Secularism, in a broader sense, essentially means that religion is kept firmly in its place if not discarded altogether from public life. Can India, a fundamentally religious country, profess belief in God and yet be paradoxically secular? While sporadic Hindu Muslim violence has been an endemic problem in India since Independence, generally the major political parties did not encourage it. This changed radically since the 1990s. Based largely on a study of secondary sources limited in period between 1988 and 1998 when religious mass campaigns brought the nationalist brand of ideology back to the fore of public life, the present article attempts to provide an overview to the rise of religion in modern Indian politics and its impact on the future of our secular polity.
Source: World Journal of Islamic History and Civilization
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