One way of defining secularism is that in a secular state, religion does not form the fundamental basis of law. India’s constitutional sche...
One way of defining secularism is that in a secular state, religion does not form the fundamental basis of law. India’s constitutional scheme makes this clear by giving the people constitutive power.
The fundamental rights laid out on the Constitution make no reference to religion as a grounding principle. Rather, as stated in Article 25, the fundamental right to religion is itself subject to morality, health and public order. This right, as well as the other fundamental rights, are justiciable by a court system that is itself not grounded in religion.
However, since Independence, the wording of some legislations relating to particular religions and particular customs give the impression – and sometimes the effect – of religion as being among the grounds of law.
Colonial policy
Secularism in Independent India is nothing like the colonial policy of religious neutrality. The colonial state was not grounded in popular sovereignty. Because no fundamental rights or democratic principles existed, individuals accessed civil laws largely in the state-defined medium of religious and customary laws.
Many discriminative principles of religious and customary traditions in the form of “personal laws” that relate to marriage, divorce, maintenance, inheritance and succession, particularly on the register of gender, have survived from the colonial order, as scholars such as Archana Parashar and Flavia...Read more
