¹ Excluding a potentially contentious issue from the agenda is one method by which powerful social groups seek to reinforce the status quo on that problem. For agenda setting as an instrument of power, see the book and article by Bachrach, Peter and Baratz, Morton: Power and Poverty: Theory and Practice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970)Google Scholar and “Decisions and Nondecisions: An Analytical Framework,” American Political Science Review, 57 (1963), 632–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

² The most influential statement of the hierarchical ordering of Indian life on the lines of dharma is by Dumont, Louis, Homo Hierarchicus: The Caste System and Its Implications (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1970).Google Scholar For a theoretical attempt to understand the varna scheme which, through a grid of concepts ranging between the localised jati, the regional varna schemes and an overarching pan-Indian Hinduism, provides the basis of ideological integration of an apparently fragmented Hindu society, see Fox, Richard, “Varna Schemes and Ideological Integration in Indian Society,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 11:1 (1969), 27–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Further evidence giving concrete expression to this form of self-identification and communal bonding can be found in Freitag, Sandria, “Sacred Symbols as Mobilizing Ideology: The North Indian Search for a ‘Hindu’ Community,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 22:4 (1980), 597–625.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³ For the role of religion in Max Weber's social theory, see his Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religioussoziologie, Bd. II, Hinduismus und. Buddhismus, 3 (Tubingen, 1963)Google Scholar. Dumont's definition of communalism as “the affirmation of community in a political group” suggests the existence of caste, religion, and tribe as constant and pre-political parameters of Indian society. See Dumont, Louis, Religion, Politics and History in India (The Hague, 1970), 90.Google Scholar Geertz's view of religion as a “cultural system of symbols” in which culture itself is seen as “a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means of which men communicate, perpetuate and develop their knowledge about and attitudes towards life” also presents these categories as universal constants. See Geertz, Clifford, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York, 1973), 89.Google Scholar

⁴ This is not to claim that the existence of religion is explained by state and society relations nor to deny the intrinsic value of religion. Thus, the emergence of a Mohammad or Guru Nanak is not predicted by state-society relations, though a particular historical conjuncture may be conducive towards the growth of a particular form of religious movement. Besides, the causation is simultaneous in the sense that an important development, endogenous to the society, might affect the nature of the state as well as the society.

⁵ See Nandy, Ashish, “An Anti-Secular Manifesto,” in Hick, John and Hempel, Lamont, eds., Gandhi's Significance for Today (London: MacMillan, 1989).Google Scholar

⁶ Hardgrave, R.L. and Kochanek, Stanley, India: Government and Politics in a Developing Nation (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986), 158.Google Scholar This is in a sense the standard view of the state in India, within which specific themes such as the secular state, secularisation, interpenetration of society and polity, the mutual accommodation of tradition and modernity have been analysed in the major texts on Indian politics.

⁷ The scale and intensity of communal violence reached a new peak during the 1980s. “The decade was tragic witness to some 4,500 communal incidents that cost around 7,000 lives. Looming menacingly over the scene was the divisive Ram Janambhoomi issue, now grown into an ominous monster for the new government of India elected at decade-end” (India To-dav, January 15, 1990, p. 14). For the geographic spread of communal violence, see “Kashmir Valley: Drifting Dangerously,” ibid., pp. 4–7.

⁸ Secularism has long been the official policy of the Congress Party as well as the Janata governments that have replaced it three times since independence. In his first major policy statement on the floor of the Parliament, the Janata government of Mr. V. P. Singh, after affirming that it intended to adopt an “alternative model of Government and development,” felt the necessity of reaffirming its allegiance to the policy of secularism. “A secular India is the very basis of our emotional unity and national integrity” (The Statesman Weekly, December 30, 1989, p. 1).

⁹ “Secularism is the dream of a minority which wants to shape the majority in its own image, which wants to impose its will upon history but lacks the powers to do so under a democratically organized polity. In an open society the state will reflect the character of the society. Secularism therefore is a social myth which draws a cover over the failure of this minority to separate politics from religion in the society in which its members live.…For the secularist minority to stigmatize the majority as primordially oriented and to preach secularism to the latter as the law of human existence is moral arrogance and…political folly” (Madan, T.N., “Secularism in its Place,” The Journal of Asian Studies, 46:4 (11 1987), 749).Google Scholar

¹⁰ The qualifying Bharat that follows India in Article 1 of the Constitution of India (“India that is Bharat shall be a Union of States”) is an unwitting double entendre that indicates the unresolved conflict between tradition and modernity.

¹¹ For the historical background to the dispute, see Van der Veer, Peter, “‘God Must Be Liberated!’ A Hindu Liberation Movement in Ayodhya,” Modern Asian Studies, 21:2 (1987), 283–301.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹² The 1989 Congress declares, Manifesto, “Maintaining that ‘secularism is the bedrock of our nationhood’ the Congress manifesto explains that secularism in India does not mean anti-religion. It means equal respect for all religions, as much for the religion of the majority as of the minorities, with full freedom of worship and freedom of propagation for the individual” (The Statesman Weekly, 11 11, 1989, p. 1).Google Scholar However, political realism rather than the defence of neutrality appears to have influenced the behaviour of the party during the election campaign (Sahay, Ambikanand, “PM pledges Ramrajya,” The Statesman Weekly, 11 11, 1989, p. 4).Google Scholar “The Janata Dal president, Mr. V. P. Singh said that he would be in Ayodhya on November 9 to see that ‘no untoward incident takes place that day’. On his way to Fatehpur, Mr. Singh told the Statesman that ‘The election fever will be over but the emotional unity of the country is more important’ ” (The Statesman Weekly, p. 7, November 11, 1989). Mr. Singh, however, judiciously refrained from taking a categorical stand on this issue.

¹³ Robb, Peter, “The Challenge of Gau Mala: British Policy and Religious Change in India, 1880–1916,” Modern Asian Studies, 20:2 (1986), 287.Google Scholar On this theme, also see Yang, Ananda A., “Sacred Symbol and Sacred Space in Rural India: Community Mobilization in the ‘Anti-Cow Killing’ Riot of 1893,”Comparative Studies in Society and History, 22:4 (1980), 516–96.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Ibid.

¹⁵ Veer, “God Must Be Liberated!,” 288.

¹⁶ Robb, “The Challenge of Gau Mata,” 289.

¹⁷ On this point, see Graham, Bruce, Hindu Nationalism and Indian Politics: The Origins and Development of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁸ Madan, “Secularism in Its Place,” 750.

¹⁹ The Shah Bano case involved a divorced Muslim woman who applied for maintenance under Section 125 of the Criminal Procedure Code (1973). The demand was upheld by the Supreme Court. It aroused strong opposition among the Muslim community, which perceived in the judgment an attempt by the state to interfere with Muslim personal law. The judgment was later set aside by an amendment of the constitution that conceded the right to regulate marriage and divorce to the Muslim community rather than the secular state (see Limaye, Madhu, “Reform of Muslim Personal Law),” in Limaye, Contemporary Indian Politics (Delhi: Radiant 1987), 135.Google Scholar

²⁰ Nehru was convinced that religion was a “hindrance to the tendency to change and progress inherent in human society” and that “the belief in a supernatural agency which ordains everything has led to a certain irresponsibility on the social plane, and emotion and sentimentality have taken the place of reasoned thought and inquiry” (Nehru, , The Discovery of India [Bombay: Asia, 1961], 543).Google Scholar

²¹ Report and Proceedings of the Second Indian National Congress, cited in Smith, D.E., India as a Secular State (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1963), 88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²² Gandhi's position can be seen in the well-known quote: “Those who say that religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion means” (Gandhi, , An Autobiography or the Story of My Experiments with Truth[Ahmedabad: Navjivan, 1940], 383).Google Scholar

²³ Compromises in the policy of neutrality were thus inevitable. “In its effort to win, Congress adapts itself to the local power structure. It recruits from among those who have local power and influence.…The result is a political system with considerable tension between a government concerned with modernizing the society and economy and a party seeking to adapt itself to the local environment in order to win elections” (Weiner, Myron, Party Building in a New Nation[Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967], 15Google Scholar).

²⁴ Lewis, Bernard, The Emergence of Modern Turkey (London: Oxford University Press, 1968),Google Scholar cited in Madan, “Secularism in Its Place,” 766.

²⁵ Nahru, “Foreward to Tendulkar,” Mahatma, p. XIII, cited in Brecher, p. 244.

²⁶ As a theoretical formulation on the nature of state formation in India, the Rudolphs' notion of “state dominated pluralism” appears rather static compared to the concept of a strategic combination of transaction and transcendence because the former does not embody the elements of historical time and propensity to take risks with which a given leadership composes its specific policy. For the former, see Susanna Rudolph, Lloyd, In Pursuit ofLakahmi: Political Economy of the Indian State (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1987).Google Scholar For the latter, see Mitra, Subrata, “Between Transaction and Transcedence: The Dilemma of the Institutionalisation of Power in India,” in Mitra, Subrata, ed., The Post-Colonial State in Asia: The Dialectics of Politics and Culture (Milton Kaynes: Wheatsheaf, 1990).Google Scholar

²⁷ For the concepts of normal science and anomalies, see Kuhn, Thomas, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1970).Google Scholar

²⁸ Nehru, Jawaharlal, “Address to the Fifteenth Session of the Jamiat-ul-Ulema-e-Hind,” Bombay, 26 April 1948 (from National Herald, 28 April 1948, in Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, second series, vol. 6 (Delhi: Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund, 1987), 49.Google Scholar

²⁹ “The Hindu Marriage Bill,”Lok Sabha Debates, 4:57 (5 05 1955, Thursday), 7962–3.Google Scholar

³⁰ “The Hindu Marriage Bill,” in Lok Sabha Debates, 4:57 (5 05 1955, Thursday) 7963.Google Scholar

³¹ Derrett, Duncan, Religion, Law and the State in India (London: Faber and Faber. 1968), 29.Google Scholar

³² Lok Sabha Debates, 3:31 (2 April 1955, Saturday), 4149–52.

³³ See Sandria B. Freitag, “Sacred Symbol as Mobilizing Ideology.”

³⁴ Lok Sabha Debates, 3:31 (2 April 1955, Saturday), 4152.

³⁵ Jawaharlal Nehru's Speeches, I, n. 9 3, pp. 73–74, cited in Prasad, Bimal, Gandhi, Nehru and J P: Studies in Leadership (Delhi: Chanakya, 1985), 136.Google Scholar

³⁶ Derrett, Religion, Law and the State in India, 57.

³⁷ Ibid., 560.

³⁸ The holy text of Hinduism both ordained and approved of intervention by the temporal power and assemblies in the social and moral life of the community. “When Manu tell us that different customs prevailed in different ages he suggests that the social code is not a fixed but a flexible one. Social customs and institutions are subject to change. Yajnavalkya tells us that “one should not practise that which though ordained by the Smrti, is condemned by the people … Vital changes may be introduced in the habits of the people by the Parishads or assemblies of the learned. When such assemblies cannot be constituted even the decision of one learned in dharma will be authoritative” (Derrett, Religion, Law and the State in India, 29). Derrett adds further: “The proposition that the state may determine what is law within the general framework of dharma is genuinely traditional. The Apastamba Dharmasutra says: ‘dharmajna samayah pramanam’ (‘the Council of knowers of dharma is authoritative’)” (Ibid., 29, n. 1).

³⁹ Madan, “Secularism in Its Place,” 748.

⁴⁰ The operational indicators of stateness have been further discussed in Subrata Mitra, The Post-Colonial State in Asia.

⁴¹ The King says to the priest: ‘Turn thou unto me so that we may unite…I assign to you the precedence; quickened by thee I shall perform deeds” (Coomarswamy, Ananda, Spiritual Authority and Temporal Power in the Indian Theory of Government [New Delhi: Munsiram Manoharlal, 1978], 8,Google Scholar cited in Madan, “Secularism in Its Place,” 751. For the duality of sacred and secular authority in India's state tradition, see Heesterman, J.C., The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985);Google ScholarDirks, Nicholas, The Hollow Crown: The Ethnohistory of an Indian Kingdom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987);Google Scholar and Presler, Franklin, Religion under Bureacracy: Policy and Administration of Temples in South India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).Google Scholar

⁴² Smith, India as a Secular State, 134.

⁴³ Ibid.

⁴⁴ Veer, “God Must Be Liberated!,” 284.

⁴⁵ See Brass, Paul R., Religion and Politics in North India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974), 27.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ See, for example, Robinson, Francis, Separatism among Indian Muslims (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974).Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Melson, Robert and Wolpe, Howard, “Modernization and the Politics of Communalism: A Theoretical Perspective,” American Political Science Review, 64 (12 1970), 1129.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴⁸ Veer, “God Must Be Liberated!,” 284.

⁴⁹ “Modern, industrial and urban life is expressed in India, using Hindu categories, as the triumph of ahankar and the increasing marginality of dharma. The ideology which could underpin this great material transformation—of which few would deny the necessity—is yet to be born. To speculate beyond this and to express an optimistic or pessimistic view would be only to substitute one's personal predilections in the place of unpredictable historical development. Some would believe that the new material conditions would create an appropriate ideology…others, more sensitive to the role of values and ideas in history would ask with some anxiety as to how India could mentally come to terms with these new demands. During this period, India will live as best as she can and, will perhaps come up with a solution that nobody could have foreseen” (Biardeau, Madeleine, L' hindouisme: anthropologies d'une civilisation [Paris: Flammarion. 1981], 180 [author's translation]).Google Scholar