Rajeev Bhargava, Reimagining Indian Secularism, 2023, 76 pp., ₹299, Seagull Books. ISBN: 9781803092898.
Secularism is a concept no less than an unresolved puzzle to academia. Scholars like Ashish Nandy, T. N. Madan and Sita Ram Goel view secularism as a Western concept and non-applicable to India. In contrast, scholars like Akeel Bilgrami and Partha Chatterjee support secularism as an infallible political value.
Professor Rajeev Bhargava, while agreeing with the first camp of scholars that secularism originated in the West, attempts to explain its suitability in the Indian context. He is widely known for his idea of ‘contextualised secularism’. This book review is divided into two major sections. The first section covers the author’s main arguments, while the second section is a critique of his arguments. His book, Reimagining Indian Secularism, is a short text divided into sixteen chapters. The book is based on the lecture that Bhargava delivered at the 2019 History for Peace Conference ‘The Idea of Indian Constitution’. more...