Argumentative Indian Amartya Sen

The book deals with a variety of different cross sections of Indian society, both with respect to India
exclusively as well as those that deal with the relationship between India and the rest of the world.
Most of the analysis in the book behind the arguments given relies not only on Economics but also on
religion, psychology, sociology and general epistemology. A few (Essay 5, Tagore and His India and
to some extent Essay 15 India through Its Calendars) also veer away from the tone of the rest of the
book and talk about ideas on a more nostalgic level. I will talk about the major ideas and concepts
outlined in each one of the essays one by one.
Essay 14 : Secularism and Its Discontents
The essay begins by outlining the incompleteness of the idea of secularism itself. Secularism, in
essence is the separation of the State and Religion. However, in itself this definition is incomplete as it
does not define the mechanism of the separation of the state and religion and also as it does not talk
about the extent of separation.
There are two kinds of Secularism in essence. First where the state favours every religion equally and
has no preference for one religion over another. This the form of secularism followed by the
Government in India. The other is where the state renounces every religion equally and goes to the
other extreme. This form of secularism is practised in France where the public display of any form of
religious affliations in public, like Hijabs or Turbans, is banned.
Sen realizes that intellectutals usually try to stay away from controversies about Secularism as the
debate usually turns extremely passionate and the goodness of Democracy is taken for granted.
He then talks about the various attacks on the idea of secularism in India, mostly in the recent years by
the BJP under their banner of the Hindutva Movement. He also observes, in an earlier essay how
their own idea of Hindutva is extremely selective and skirts over the many facets of hinduism itself for
furthering their agenda. That said, he gets down to enumerating the major complaints against
Secularism in India and their rebuttals.
1. The Non- Existence Critique
This idea is usually more prevalent in the West where India has become the home of Yoga and
330 Million Gods (in line with the Exoticist view of India we looked at in a previous essay). Any
claims of India being a secular country is taken to be sanctimonious non-sense, as it has no effect on
the international political scene which is dominated mostly by the western hemisphere. This view is
justified on the basis of numbers and with an 80% Hindu population, they feel they have done justice to
the idea of India by calling it a Hindu State or a mainly Hindu state. So in essence, this critique
insists that secularism in India is not important enough to be talked about as it doesn't exist.
Rebuttal
Well, in a word LOL. This is, if anything, an over-simplification for allowing India to be
potrayed as the couterpart of Pakistan and save time spent in actually researching the differences.
Obviously, India being a Secular republic and Pakistan being an Islamic Republic has significant
consequences from the legal point of view. For example, the head of the state in Pakistan can only be a
Muslim, whereas in India, he can belong to any religion. The laws against blasphemy and protecting
religious sentiments also come into the picture here. Therefore, the non-existence critique isn't even the

strongest opposition here.

However, it does lead tangentially to a point which talks about which form of secularism is it
that India practises in the first place. Is it equidistant in term of favoring every religion, or is it
equidistant in disregarding every religion. And more importantly, which is a better form of governance.
Clearly, India places itself equidistantly from all religions in terms of favoring them and all religions
receive equal favor from the state. However, it might lead to the problem in the long run of the small
minorities claiming their sentiments aren't being protected. For instances, this view mandates that even
a religion which has 100 followers is protected from attacks on its practices by means of blasphemy
laws among others. This however, would be a legislative nightmare.
2. The Favoritism Critique
This critique is more popular amongst the Hindutva agenda parties, ones that claim that the
secularism is a sham as it favors the muslim minorities over the Hindu majority. It goes on to state that
the secularism is actually a pseudo-secularism as it protect the muslims better than the hindus, which
would not happen in a truly secular state.
Rebuttal
This idea stems from the fact that the muslim community has a different civil code than the rest
of the country. Again, this is predominantly false as the