Chapter Info (Click Here)
Book No. – 002 (Political Science)
Book Name – Political Theory (Rajeev Bhargava)
What’s Inside the Chapter? (After Subscription)
1. SECULARISM: THE BROAD DEFINITION
2. POLITICAL SECULARISM
2.1. Theocracy. States with Established Religions and Secular States: An Exposition
2.2. Amoral and Value-based Secular State
2.3. Values of a Secular State
3. CRISIS FOR SECULAR STATES
4. THEOCRACY, STATES WITH ESTABLISHED RELIGIONS AND SECULAR STATES: A NORMATIVE COMPARISON
5. Critique of Mainstream Secularism
6. AN ALTERNATIVE CONCEPTION: INDIAN SECULARISM
6.1. Principled Distance
7. IS SECULARISM A CHRISTIAN AND WESTERN DOCTRINE?
Note: The first chapter of every book is free.
Access this chapter with any subscription below:
- Half Yearly Plan (All Subject)
- Annual Plan (All Subject)
- Political Science (Single Subject)
- CUET PG + Political Science
LANGUAGE
Secularism
Chapter – 18
Table of Contents
SECULARISM: THE BROAD DEFINITION
- Most doctrines or ideologies advocate something while defining themselves in opposition to other things (e.g., feminism advocates gender equality but opposes patriarchy).
- Similarly, environmentalism advocates the protection of the natural environment but opposes its destruction by human actions.
- Secularism can be understood in opposition to religious hegemony, religious tyranny, and religion-based exclusion.
- The goal of secularism is to ensure a social and political order free from institutionalized religious domination, promoting religious freedom, freedom to exit from religion, inter-religious equality, and equality between believersand non-believers.
- Religion defines the scope of secularism, which is lost if religion either disappears or purges itself of oppressive, tyrannical, or inegalitarian features.
- If religion is defined only by its oppressive aspects, secularism may aim to eliminate religion altogether.
- However, since religion is not always oppressive, secularism can be seen as advocating for critical respect towards religion.
- The word secular comes from the Latin word ‘saeculum’, meaning ‘this time’ or ‘this world’, distinct from divine or otherworldly time.
- In deeply religious contexts, where the focus is often on transcending the earthly world, secularism denies the inferiority of this world.
- Secularism is not committed to asserting the absence of another world, but rather to affirming that this world and this time are significant enough for human beings.
- Secularism assumes that all human beings exist on the secular plane, regardless of beliefs about other worlds or entities.
- Even religious people must acknowledge that all human institutions, including religious ones, are entangled with this world and this time.
- Secularism also presupposes that human institutions in this world can become oppressive or inegalitarian.
- If concerned about oppression, tyranny, or hierarchy, this concern must apply to all institutions in this world, including those focused on the otherworldly.
- Historically, many religious figures like Buddha, Jesus, Nanak, Kabir, Luther, Gandhi, and Phule were concerned with religious reform within their own traditions, engaging in what can be seen as a secular struggle.
- While not secular themselves, these figures had affinities with secularists in their internal religious reform efforts.
POLITICAL SECULARISM
- Secularism has been defined broadly as a normative doctrine aimed at ending religious hegemony, oppression, and exclusion.
- Political secularism is a narrower, normative doctrine that focuses on the appropriate relationship between the stateand religious institutions.
- The main objective of political secularism is to separate the state from religious institutions to prevent religious tyranny, oppression, and hierarchy, and to promote religious freedoms, non-religious freedoms, and equality.
- Political secularism can be schematically defined as the separation of state and religion for the sake of these values.
- Political secularism is not a single, fixed concept; it has many interpretations depending on:
- How the metaphor of separation is understood.
- What values the separation is meant to promote.
- How these values are combined and weighted.
- To understand political secularism, it is essential to contrast it with doctrines related to but opposed to it.
- Doctrines opposed to political secularism favor a union or alliance between religion and state.
- Political secularism advocates for a secular state, while opposing doctrines seek either a theocracy (union of state and religion) or a state with established religion.