Secularism : Its implications for Law and life in India

I have great pleasure in presenting this volume on Secularism : Its
Implications for Law and Life in India. It contains the papers presented
at a seminar organized at the Indian Law Institute, New Delhi, under the
joint sponsorship of the Institute and the Education Commission, Govern-
ment of India, in November 1965. Summaries of the proceedings at the
discussion sessions are also included. The seminar (which was originally
to have been held at Jaipur) was attended by eminent educationists,
judges, lawyers, law teachers, political scientists, Indologists, historians,
priests and sociologists. As many points of view as possible were presented
at the seminar.
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No apology is needed for a seminar of this kind in India. An effort
to examine and analyze the concept would have been a necessary and
welcome step at any time in the history of the country after independence.
But the social and political problems of contemporary India make serious
thinking upon the subject inevitable. In view of the stresses and
strains and feelings of insecurity generated by continuous conflict with our
neighbour it becomes the responsibility of the intellectuals to guide Indian
social thinking on proper lines and to see to it that an atmosphere of
brotherliness, tolerance, national unity, and the transcending of religious
and sectarian differences is created. It is only through this atmosphere of
a compromise of interests, of willingness to give everybody a hearing, of
emphasizing that opinions should not be formed and expressed unless they
are based upon rational appraisal, that Indian democracy can flourish. In
truth the complex heterogeneity that India presents in almost all direc-
tions-race, language, religion and colour can only be suitably contained
through a democratic principle. But the atmosphere to operate happily
and functionally rests not upon special privileges to any group but upon a
guarantee that the institutions of law and order will be so run that there is
no discrimination or arbitrariness as against individuals or groups.
Secularism emerged in the West as a concept antagonistic to religion
and as a byproduct of materialism and industrialization. The problem of
secularism in India is how such a peculiarly intellectual and scientifically
empirical concept can be made viable in a community subject to mass illite-
racy, superstition and the all-inclusive hold of religion. Both the Hindu
and the Muslim religions, though neither has an established church, pro-
fess to guide the life of their votaries from birth to death.