BeyondHeadlines Editorial Desk
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s demand that India needs ‘a secular leader’ and his recent withdrawal of support from the BJP led NDA has triggered again the familiar debate on secularism in India. In recent decades secularism as an idea has been used, misused and abused in India as elsewhere in the world. We need to ask some serious questions to understand the idea and politics of secularism in our country. Is Secularism a political rhetoric? Is ‘secularism’ designed only to wake up during the elections?
We need to go beyond the ‘electoral secularism’ and probe deeper to analyse and find out its ideological, political and policy relevance in today’s India. We are happy to announce that on popular demand we are starting a series on Secularism in India. This series has been titled as Debating Secularism in India: Ideology, Politics and Public Policy.
We invite articles, commentaries and book reviews on the following topics related to secularism:
1. What is Secularism? History of the Idea
2. Constitutional Debates on Indian Secularism: Gandhi, Nehru and Ambedkar
3. How Indian Secularism is different from other secularisms as practiced in other countries of Asia, Africa, Europe, Americas and Australasia?
4. Evaluating Indian Secularism, has it served its purpose?
5. Theological and neo-religious Perspectives/Critiques of Secularism
6. Philosophical Perspectives/Critiques of Secularism- Liberalism, Marxism, Feminism, Green
7. Public Policy Perspectives/Critiques of Secularism
8. Congress Party and Secularism
9. BJP and Secularism
10. Secularism and the Left in India
11. Secularism and Inter-faith dialogue
Please email your articles to: beyondheadlinesnews@gmail.com
Note: Opinions published in this series will be solely of that of the authors and the authors will be responsible for their data, analysis and conclusions.
