Secular states, religious politics: India, Turkey, and the future of secularism

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Secular States, Religious Politics is a pioneering comparative study of the two major attempts to build secular states--where the constitutional identity and fundamental character of the state are not based on or derived from any religious faith--in the non-Western world. A few decades ago, the secular nature of the republics of India and Turkey was considered axiomatic. Not so any more. Alternative, anti-secular visions of nationhood have risen decisively from the political margins so centre-stage and won state power in both countries. The secular definition of nationhood has effectively been replaced by a Sunni-Islamist majoritarian definition in Turkey, where the secular state is dead in all but name. In India, majoritarian Hindu nationalism has emerged as by far the country's single largest political force, and the future of India's secular state is in the balance. This book explains the political transformations of India and Turkey with deep insight and exceptional clarity. It shows the similarity of the two non-Western secular states in not being based on a Western-style principle of separation of church and state, but rather on an operational doctrine of state intervention in and regulation of the religious sphere. At the same time, Bose highlights the very different motives behind the establishment of secular states in the two cases, and demonstrates that while state-secularism took a culturally deracinated and deeply authoritarian form in Turkey, it assumed a culturally rooted and democratic form in India. Bose is critical of the flaws of what he calls India's 'really existing' secular state, but argues that unlike the fatally flawed Turkish model, secularism retains relevance in the Indian context and is indispensable to its future as a democracy. In a lucid, accessible style, this book combines encyclopedic knowledge of the cases with a sophisticated comparative framework. Its subject, and argument, are extremely topical to the times we live in .