Europe, India, and the Limits of Secularism

Bibliographic Data

ID19984937
AuthorsJakob De Roover (0000-0001-8790-320X, corresponding author)
Year2016
Pages296
Publication date2016-03-01
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
VenueEurope, India, and the Limits of Secularism (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199460977.001.0001
OpenAlexW2300475839
Open LibraryOL28824123M
ISBN9780199460977
LanguageEN
Citations received12

For several decades now, commentators have sounded the alarm about ‘the crisis of secularism’. Saving the secular state from political religion, they suggest, is a question of survival for societies characterized by religious diversity. Yet it remains unclear what the crisis is all about. This book argues that its roots are internal to the liberal model of secularism and toleration. Rather than being neutral or non-religious, this is a secularized theological model with deep religious roots. The limits of liberal secularism go back to its emergence from the inherent dynamics and tensions of the Protestant Reformation in Europe. From the very beginning, this political model went hand in hand with its own modes of intolerance: an anticlerical theology that rejected Catholicism and Judaism as evil forms of ‘political religion’. In the name of public order, all religions and traditions in European societies had to reform themselves along the lines of a secularized Protestant framework. Later this normative framework gave rise to the orientalist and colonial descriptions of ‘Hinduism’ (and its ‘caste hierarchy’) as a false and immoral religion. Drawing on these descriptions, secularism was then presented as the only route forward for India, even though it often harms local forms of living together and reinforces conflicts rather than resolving them. Today’s advocacy of secularism is not the outcome of reasonable reflection on the problems of Indian society but a manifestation of a colonial consciousness that blinds us to cultural realities

Hinduism · Modernity · Political science · Politics · Protestantism · Secularism · Secularization · Sociology · Toleration · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Law · Philosophy · Religion and Society Interactions · Religion, Society, and Development · Religious studies · Christianity and politics · Europe · India · Kristendom och politik · politics and government · Religion · Religion and politics · Religiös tolerans · Religious tolerance · Säkularismus · Sekularisering · Sekularism · Toleranz

Tools

Open DOI