities. In her historically-based
account, Rochana Bajpai argues that far from symbolising a radical departure, the UPA’s
record marks a continuation of polity-wide policy shift first signalled by the implementation
of the Mandal Commission report in 1990. The real distinction between the UPA and
previous Congress administrations, it is suggested, is the recognition that religious identities
can be a source of disadvantage which requires affirmative action, and as such, its use is
justified on grounds of the ‘egalitarian concept of social justice’. While the Congress appears
to have embraced the language of reservation for non-Scheduled Castes and Tribes groups,
including religious minorities, this conversion, is not unrelated to building new political
constituencies around identities which have been so effective in shaping Indian politics since
the late 1990s (see Chapter 7).
Given the currency of the UPA’s policies it is perhaps premature to offer a definitive
assessment, especially as a serious evaluation of the impact of some the more targeted
measures still remains to be undertaken. The three perspectives suggested above are useful in
so far as they draw our attention to the continuities and discontinuities with the Nehruvian
normative ideal in UPA’s record over secularism, but apart from Wilkinson’s qualified
approach, they tend to elide more critical readings of the nature of Indian state secularism
itself that could better explain Congress’s historic ambivalence. Here the answer may lie in
a more radical approach to Indian state secularism which question whether it applies ‘only to
cultural groups that remain broadly within the Hindu fold but discriminates against non-
Hindu minorities’ (Brass 1994: 69). For some, like Madan, state secularism in India is at best
an
...inadequately defined ‘attitude...of good will to all religions’, sarvadarama
sadbhava; in a narrower formulation it has been a defensive policy of religious
neutrality (dharma nirpekshta) on the part of the state. In either formulation
the Indian state achieves the opposite of its stated intentions; it trivialises
religious differences as well as the notion of the unity of religions. And it
really fails to provide guidance for viable political action, for it is not rooted,
full-bloodied, and well thought weltanschung; it is only a strategy (Mandan
1987: 750).
This negative strategy has no particular agenda for the secularisation of Indian society. It
offers only asymmetrical accommodation (encapsulation) to religious minorities in terms of
15
state neutrality, and as a result, while the state’s official policy is to treat all religious
communities equally, one community remains ‘more equal and others – the majority Hindu
community’ (Upadhyaya 1992: 817). Such an outcome, I have argued elsewhere (Singh
2000), was implicit in the demographic majoritarianism built into the new state at
Independence; it was also inventible in the model of Nehruvian secularism which was unable
to erase M.K. Gandhi’s philosophy of inter-religious pluralism as the credo of the new state
(Singh 2004).
Thus while the Congress under the UPA has undoubtedly embraced the language of
affirmative action for religious minorities, this conversion is not unmindful of its political
potential in an era which has been defined by patronage politics where new constituencies of
caste and religion can be mobilised only by promises of reservation (Chandra 2007). These
consideration perhaps explain the UPA’s recent decision to enumerate caste as a category in
the 2011 census when for the last 60 years calls for such an enumeration have been
pejoratively dismissed as throwback to colonial engineering of ‘divide and rule’. To what
extent this turn in Indian public policy, that is characterised by a relentless extension of
affirmative action to ‘excluded group’, can provide a firm underpinning for democratization
and consolidation of state secularism remains to be seen, especially given the zero-sum
implications of these policies from some of the groups and its potential for wider backlash
from the BJP and its Hindutva organisations. It is in this light that Congress’s claims to have
further ‘embedded’ and ‘consolidated’ state secularism by empowering religious minorities
should be assessed. Historically speaking the odds against such claims being realised are very
high, and only the UPA’s record in office since 2009 will determine whether it has
permanently shifted the terms of trade of Indian secularism or merely reframed them under
the all too familiar rhetoric of ‘empowering’ religious minorities.
Bibliography
AsiaNews.it (2004) ‘The Singh Government Wants to Cleanse School Textbooks of Hindu
Nationalism’, available at http://www.asianews.it/news-en/The-Singh-Government-
Wants-to-Cleanse-School-Textbooks-of-Hindu-Nationalism-1069.html (accessed 13th
July 2010).
Bajpai, Rochana (2002) ‘The Conceptual Vocabularies of Secularism and Minority Rights in
16
India, Journal of Political Ideologies, 7:2, pp.179-197.
Bhargava, Rajiv ed., (1998) Secularism and Its Critics (New Delhi: Oxford University Press).
Brass, Paul R (2010) ‘Introduction’ in Paul R. Brass ed., Routledge Handbook of Indian
Politics: India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Nepal (Routledge: Oxford),
Pp.1-24.
Brass, Paul R. (2006) ‘Indian Secularism in Practice’, The Indian Journal of Secularism,
9:1, pp.115-32.
Brass, Paul R.(1999) ‘Secularism out of its Place’ in Veena Das, Dipankar Gupta and Patricia
Uberoi eds., Tradition, Pluralism and Identity (New Delhi: Sage), pp.359-379.
Brass, Paul R.(1994). The Politics of India since Independence (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2nd edition).
Chandra, Kanchan (2007) Why Ethnic Parties Parties Succeed in India: Patronage and
Ethnic Head Counts in India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Gill, P.P.S.(2001) ‘SGPC Colleges are “Minority Institutions”’, The Tribune (29th May, on-
line).
Government of India (2010) Ministry of Minority Affairs
http://minorityaffairs.gov.in/newsite/main/FAQ_Ministry.pdf(accessed 22 December 2010)
Government of India (2007) Report of the National Commission for Religious and Linguistic
Minorities (accessed 17 December 2010). Available at
http://minorityaffairs.gov.in/newsite/ncrlm/volume-1.pdf
Government of India (2006) Social, Economic and Educational Status of the Muslim
Community of India. Available at
http://minorityaffairs.gov.in/newsite/sachar/sachar_comm.pdf (accessed 20 December 2010)
Government of India (2004) National Common Minimum Programme of the Government of
17
India. Available at http://pmindia.nic.in/cmp.pdf (accessed 12 July 2010).
Hasan, Zoya(2009) ‘Muslim Deprivation and Debate on Equality’, Seminar no. 602 (October
2009), pp.34-37
Indian National Congress (2004) Manifesto 2004. Available at
http://www.congress.org.in/manifesto-2004.php (Accessed 12 th July 2010).
Madan, T.N. (1987) ‘Secularism in Its Place’, The Journal of Asian Studies, 26:4, pp.
Majhan, Gurpreet, (2010) ‘Religion, Community and Development’, in Gurpreet Mahajan
and Surinder S. Jodhka eds., Religion, Communities and Development: Changing
Contours of Politics and Policy in India (New Delhi: Routledge), pp.1-35.
Mahajan, Gurpreet and Surinder S. Jodhka (2009) Religion, Democracy and Governance:
Spaces for the Marginalised in Contemporary India (Birmingham: Religions and
Development Research Programme Working Paper 26),pp.1-101.
Nanda, Meera (2004) ‘Postmodernism, Hindu Nationalism and “Vedic
Science”’, Frontline, 9 January 2004, p.10, online edition.( Accessed 10th April
2004.)
Robinson, Rowena (2007) ‘Indian Muslims: The Varied Dimension of Marginality’,
Economic and Political Weekly (10 March), pp.839-43.
Seth, D.L. (2009) ‘Minority Politics: The Shifting Terms of Policy Discourse’, Seminar, 602
(October), pp.15-19.
Seth, D.L. (2010) ‘Political Communalisation of Religions and the Crisis of Secularism’ in
Gurpreet Mahajan and Surinder S. Jodhka eds., Religion, Communities and
Development: Changing Contours of Politics and Policy in India (New Delhi:
Routledge), pp.36-64.
Singh, Gurharpal (2004) ‘State and Religious Diversity: Reflections on Post-1947 India’,
Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 5:2, pp.205-25.
Singh, Gurharpal (2000) Ethnic Conflict in India: A Case-Study of Punjab (Basingstoke:
Macmillan).
Singh, Jarnail (2009) I Accuse...: The Anti Sikh Violence of 1984. (New Delhi: Viking).
18
Smith, Donald Eugene (1967) India as a Secular State (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press).
South Asian Human Rights Documentation Centre (2008) ‘Anti-Conversion Laws:
Challenges to Secularism and Fundamental Rights’, Economic and Political Weekly,
(12 January), pp.63-73.
Tandon, Aditi and Ashok Tuteja (2009) ‘Babri report leak throws Parliament into tumult:
Table the report now, demands angry Opposition’, The Tribune (24 November 2009),
(Chandigarh – online).
United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (2010) Annual Report.
Available at
http://www.uscirf.gov/images/annual%20report%202010.pdf (accessed 23 December
2010).
Notes
1
The UPA also introduced a bill to give constitutional status to the Minorities Commission. This bill was
introduced as an amendment in 2004 and reached the committee stage in 2006, but does not appear to have
passed. As late as June 2009 the minister for Minority Affairs was promising to reconsider the matter to give
constitutional status to the Minorities Commission.
