Essay on Essay
Secularism In India -- A Brief Study - By Kamaluddin Khan
By Kamaluddin Khan,
The challenges of castism, communalism and religious fundamentalism, involving separatism and violence in India, are the major threats to our secular polity. They weaken the working and stability of our secular federal system and militate against the basic principles governing our national life and providing meaning to our new identity. Our national movement was the biggest and the most widespread anti-imperialist movement in world history, because it was a movement of all patriotic elements drawn from the diverse regions, language groups, religious communities, castes, and tribes, urban and rural segments. Inter-communal and inter-caste tensions and violence over the years have disturbed national peace and order. In recent years there have been recurrent and increasing number of communal riots, caste carriages and linguistic animosities. This disruptive element should be suppressed with firm step if India is to emerge as a demo critic secular polity.
Secularism is one of the major instruments for building a modern polity. It is one of the fun damental values of our national life, emphasized by the national movement and the founding fathers of the Republic.
In the Indian context, secularism and communalism are considered to be binary opposites. Secularism is a sign of modernity, plurality, co existence, rationalism and developing with a fast growing multicultural society. Communalism, which some consider as being based on love of one's community, has come to acquire the derogatory meaning of an attitude that is narrow, based on prejudices about the 'other' and almost based on hatred and violence. In India to pursue communal politics as religion is the main identifying factor and also acting against the interests of the 'other'. In the politics of the '1990s the essentially ehruvian notion of secularism itself began to be challenged, without being totally rejected. In this context it
By Kamaluddin Khan,
The challenges of castism, communalism and religious fundamentalism, involving separatism and violence in India, are the major threats to our secular polity. They weaken the working and stability of our secular federal system and militate against the basic principles governing our national life and providing meaning to our new identity. Our national movement was the biggest and the most widespread anti-imperialist movement in world history, because it was a movement of all patriotic elements drawn from the diverse regions, language groups, religious communities, castes, and tribes, urban and rural segments. Inter-communal and inter-caste tensions and violence over the years have disturbed national peace and order. In recent years there have been recurrent and increasing number of communal riots, caste carriages and linguistic animosities. This disruptive element should be suppressed with firm step if India is to emerge as a demo critic secular polity.
Secularism is one of the major instruments for building a modern polity. It is one of the fun damental values of our national life, emphasized by the national movement and the founding fathers of the Republic.
In the Indian context, secularism and communalism are considered to be binary opposites. Secularism is a sign of modernity, plurality, co existence, rationalism and developing with a fast growing multicultural society. Communalism, which some consider as being based on love of one's community, has come to acquire the derogatory meaning of an attitude that is narrow, based on prejudices about the 'other' and almost based on hatred and violence. In India to pursue communal politics as religion is the main identifying factor and also acting against the interests of the 'other'. In the politics of the '1990s the essentially ehruvian notion of secularism itself began to be challenged, without being totally rejected. In this context it