On 5 August 2011 04:18, ss <[email protected]> wrote: > > > What is a "secular democracy"? How would a non secular democracy work? Does > anyone have any examples of a non secular democracy? > > Democracy and secularism go very easily together if the country has an > overwhelming majority of one single religion. As the proportion of minority > religions rises, secularism becomes more contentious. > > As I have stated before on Silklist, predominantly Christian European > states > became secular after decades of war, death and strife in Europe. > Christianity > per se does not include secularism as a tenet. Islam and secualrism have no > connection. Hindus have no concept of secularism. It is "pluralism" that > Hindus follow. > > Yet it is a predominantly Hindu country that writhes and struggles with an > internal debate on secularism. If democracy is the will of the majority, > then > pluralism should be the rule in india, not secularism. And in fact that is > exactly what I see around me. Pluralism in the guise of secularism. Perhaps > it > It is people who object to pluralism who have a problem? > > shiv >
A partial answer to the difference between European and Indian approaches to, and definitions of, secularism, may lie in the fact that the earliest struggles for liberty/freedom/rights in Europe were against the dominance of the church. Much early migration to North America was also fueled by the need to flee religious persecution. Secularism in the West, is, as a consequence, defined as the separation of church and state. In India, by contrast, religion has arguably never been *the* oppressive force, possibly because of the characteristics of Hinduism. Even in Kashmir the origins of the struggle were anti-occupation, not anti-Hindu, before it was hijacked by Islamists. The Indian constitution defines secularism as equal treatment for all religions, pluralism, in other words, not the absence of religion in public life. This comparison of US and Indian constitutional provisions lays out the basic differences reasonably well: http://www.lehigh.edu/~amsp/2006/08/secular-constitutions-us-and-india.html
