Secularism in India

Ok, this is a topic which started off much debate on one of the lists I'm on. I posted two articles from a recent edition of the Indian newsmagazine Outlook, which seemed to reflect two different positions on the notion of secularism as it was understood in the Indian and South Asian context. These articles are part of a debate between Ashis Nandy and Kuldip Nayar. Nandy's article, titled "A Billion Gandhis", essentially argued that secularism as understood by Nehru in its Western sense (i.e. separation of Church and State) was a "dry import" which was artificially imposed upon India. According to him, India has traditionally always had a multicultural ethos premised upon tolerance (a sort of "Hindu secularism"), and hence Western secularism was a pretty needless imposition. Nayar criticises this identification of Indian multiculturalism with Hinduism, and believes that such a notion could be powerful ammunition for proponents of communalism in India. I got an interesting response from a friend to this debate, which was:

First a question of definition and context - in India, no other word is bandied around so much as secularism - the press discusses it, politicians make a living out of it, and almost every Indian has an opinion on it. Our constitution mandates India to be a secular state, but Indian secularism is not a strict separation of church and state - it would be closer to what in the Western context has now been understood as 'multiculturalism' (this itself should be enough to refute Nandy's claim - the fact that the Indian variety was so different from how secularism has been understood in the West). Nandy's post-colonialism makes him blame almost everything on the colonial state. While it is true that the British policies led to the concretisation of 'Hindu' and 'Muslim' identities in the popular psyche, crediting them with running a secular administration is what they certainly did not do. A number of colonial British policies were clearly designed to drive a wedge between the two communities, their oft-quoted 'divide and rule' policy. But secularism was certainly a reaction of the then Indian elite (led by Nehru) to the problem of increasing tensions between the two communities in the aftermath of partition of the country based on religious lines. That Pakistan chose to become an Islamic state made it still difficult for Nehru to justify why India was not becoming a Hindu state, since that was the 'logic' of partition.
Anyway, that much history aside, the main problem of Nandy is that he comes from a romanticisation of everything traditional, and while he claims to be a non-believer, the Hindu colour of his ideas is unescapable. At another place, Nandy claims that 'Hindutva' (that is political militant hinduism) is the death of 'hinduism' (the traditional, rural, tolerance-based religion). A lot of his love for rural tolerance is mostly, for him, Hindu tolerance. His tolerant India is surely hindu India, because he sees the essence of hinduism as tolerance (I am not disputing or affirming the truth of this claim, but the fact is that this does exclude other religions as fundamentally tolerant). He, actually, says that the Hindu Right in India is actually christianising/islamising hinduism.
He gives himself away when he says:
> These ideas of tolerance in ordinary people and everyday life are
> tinged
> with popular religious beliefs, however superstitious, irrational and
> primitive they may seem to progressive, secular Indians. Modern India,
till
> today, has not produced a single hero of secularism except for that
> fading
> star, Jawaharlal Nehru.
He is more direct in his other writings as to which 'popular' religious beliefs he is referring to. Of course, the above question may not necessarily be a critique, and is open to demonstration that in fact the basic belief in hinduim is tolerance. (that still does not prove that the same is not true with other religions - and even if it was, it does not discredit secularism, which teaches tolerance irrespective of religion). However, one very crucial aspect that Nandy almost entirely ignores is the context of caste - his tolerant rural India continues to discriminate on the basis of caste, and only the modern, urban (western) secular state has considered it worth to intervene and disrupt the massive caste infrastructure (with whatever digree of success or failure).
The only point that Nandy gets right is his claim to Gandhi's legacy - this much is true - Gandhi did employ religion to fight religious hatred, and employed religious symbols for his political struggle. Indian secularism truly owes its debt only to Nehru.

And I responded by saying:

I don't necessarily agree that the notion of secularism as understood in India can so easily be equated with multiculturalism. The point Nandy has made in the past is that it is not clear what secularism is meant to be in India, for some it is separation of State from religion, and for some it is a more pluralist recognition of the rights of all religions. This is reflected in constitutional decisions of the Supreme Court on the content of the notion of 'secularism' in the constitution, for instance. Nandy's critique is of one such stream of thought - that of purely Western secularism, symbolised by the separation of State and church, which he believes is impossible to recreate successfully in Indian socio-political discourse. ('If secularism only means the traditional tolerance of South Asia, why do we need an imported idea to talk about that local tolerance?') Nandy is essentially contrasting two modes of achieving amity (Gandhi's religion-based method with Nehru's Occidental secular method) and nominating his preference between them. By declaring Nehru to be the only advocate of secularism in India, Nandy is implying that the current practice of secularism in India (i.e. as among the people of India) is closer to Gandhi than Nehru (who represents the political class in India), and for him this is a desirable outcome (ergo the title 'A Billion Gandhis'). Hence, according to Nandy, the traditional (Hindu/Gandhian) notion of communal amity which is prevalent in South Asian multicultural communities is a workable alternative to Western notions of secularism (which is what is sought to be imposed on them by the political elite). One possible criticism of Nandy could be that he errs in believing that the entire ruling class in India takes one view of secularism (in the Nehruvian sense), whereas in reality even the ruling class is more fragmented than that. This would not detract from the essence of Nandy's argument, that in a struggle between traditional notions of secularism and the Western one, it is the traditional which should prevail, atleast in the South Asian context.
The point about traditional notions of religion reinforcing caste structures is a valid one, but some also appear to believe that the 'modern, urban, secular State' is replacing caste structures with class ones. Is this necessarily a positive step?
Also I believe Nandy's romanticising of other traditional Indian concepts (including that of 'sati' - widow immolation) should not influence analysis of his notions on secularism, as each has its own context.

What do you think?

Prithvi.