The secular values were enshrined in the constitution of India. India's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru is credited with the formation of the secular republic in the modern history of the country. With the Forty-second Amendment of the Constitution of India enacted in 1976, the Preamble to the Constitution asserted that India is a secular nation. However, the Supreme Court of India in the 1994 case S. R. Bommai v. Union of India established the fact that India was secular since the formation of the republic.S.R. Bommai vs Union Of India on 11 March, 1994 Indian Kanoon The judgement established that there is separation of state and religion. It stated "In matters of State, religion has no place. [...] Any State Government which pursues unsecular policies or unsecular course of action acts contrary to the constitutional mandate and renders itself amenable to action under Article 356". Furthermore, constitutionally, state-owned educational institutions are prohibited from imparting religious instructions, and Article 27 of the constitution prohibits using tax-payers money for the promotion of any religion.https://cdnbbsr.s3waas.gov.in/s380537a945c7aaa788ccfcdf1b99b5d8f/uploads/2024/07/20240716890312078.pdf The Constitution Of India
Officially, secularism has always inspired modern India. However, India's secularism does not completely separate religion and state. The Indian Constitution has allowed extensive interference of the state in religious affair. The degree of separation between the state and religion has varied with several court and executive orders in place since the establishment of the Republic. In matters of law in modern India, personal laws – on matters such as marriage, divorce, inheritance, alimony – varies if one is a Muslim or not (Muslims have an option to marry under secular law if they wish). The Indian Constitution permits partial financial support for religious schools as well as the financing of religious buildings and infrastructure by the state. The Islamic Central Waqf Council and many Hindu temples of great religious significance are administered and managed (through funding) by the federal and the state governments in accordance with the Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act, 1991, and the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act, 1958, which mandates state maintenance of religious buildings that were created before August 15, 1947 (the date of Indian independence), while also retaining their religious character.Legislationsindiaculture.nic.in The attempt to respect religious law has created a number of issues in India, such as acceptability of polygamy, unequal inheritance rights, extrajudicial unilateral divorce rights favorable to some males, and conflicting interpretations of religious books.
History Ashoka about 2200 years ago, Harsha about 1400 years ago accepted and patronised different religions. The people in ancient India had freedom of religion, and the state granted citizenship to each individual regardless of whether someone's religion was Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism or any other. Ellora cave temples built next to each other between 5th and 10th centuries, for example, shows a coexistence of religions and a spirit of acceptance of different faiths.Ellora Caves UNESCO, World Heritage List (1983)Brockman, N. (2011), [ Encyclopedia of sacred places]; 2nd Edition; see entries for Ajanta, Ellora and other sacred places of India,
This approach to interfaith relations changed with the arrival of Islam and establishment of Delhi Sultanate in North India by the 12th century, but it was not the only cause the enmity in minds of Hindu lower caste had risen to the top because of the discrimination by Brahmins followed by the Deccan sultanates in Central India. The political doctrines of Islam, as well as its religious views were at odds with doctrines of Hinduism, Sikhism, Christianity and other Indian religions.Makarand Paranjape (2009), Altered Destinations: Self, Society, and Nation in India, London, Anthem Press South Asian Studies, , pp 150-152 New temples and monasteries were not allowed. As with Levant, Southeastern Europe and Spain, Islamic rulers in India treated Hindus, Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs as dhimmis in exchange of annual payment of jizya taxes, in a sharia-based state jurisprudence. With the arrival of Mughal era, Sharia was imposed with continued zeal, with Akbar – the Mughal Emperor – as the first significant exception. Akbar sought to fuse ideas, professed equality between Islam and other religions of India, forbade forced conversions to Islam, abolished religion-based discriminatory jizya taxes, and welcomed building of Hindu temples.See "Mughal Empire". Gale Encyclopedia of World History: Governments. Vol. 1. Detroit; Gale, 2008Richards, John F. The Mughal Empire. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993
After Aurangzeb, India came into control of East India Company and the British Raj. The colonial administrators did not separate religion from state, but marked the end of equal hierarchy between Islam and Hinduism, and reintroduced the notion of equality before the law for Hindus, Christians and Muslims. The British Empire sought commerce and trade, with a policy of neutrality to all of India's diverse religions. Before 1858, the Britishers followed the policy of patronizing and supporting the native religions as the earlier rulers had done.Domenic Marbaniang, Secularism in India, 2005 as cited by Shiv Shankar Das in "Buddha Dharma, Secular Laws and Bahujan Politics in Uttar Pradesh", Madhya Pradesh Journal of Social Sciences, Vol.19. No.1, June 2014, p. 121 By the mid-19th century, the British Raj administered India, in matters related to marriage, inheritance of property and divorces, according to personal laws based on each Indian subject's religion, according to interpretations of respective religious documents by Islamic jurists, Hindu pandits and other religious scholars. In 1864, the Raj eliminated all religious jurists, pandits and scholars because the interpretations of the same verse or religious document varied, the scholars and jurists disagreed with each other, and the process of justice had become inconsistent and suspiciously corrupt. The late 19th century marked the arrival of Anglo-Hindu and Anglo-Muslim personal laws to divide adjacent communities by British, where the governance did not separate the state and religion, but continued to differentiate and administer people based on their personal religion. The British Raj provided the Indian Christians, Indian Zoroastrians, Indian Jews and others with their own personal laws, such as the Indian Succession Act of 1850, Special Marriage Act of 1872 and other laws that were similar to Common Laws in Europe.Nandini Chatterjee, The Making of Indian Secularism: Empire, Law and Christianity Macmillan,
Although the British administration provided India with a common law, its divide and rule policy contributed to promoting discord between communities. The Morley-Minto reforms provided separate electorate to Muslims, justifying the demands of the All-India Muslim League, eventually paving the way for the creation of Pakistan.
In the first half of 20th century, the British Raj faced increasing amounts of social activism for self-rule by a disparate groups such as those led by Hindu Gandhi and Muslim Jinnah; the colonial administration, under pressure, enacted a number of laws before India's independence in 1947, that continue to be the laws of India in 2013. One such law enacted during the colonial era was the 1937 Indian Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Application Act, which instead of separating state and religion for Western secularism, did the reverse.
It, along with additional laws such as Dissolution of Muslim Marriages Act of 1939 that followed, established the principle that religious laws of Indian Muslims can be their personal laws. It also set the precedent that religious law, such as sharia, can overlap and supersede common and civil laws, that elected legislators may not revise or enact laws that supersede religious laws, that people of one nation need not live under the same laws, and that law enforcement process for different individuals shall depend on their religion. The Indian Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Application Act of 1937 continues to be the law of land of modern India for Indian Muslims, while parliament-based, non-religious uniform civil code passed in mid-1950s applies to Indians who are Hindus (which includes Buddhists, Jains, Sikhs, Zoroastrians), as well as to Indian Christians and Jews.Chandra Mallampalli, Christians and Public Life in Colonial India: Contending with Marginality (London, 2004) Current status The 7th schedule of Indian constitution places religious institutions, charities and trusts into so-called Concurrent List, which means that both the central government of India, and various state governments in India can make their own laws about religious institutions, charities and trusts. If there is a conflict between central government enacted law and state government law, then the central government law prevails. This principle of overlap, rather than separation of religion and state in India was further recognised in a series of constitutional amendments starting with Article 290 in 1956, to the addition of word 'secular' to the Preamble of Indian Constitution in 1975.
The overlap of religion and state, through Concurrent List structure, has given various religions in India, state support to religious schools and personal laws. This state intervention while resonant with the dictates of each religion, are unequal and conflicting. For example, a 1951 Religious and Charitable Endowment Indian law allows state governments to forcibly take over, own and operate Hindu temples,K. N. Kumari (1998), History of the Hindu Religious Endowments in Andhra Pradesh, Northern Books, and collect revenue from offerings and redistribute that revenue to any non-temple purposes including maintenance of religious institutions opposed to the temple;Presler, F. A. (1983). "The structure and consequences of temple policy in Tamil Nadu, 1967-81". Pacific Affairs, 56(2), 232-246 Indian law also allows Islamic and other minority religious schools to receive partial financial support from state and central government of India, to offer religious indoctrination, if the school agrees that the student has an option to opt out from religious indoctrination if he or she so asks, and that the school will not discriminate any student based on religion, race or any other grounds. Educational institutions wholly owned and operated by government are prohibited from imparting religious indoctrination, but religious sects and endowments may open their own school, impart religious indoctrination and have a right to partial state financial assistance.
Scholars have identified the judiciary as a central agent in shaping Indian secularism. In his study of the Supreme Court and secularism, Ronojoy Sen argued that through the essential practices doctrine the Court made itself not only the gatekeeper of what qualified as religion but also the arbiter separating superstition from religion, taking up an overt role in rationalizing religion and marginalizing practices that did not meet its test — a role articulated most clearly in the landmark judgments delivered by Justice P. B. Gajendragadkar in the early 1960s.
Secularism and Hindu nationalism