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Indian Freedom Struggle (1707–1947 A.D.)

Notes freedom of attendance at religious instruction or religious worship in certain educational institutions,
cultural and educational rights including protection of interests of minorities and their right to
establish and administer educational institutions.
The debate over the meaning of the term secular in the Indian context has been a heated one. Some
people have argued that the Western context from which the term secular is borrowed is a very
different one. In the West, the outcome of the struggle between the Church and the state led to the
separation of the two; the Church was allowed to decide on religious rituals, the state was to
regulate secular affairs. In India, the concept of secularism evolved as part of the struggle of
nationalist forces against communal forces that wanted to use religion for political purposes and
divide the emerging nation on the basis of religion.
Nehru put it best:
We call our State a secular one. The/word ‘secular’, perhaps, is not a very happy one and yet for
want of a better, we have used it. What exactly does it mean? It does not obviously mean a society
where religion itself is discouraged. It means freedom of religion and conscience, including freedom
for those who may have no religion. It means free play for all religions, subject only to their not
interfering with each other or with the basic conceptions of our State.
Dr. S. Radhakrishnan, the renowned scholar of Indian philosophy, who was President of India
from 1962 to 1967, placed secularism within the Indian tradition:
We hold that no religion should be given preferential status of unique distinction . . . No group of
citizens shall arrogate to itself rights and privileges that it denies to others. No person should
suffer any form of disability or discrimination because of his religion but all alike should be free
to share to the fullest degree in the common life . . . Secularism as here defined is in accordance
with the ancient religious tradition of India.
Nehru’s commitment to secularism was unsurpassed and all-pervasive. Communalism went against
his grain, and he fought it vigorously throughout his life. He helped secularism acquire deep roots
among the Indian people; and he prevented the burgeoning forth of communalism when conditions
were favourable for it. Though on almost all issues he believed in consensus and compromise,
communalism was the exception, for as he said in 1950, any compromise on communalism ‘can
only mean a surrender of our principles and a betrayal of the cause of India’s freedom’.
Keeping in view India’s specific situation, Nehru defined secularism in the dual sense of keeping
the state, politics and education separate from religion, making religion a private matter for the
individual, and of showing equal respect for all faiths and providing equal opportunities for their
followers. He defined communalism as the ideology which treated Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs or
Christians as homogeneous groups in regard to political and economic matters, as ‘politics under
some religious garb, one religious group being incited to hate another religious group’.
Nehru was one of the first to try to understand the socio-economic roots of communalism, and he
came to believe that it was primarily a weapon of reaction, even though its social base was formed
by the middle classes. He also most perceptibly described communalism as the Indian form of
fascism. In contrast, he regarded secularism as an essential condition for democracy.
He also did not distinguish between Hindu, Muslim, Sikh or Christian communalisms. They were,
he said, different forms of the same ideology and had, therefore, to be opposed simultaneously.
While he was very clear that secularism meant giving full protection to the minorities and removing
their fears, at the same time, he was as opposed to minority communalisms as to the communalism
of the religious majority. He also argued most convincingly that secularism had to be the sole basis
for national unity in a multi-religious society and that communalism was, therefore, clearly a
danger to national unity and was anti-national.
There was, however, a major lacuna in Nehru’s approach to the problem of communalism, which
can be seen as a certain economistic, deterministic and reductionist bias. Believing that planning
and economic development and the spread of education, science and technology would
automatically weaken communal thinking and help form a secular consciousness, he ignored the
need for struggle against communalism as an ideology. As a result he paid little attention to the

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