Vanya Vaidehi Bhargav

Hindu Politics in Service of Secularism

Working Paper #25

Working Paper Series of the Centre for Advanced Studies
in the Humanities and Social Sciences (CASHSS)“Multiple Secularities – Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities”
ISSN 2700-5518#25: Vanya Vaidehi Bhargav. “Hindu Politics in Service of Secularism.”
Leipzig University, 2022.
© Vanya Vaidehi Bhargav
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Please cite as:
Bhargav, Vanya Vaidehi. “Hindu Politics in Service of Secularism.”
Working Paper Series of the CASHSS “Multiple Secularities – Beyond the West,
Beyond Modernities” 25. Leipzig University, 2022.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.36730/2020.1.msbwbm.25

Leipzig University
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Nikolaistraße 8–10
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The CASHSS is part of Leipzig University and funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG.)Contents

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Introduction.............................................................................................................3
The context: Hindu-Muslim cooperation and its unravelling.............................5
The response: Hindu political consolidation and secular Indian nationalism.......11
The 'Hindu communalism' vs. 'secularism' dichotomy.......................................26
A 'Hindu communal' articulation of Indian secularism.....................................30
A brief comparison with 'Western' secularisms, Indian constitutional
secularism, Gandhi-Nehru, and the Hindu right...............................................42
7 Conclusion................................................................................................................50
8 Bibliography..............................................................................................................52

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Hindu Politics in Service of Secularism
1 Introduction

This paper explores the political thought during the 1920s of Lala Lajpat
Rai (1865–1928), a prominent anti-colonial nationalist. He is now widely
regarded as an early pioneer of Hindu nationalism, which either has strong
continuities with exclusivist-assimilationist Hindutva nationalism, or laid
the basic ideological groundwork for it.1 A contemporary of M.K. Gandhi,
Lajpat Rai was a prominent leader of the Hindu Mahasabha (The Great
Assembly of Hindus), which emerged in the 1920s as the most influential
Hindu political organisation of the time, even compared to the Rashtriya
Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS; National Volunteer Organisation), which is now
well-known, but was then more marginal.2 As temporary president of theMahasabha, Rai played a leading role in consolidating a Hindu communal
politics in the mid-1920s – his response to the context of mutual suspicion,
antagonism, and violence that marked Hindu-Muslim relations in India
during this decade. However, a closer look at Rai’s ideas reveals that his
efforts to engineer a sociopolitical consolidation of Hindus were founded

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I am grateful to Monika Wohlrab-Sahr and the anonymous reviewer for theirincisive questions on an earlier draft of this article, and Wolfgang Höpken
for generously sharing both his understanding of and references to further
understand the evolving state-religion relationship in medieval Europe. Thanks
are also due to Sushmita Nath for stimulating discussions and for nudging me
to reflect more deeply on certain aspects of Rai’s secularism.
Christophe Jaffrelot, “Genesis and Development of Hindu Nationalism in the
Punjab: From the Arya Samaj to the Hindu Sabha (1875–1910),” in Religion,
Caste, and Politics in India (London: Hurst, 2011), 113; Chetan Bhatt, Hindu
Nationalism: Origins, Ideologies and Modern Myths (Oxford: Berg, 2001), 2–4,
42–44, 48–55; William Gould, Hindu Nationalism and the Language of Politics
in Late Colonial India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 38; C.S.
Adcock, The Limits of Tolerance: Indian Secularism and the Politics of Religious
Freedom (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2013), 92–99, 129–32,
149–55. One exception is Neeti Nair, who notes that Rai shifted positions, heldcomplicated and sometimes inconsistent stances (Changing Homelands: Hindu
Politics and the Partition of India (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,2011), 16–19, chap. 2).
For more on the RSS, see Christophe Jaffrelot, The Hindu Nationalist Movement
and Indian Politics: 1925 to the 1990s (New Delhi: Penguin Books, 1999); Bhatt,Hindu Nationalism, chap. 5.
3

in a desire to establish a secular Indian nation state. This paper explores
the articulation of secularism by this Hindu ‘communal’ politician. It firstoutlines, in detail, the historical context under which a secular politics
became vital for Rai, and then elaborates the intricate internal texture of
his complex, often fluid vision of secularism. Here, I demonstrate how hesquared his organisation of an often-virulent, potentially violent Hindu
politics with a vision of secularism. The second half of the paper explores
the theoretical implications of Rai’s dynamic position. I illustrate how
Lajpat Rai simultaneously articulated both a Hindu communal politics anda vision of secularism. By so doing, this paper challenges the long-drawn
strict dichotomy between Hindu politics or Hindu ‘communalism’ andIndian secularism, undermining the assumption that these two positions
cannot be simultaneously held. Yet, the paper also pushes back against
revisionist scholarship which, in challenging assumptions of strict mutual
exclusivity between Indian secularism and Hindu communalism, has
tended to overlook and undermine meaningful distinctions that still exist
between these categories, and promoted a misleading tendency towards
their conflation. This paper insists on the need to retain and respect theanalytical distinctions between the categories of secularism and Hindu‘communalism’, even while recognising that they do not always exist
in relation to each other as a strict dichotomy. Unearthing a hithertohidden Indian secularism articulated by this ‘Hindu communal’ politician,the paper will briefly explore the ways in which Rai’s complex position
overlaps with, and is distinct from, Western variants of secularism, India’s
constitutional secularism, and the Gandhian-Nehruvian vision, the latterof which became hegemonic till the 1970s. The paper ends by, very briefly,
comparing Lajpat Rai’s position with Hindutva nationalism3 – a major
influence on the contemporary Hindu right – and by reflecting on therelationship between the Hindu right and secularism.
First, a clarification of my choice of terms. The Multiple Secularities
project distinguishes between secularity as an analytical category, connoting
a modality of making distinctions between religion and non-religion, and3

In this article, I use the term ‘Hindutva nationalism’ for heuristic purposes,
to signify the culturally assimilationist, diversity-averse Hindu nationalism ofV.D. Sarvarkar and M.S. Golwalkar, which has been a major influence on thecontemporary Hindu right.
4

secularism as a normative category, signifying the ideological project of
separating the two.4 Since my paper deals with historical actors pursuing
the ideological project of separating religion from the state and/or politics
for certain normative ends, I use the category secularism throughout.
This not only does justice to these historical actors’ own eventual use ofthis term in the modern colonial era, but, more importantly, seems to be
the appropriate analytical category to capture the normative content thatguided the quest of these historical actors to separate religion from thestate and/or politics. At the same time, for most of these modern historicalactors, the ideological objective of separation (secularism) itself rested on
the act of making conceptual distinctions between religion and the stateor politics (secularity). Their varying articulations of Indian secularism
therefore involved different expressions of Indian secularity.
2 The context: Hindu-Muslim cooperation and its unravelling

In order to grasp the secular vision that Lajpat Rai developed in the mid1920s, it is important to understand both the wider and the more immediate
political contexts in which it crystallised. In this section, I spend some timelaying out these contexts. From its foundation in 1885, much of India’sMuslim leadership had remained aloof from the Indian National Congress,
eventually forming their own political organisation in 1906: the Muslim
League.5 In the late 19th century, high-born Muslim leaders spurned theCongress, as they rejected its modern conception of nationhood, with its
connotations of popular self-rule. Muslim notables believed themselves
to be naturally gifted in the art of political rule, imagining themselves aspartners of the British Empire, alongside some Hindu aristocrats. However,even at this stage, a major reason why Muslim leaders rejected the Congress

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Christoph Kleine, and Monika Wohlrab-Sahr, “Research Programme of the
HCAS ‘Multiple Secularities – Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities’,” Working
Paper Series of the HCAS “Multiple Secularities – Beyond the West, Beyond
Modernities” 1, Leipzig University, 2016, 6–8; Monika Wohlrab-Sahr, andMarian Burchardt, “Revisiting the Secular: Multiple Secularities and Pathways
to Modernity,” Working Paper Series of the HCAS “Multiple Secularities –Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities” 2, Leipzig University, 2017, 12.
This was the same Muslim League that would lead the movement for Pakistan
in the 1940s. Its objectives in the first three decades of its existence, however,were quite different, and far from demanding a separate nation state.
5was their fear that the latter’s demand for elective representation would
inaugurate a system in which numbers mattered, and the Muslim minority
therefore be structurally disadvantaged.6
When Muslim leaders formed the Muslim League, they did soto demand separate political representation, in the form of separate
electorates and ‘weightages’ (representation in excess of numbers) in the
new system of (limited) elective political representation. This reflected the
League’s rejection of the Congress’ claim that it represented the common
political interests of Hindus and Muslims as members of an ‘Indian’ nation.
The League admitted the existence of several shared political interests,
but nonetheless considered Hindus and Muslims to be distinct politicalcommunities (or ‘nationalities’), each with its own special political interests
which could be represented only by members of that community. While
many Congressmen still frequently declared their loyalty to the Crown,
the number of those who were demanding some form of self-government(even whilst conceiving India as remaining within the British Empire)rose steadily. By contrast, the leaders of the Muslim League declared theirloyalty to the British, without demanding eventual self-government.
Given that the Congress and the League had long conducted theirpolitics separately, it was a remarkable achievement when, in 1916, these
two organisations came to an accord. In what came to be called the‘Lucknow Pact’, after the North Indian city where it was negotiated, they
arrived at a shared agreement, not just on Indian self-government, butalso on the question of political representation for Hindus and Muslims
in India’s legislatures. The Congress accepted separate electorates andweighted communal representation for Muslims in provinces where they
constituted a minority.7 The Pact helped create an atmosphere of mutual
trust between Hindus and Muslims, laying ground for further cooperationin subsequent years.8 Indeed, such collaboration was evident when asection of Hindu and Muslim leaders joined forces in the Khilafat/noncooperation movement (1919–22).

6
7
8

Vanya Vaidehi Bhargav, “Between Hindu and Indian: The Nationalist Thought of
Lala Lajpat Rai” (PhD diss., University of Oxford, 2018), 23–25.
Sumit Sarkar, Modern India: 1886–1947 (Delhi: Macmillan, 1983), 150.
Hugh Owen, “Negotiating the Lucknow Pact,” The Journal of Asian Studies 31, no.
3 (1972): 578.
6

The Khilafat movement was a Pan-Islamic movement launched bya newly emergent Indian Muslim leadership in the aftermath of the FirstWorld War. The war had ended with the British and Ottomans on the
victorious and defeated sides, respectively. The Khilafat movement in India
aimed to preserve the Ottoman caliphate-empire, which the victorious allied
powers threatened to dismantle at the Paris Peace Conference in January
1919. Gandhi, recently returned from South Africa, and now asserting
his leadership in Indian politics, believed that Hindu-Muslim unity was
the foundation of Indian national identity, and expressed sympathy withwhat he called the ‘Khilafat wrong’. The Khilafat grievance was soon linked
to other war-related grievances, also affecting non-Muslims, such as the
British government’s passing of the Rowlatt Acts, which extended wartime
emergency powers into peacetime, and the British massacre of Indians who
had gathered to protest the Acts in Jallianwala Bagh, Amritsar, in April 1919.
Combining these grievances, Gandhi and a section of the Indian Muslim
leadership cooperated to mobilise popular demonstrations and eventually
launch the Khilafat and ‘non-cooperation’ movement directed at the British
government. The movement was characterised by unprecedented andwidespread Hindu-Muslim fraternisation, at both leadership and popularlevels.9 This amity manifested itself, among other things, in the united
congregations of Hindus and Muslims in mosques and temples.10
However, over time, cracks began to appear in this Hindu-Muslim
cooperation. By early 1921, a few Muslim Khilafat leaders were growing
increasingly impatient with Gandhi’s insistence on non-violent noncooperation, which, in turn, alarmed a section of the Hindu leadership.11
The Mapilla rebellion in South India in August, in which the predominantly
John Zavos, The Emergence of Hindu Nationalism in India (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2000), 145; Gail Minault, The Khilafat Movement: Religious Symbolism andPolitical Mobilization in India (Delhi: Columbia University Press, 1982), 70–71; Cemil
Aydin, The Idea of the Muslim World: A Global Intellectual History (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 2017), 84.
10 Minault, Khilafat Movement, 70–71; Shabnum Tejani, Indian Secularism: A Social andIntellectual History, 1890–1950 (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2008), 154.
11 Minault, Khilafat Movement, 138; Tejani, Indian Secularism, 163–64. The eagerness to use
violence was, of course, not confined to only the Indian Muslim leaders of the Khilafat
movement. From the late 19th century, right up to the war years, several Hindus and Sikhs
had been involved in plots to either assassinate British officials or overthrow the British
government through an armed revolt. See Sarkar, Modern India, 123–35, 144–49.
97

Muslim Mapilla peasants revolted against their Hindu landlords, further
eroded trust between Hindu and Muslim leaders. The rebellion arose outof a combination of complex factors: agrarian discontent and an incipientfamine; the Mapilla community’s long history of armed rebellion against
authority, and the inclusion of a sizeable number of recently demobilised
soldiers trained in the use of arms and concerted action; Mapilla support
for the Khilafat but advocacy of a form of non-cooperation that condoned
violence as a means to demand redressal from their Hindu landlords;
the government’s mishandling of agrarian discontent and its repressionof political meetings by Congress and Khilafat leaders; and an eventual
trigger involving the alleged desecration of a mosque. The government
reported that the revolt caused the destruction of Hindu temples, alongsideestates, and that it included forcible conversions and the proclamation of
Khilafat kingdoms.12 Although the all-India Muslim Khilafat leadership,themselves powerless to end the revolt, condemned the violence andexpressed horror at forcible conversions, sections of Hindu leadershipgrew sceptical of Muslim intentions. For them, the Mapilla revolt raised thespectre of an organised Muslim community poised to wipe out Hindus.13
Further sporadic incidents of violence gave the colonial government an
excuse to repress the Khilafat/non-cooperation movement and arrest its
Hindu and Muslim leaders, and Gandhi himself decided to call off his
movement in early 1922, in response to violence perpetrated by some of
his followers (leading to his own arrest and further repression). As a result,the earlier enthusiasm and momentum of the movement curdled into
resentment and despair. Many Hindu and Muslim leaders blamed eachother for lacking commitment to the movement.14 Divisions surfaced evenamong Congress leaders and Muslim Pan-Islamic leaders, over the form inwhich to continue non-cooperation with the colonial government.15

12 Minault, Khilafat Movement, 145–49; Tejani, Indian Secularism, 165.
13 Gyanendra Pandey, “Hindus and Others: The Militant Hindu Construction,”
Economic and Political Weekly 26, no. 52 (1991): 2998; Charu Gupta, “Articulating
Hindu Masculinity and Femininity: ‘­Shuddhi’ and ‘Sangathan’ Movements in United
Provinces in the 1920s,” Economic and Political Weekly 33, no. 13 (1998): 728.
14 Minault, Khilafat Movement, 177–86.
15 From the beginning, deep differences existed among Hindu and Muslim leaders,
between those who favoured cooperation with the government and those who did
not, and between those who were more and less committed to nonviolence.
8

Meanwhile, at the popular level, the passions and energies released
during the mass movement began to find new, often violent outlets. From
this point, until the close of the 1920s, riots occurred with an alarming
frequency and intensity across various regions of North India. To give somesense of the scale: 1922 saw riots in Multan (Punjab); 1923 in Amritsar(Punjab) and the towns of Agra and Saharanpur (United Provinces; today’s
Uttar Pradesh); 1924 saw disturbances in Delhi and a major conflagrationin Kohat (Northwest Frontier Province; today’s Kyber Pakhtunkwa
in Pakistan); in 1925 and 1926, riots ravaged Panipat and Rawalpindi(Punjab). According to official records, 76 riots were recorded in India
between 1923 and July 1926, clustered around Bombay, Punjab, Delhi, theUnited Provinces, Bihar and Bengal. By official reckoning, 1926 saw 11
riots in Bengal alone, with Calcutta witnessing arguably the longest riot
India had ever seen, spanning a whole month.16 Increasing polarisation
between Hindus and Muslims found expression in the competitive
shuddhi/sangathan and tabligh/tanzim movements for Hindu and Muslim
consolidation, respectively. The Arya Samaj, a Hindu reform organisation,
revived the shuddhi (‘purification’ or ‘reconversion’) movement, to reclaim
those forcibly converted during the Mapilla rebellion. They soon extended
their campaign to ‘reconvert’ groups of ‘borderline Muslims’, such as theMuslim Malkana Rajputs of the United Provinces, who followed many
Hindu customs.17 This was accompanied, in 1922, by the revival of the AllIndia Hindu Mahasabha (The Great All-India Hindu Assembly), which had
been dormant and marginalised since its foundation in 1915. The Hindu
Mahasabha launched the Hindu sangathan (‘organisation’) movement,
calling on Hindus to organise in ‘self-defence’, in response to what they saw
as the threat of violence and conversion from Muslims. Alarmed, a numberof prominent Ulama and Sufis, supported by the Jamiat al-Ulama (the allIndia organisation of Islamic theologians and jurists founded during the
Khilafat movement), launched the tabligh (‘propagation’), while another16 Pradip Kumar Datta, “War over Music: The Riots of 1926 in Bengal,” Social
Scientist 18, no. 6/7 (1990): 38.
17 Minault, Khilafat Movement, 193; Gupta, “Hindu Masculinity,” 728; Tejani, Indian
Secularism, 166; Yoginder Sikand, “Arya Shuddhi and Muslim Tabligh: Muslim
Reactions to Arya Samaj Proselytization (1923–30),” in Religious Conversion inIndia: Modes, Motivations, and Meanings, ed. Rowena Robinson, and Sathianathan
Clarke (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003), 102–9.
9prominent Khilafat leader now began tanzim (‘organisation’) – apparently
also in ‘self-defence’. These movements, the consequence of HinduMuslim antagonism and violence, often themselves provoked further
violence.18 Meanwhile, polarisation and rioting resulted in the unravellingof the Lucknow Pact, as certain disgruntled Hindu and Muslim leaders
manipulated and even encouraged violence, to press their demands andpush for the Pact’s revision.19
It was in response to this new atmosphere of mutual mistrust, hostility,and violence that Lajpat Rai would articulate his ideas of secularism.20 Rai’s
own province of Punjab was particularly notable for its depth of intercommunal tension. Touring Punjab in 1923, Congress leaders concluded
that “relations between Hindus and Mussulmans, both educated anduneducated, were so greatly strained that each community had practicallyarrayed itself in an armed camp against the other.”21 The 1919 constitutional
reforms introduced by the British had granted substantial powers to
Indian provinces (as opposed to the central government), and shifted
power from confrontational urban middle-class politicians, to a loyalist
rural elite that favoured cooperation with the British imperial order.22
In the Muslim-majority province of Punjab, this had given substantial
power to a party dominated by Muslim landlords, which, even as itenacted policies for all communities, had attempted to consolidate Muslim
majority votes by extending communal representation to local bodies andeducational institutions. This resulted in deep resentment among manyurban Punjabi Hindus, rapidly and seriously embittering Hindu-Muslim
relations throughout the Punjab.23 It was the major riot in Kohat, in theneighbouring Muslim-majority Northwest Frontier Province, however,

18 Minault, Khilafat Movement, 194–95.
19 Owen, “Lucknow Pact,” 586.
20 Here, I use secularism in the sense used by Rajeev Bhargava, to connote a visionseeking the separation of organised religion from organised political power,
for the sake of a specific set of values. Rajeev Bhargava, The Promise of India’s
Secular Democracy (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2010), 65.
21 David Page, Prelude to Partition: The Indian Muslims and the Imperial System ofControl, 1920–1932 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1982), 85.
22 Page, Prelude to Partition, 22.
23 Ayesha Jalal, and Anil Seal, “Alternative to Partition: Muslim Politics between theWars,” Modern Asian Studies 15, no. 3 (1981): 426; Nair, Changing Homelands,
71–72; Page, Prelude to Partition, 86–87.
10that most affected Lajpat Rai. Here, the riot was triggered by a pamphlet
written by a supporter of Hindu sangathan, which made a call to spread thefaith of Vishnu all the way to Mecca and promised to annihilate Muslims.
Initiated by a complicated series of events, in which panicked firing byHindus led to the death of a Muslim boy, the riot eventually forced theBritish government to evacuate the entire Hindu minority from Kohat.24
3 The response: Hindu political consolidation and secular Indian
nationalism

In the years coinciding with and immediately following the First World
War, Lajpat Rai had actively discouraged the organisation of separate,
rivalrous Hindu and Muslim politics. In a book in 1918, he spoke of“the false ideas of religious nationalism and communal patriotism”,25
and declared the Arya Samaj – with which he himself had been closely
associated until the early years of the 20th century – to be “narrow andopenly sectarian”.26 As one newspaper reported, at a public meeting in
1920, “Lajpat Rai announced that hereafter he severed his connection
with any religious sect dealing with political problems”.27 In another public
speech in 1920, he asked Hindus and Muslims to end their “petty” quarrels
over the “crumbs” of council seats thrown at them by the British, and unite
to “take the whole loaf together”.28
But the new atmosphere of mistrust and violence that had beendeveloping in India since 1922 had, by late 1924, convinced Lajpat Raiof the urgent need for Hindus to consolidate in an exclusively Hindu
organisation: the newly revived Hindu Mahasabha.29 Apart from rising
violence, Lajpat Rai’s call for an assertive Hindu politics was a responseto the political actions of the bulk of Indian Muslim leadership. For many

24 Nair, Changing Homelands, 54–71.
25 Lala Lajpat Rai, “Problem of National Education in India, 1918,” in Collected
Works of Lala Lajpat Rai, ed. Bal Ram Nanda (New Delhi: Manohar, 2003), 7:184.
26 Lajpat Rai, 132–33.
27 Lala Lajpat Rai, “Unity, the Foundation of Liberty, The Tribune, 26 February
1920,” in Collected Works, 9:3.
28 Lala Lajpat Rai, “Amritsar-Place of Political Pilgrimage, The Tribune, 16 March
1920,” in Collected Works, 9:28–29.
29 Lala Lajpat Rai, “The Hindu Mahasabha and Muslim League, Bombay Chronicle,
22 December 1924,” in Collected Works, 11-203.
11

of these Muslim leaders, Hindu-Muslim cooperation during the Khilafat
movement had never implied that Indian Muslims would abandon theirown community-based political organisations – the Muslim League
and Khilafat Committee – in favour of the Indian National Congress.
In rejecting the Congress’ claim to represent the political interests ofMuslims, this Indian Muslim leadership thus only continued a longheld political stance. But Lajpat Rai’s implicit expectation that thecooperation of the preceding years would result in Muslim rejection of
separate organisation, in favour of the Congress, now produced a sense of
betrayal.30 Muslims were seen as rejecting a ‘national’ politics in common
with Hindus, to persist with a community-based politics, to negotiate with
the Hindus and the British government. In 1924, Indian Muslim politics
was fragmented like never before due to the centrifugal forces unleashedby the constitutional reforms of 1919.31 Yet, Muslim leaders from acrossIndia managed to unite in the Muslim League to define a united Muslim
position on the question of political representation. They demanded thecontinuation of separate Muslim electorates, and pushed for a further
increase in communal representation, beyond the level agreed upon at
Lucknow.32 For Lajpat Rai, the continuing separate Muslim politicalorganisation, as if Hindus and Muslims were “two parties to a quarrel”,
necessitated the activation of a mirroring Hindu political organisation, to
articulate the Hindu position on the question of communal representation.
Interestingly, despite the Muslim League’s dismissal of the Congress asan organisation predominated by Hindus, Lajpat Rai maintained that
the Congress, as an Indian ‘national’ organisation claiming to represent
both Hindus and Muslims, could not represent Hindu political interests

30 Lala Lajpat Rai, “The Hindu Sabha and Hindu Community, The Tribune, 16
January 1925,” in Collected Works, 11:210; Lala Lajpat Rai, “The Need for Hindu
Organisation, The Bombay Chronicle, 5 January 1925,” in Collected Works,
11:205; Lajpat Rai, “The Hindu Mahasabha and Muslim League,” 11:202–3.
31 Page, Prelude to Partition, 39, 98–101; Jalal and Seal, “Alternative to Partition,”
429–30.
32 All-India Muslim League, “All India Muslim League, Fifteenth Session,” in
Evolution of Muslim Political Thought in India, ed. A. M. Zaidi (New Delhi:
Michiko and Panjathan, 1975), 2:272.
12

in negotiations with the Muslim League.33 Hindu political interests could
only be represented in an unfettered manner by the Mahasabha.
But what does Lajpat Rai’s call for Hindu political consolidation haveto do with secularism? Searching, like many others, for the causes of
Hindu-Muslim tension, Lajpat Rai identified communal representation– the provision of separate political representation for Muslims – as
its root cause.34 Throwing his weight behind the revitalised Hindu
Mahasabha, he exhorted Hindus to rally behind it to “stoutly oppose”
communal representation.35 In his view, this principle was “destructive
and antagonistic to the idea of common nationhood”, and separate
electorates made “this vicious principle immeasurably worse”.36 By
permanently institutionalising a religious community-based politics
and politically dividing India’s Hindus and Muslims into “watertightcompartments”, they created conditions for “a never-ending civil war”37
and prevented “the emergence of one national will in the politicalfield”, in effect making the evolution of a nation impossible.38 This, inturn, prevented Hindus and Muslims from uniting against the British,
encouraged British denial of Indian self-government, and ensured India’s“perpetual bondage”.39 In fact, as mentioned above, it has been argued
that the acceptance of communal representation and separate electorates

33 Lajpat Rai, “The Hindu Mahasabha and Muslim League,” 202–3.
34 Lala Lajpat Rai, “Religion and Politics, The People, 22 August 1926,” in Collected
Works, 12:354.
35 Lala Lajpat Rai, “Presidential Speech at the Punjab Provincial Hindu Conference,
Lahore, The Tribune, 5 June 1925,” in Collected Works, 11:249; Lala Lajpat Rai,
“On Sarojini Naidu’s Criticism of the Leaders of the Hindu Sabha Movement,
The Tribune, 24 October 1925,” in Collected Works, 11:261.
36 Lala Lajpat Rai, “Hindu-Muslim Unity, The Tribune, November–December
1924,” in Collected Works, 11:172.
37 Lala Lajpat Rai, “My Political Creed, The People, 26 July 1925,” in Collected
Works, 11:383; Lala Lajpat Rai “Communal Representation – a Negation of
Nationalism, Hindustan Times, 27 January 1925,” in Collected Works, 11:217.
38 Lajpat Rai, “My Political Creed,” 11:383; Lala Lajpat Rai, “Communal
Representation, The People, 19 December 1926,” in Collected Works, 12:358.
39 Lajpat Rai, “Communal Representation – a Negation,” 11:217; Lala Lajpat Rai,“Communalism, Nationalism and Internationalism, The People, 27 September
1925,” in Collected Works, 11:403–4; Lajpat Rai, “My Political Creed,” 11:383.
It must, however, be remembered that, as their demands for communal
representation implied, many Indian Muslim leaders continued to conceptualise
Hindus and Muslims as distinct (if overlapping) religio-political communities.
13

by the Congress, in the 1916 Lucknow Pact, laid the ground for HinduMuslim cooperation up until the unravelling of the Khilafat movement. It
had also brought to prominence a new Indian Muslim political discourse,which conceptualised Hindus and Muslims not as distinct nationalities,
but as members of one Indian nation who must cooperate to attain selfgovernment.40 Nevertheless, Lajpat Rai wanted the Hindu Mahasabha tooppose communal representation because, in his eyes, it thwarted firstnational unity and then national autonomy (the former conceived as aprerequisite for the latter). Interestingly, while he saw Muslim politics asrepresenting a backward, illegitimate politics of religious community (apolitics now pejoratively labelled as ‘communalism’) that was opposed
to Indian nationalism,41 the Mahasabha’s Hindu politics was seen as not‘communal’, but consistent with Indian nationalism. This was because,
as he saw it, while Muslim politics insisted on nationalism-negating
communal representation, Hindu politics was geared towards opposing
communal representation, and thereby “killing communalism in politics”.
In this way he hoped it would create the conditions for the emergence ofIndian nationhood.42
At this point, the concept of secularism becomes relevant to Lajpat
Rai’s political thought. The prominent nationalist Hindu leader opposed
communal representation precisely because he believed it violated thesecular preconditions necessary to forge the Indian nation. In an article
in 1924, he expressed his discomfort with communal representation in thefollowing terms:

40 Ian Douglas, “‘Abul Kalam Azad and Pakistan’: A Post-Bangladesh Reconsiderationof an Indian Muslim’s Opposition to Partition,” Journal of the American Academyof Religion 40, no. 4 (1972): 473; Mohammad Ali Jinnah, Mohammad Ali Jinnah
An Ambassador of Unity: His Speeches and Writings (1912–1917), ed. Sarojini Naidu(Madras: GA Natesan and Co., 1918), 36–49; Shan Mohammad, ed., “Comradeon the Creed of Muslim League, 4 January 1913,” in The Indian Muslims: A
Documentary Record (1900–1947) (Meerut: Meenakshi Prakashan, 1980), 3:222–24.
41 Lala Lajpat Rai, “Presidential Address to the Eighth Session of the Hindu
Mahasabha, Calcutta, Amrita Bazar Patrika, 12 April 1925,” in Collected Works,
11:228; Lajpat Rai “Communalism, Nationalism and Internationalism,” 11:403.
42 Lajpat Rai, “Presidential Address, Eighth Hindu Mahasabha,” 11:228; Lala Lajpat
Rai, “Two Wrongs?, The Tribune, 10 November 1925,” in Collected Works, 11:267;
Lala Lajpat Rai, “Concluding Speech at the Bombay Hindu Mahasabha Conference,
The Bombay Chronicle, 8 December 1925,” in Collected Works, 11:284.
14

The history of several European countries shows that […] what helped
them to become nations was a decisive refusal to give in to the claims of
religion. As a fundamental principle of their policy, they recognised thesupremacy of the state over religion, and gradually removed all religious
distinctions so far as they affected the constitution of the state, including
services under the state […]. In India […] the acceptance of communal
representation was a concession to religion […]. The supremacy of religion
over the state has thus been enthroned.43

What Lajpat Rai meant here is clarified by placing these remarks in thecontext of scattered statements he made in two other articles over the next
two years. A year later, he wrote:
In ancient times, all systems of religion insisted on the unity of life andhence politics were only a department of religion. But those were more orless days of isolation. A single religion held sway in large areas and often
men of one race, speaking one language and following one religion were
the sole occupants of the soil of a country […]. Hence, we find that every
system of religious law professes to be a complete code for its followers,
dealing almost exhaustively with every department and phase of individualand collective life. No one ever imagined a condition of things which would
involve a variety of religions […] a variety of languages or a variety of races
in one country […]. The conditions of life throughout the world have now
been so completely changed that any insistence on sticking to the letterof the old laws is out of the question. Modern Europe and America havepractically banished religion from the orbit of their political activities.44

For Rai, the conflation of religious and political domains was possibly
suitable in ancient times, which he assumed were characterised byreligiously homogeneous societies. However, it was “out of the question” for“modern” times, supposedly marked by unprecedented levels of religious
diversity. In this reading, it was in response to this new religious diversity– and the injustice and conflict presumably generated by religious politics
under such conditions – that “modern Europe and modern America” had“practically banished religion from the orbit of their political activities”.

43 Lajpat Rai, “Hindu-Muslim Unity,” 11:167. Emphasis mine.
44 Lala Lajpat Rai, “What Is Political Work, The People, 8 November 1925,” inCollected Works, 11:417.
15

In fact, the modern age of industrialism and nationalism had produced
much greater levels of homogenisation than had existed in pre-modern,
pre-industrial societies.45 In much of Europe, the notion of separating
religion from politics arose, not as a response to religious diversity,
but in predominantly single-religion, often even single-denominationsocieties. After the Reformation, Christian sectarian diversity provoked
terrible religious warfare in Europe for more than a century. These wars
were ended in the mid-17th century, not by the establishment of secularstates, but by the reaffirmation of confessional states with strong links
to particular denominational churches.46 In many places, these alliances
between European states and their churches translated into various forms
of intolerance, homogenisation, migration, expulsion, forced conversion,and legal sanctions against minorities.47 Over the next two centuries, the45 Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (New York, NY: Cornell University
Press, 1983), 35–55.
46 The ‘confessionalisation of Europe’ saw the emergence of three monoconfessional blocs: the Lutheran north (Denmark, Norway, Sweden), theCatholic south (France, Italy, Spain, Portugal), and the Orthodox east. In
between, there was also a belt of ‘bi-’ and ‘multi-confessional’ lands. This
included England and Ireland, south Germany, Switzerland, Bohemia, Poland,and Hungary. However, Ireland was a colony of a Britain that was dominated by
Anglican England, and, as such, saw efforts at Protestantisation, with Catholics
being subject to social and political discrimination for a long time. Even in
multi-confessional German lands, there were Lutheran, Reformed and Catholicstates with tendencies towards disciplining, assimilation, and homogenisation.
Policies of religious homogenisation were similarly undertaken in Hungary
and Bohemia. See Anja Hennig, “Zum Verhältnis von Religion und Politik
in Europa,” Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 63, no. 24 (2013): 44; Philip Gorski,“Historicizing the Secularization Debate: Church, State, and Society in Late
Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ca. 1300 to 1700,” American Sociological
Review 65, no. 1 (2000): 147–48, 157–58; Joel F. Harrington, and Helmut Walser
Smith, “Confessionalization, Community, and State Building in Germany,
1555–1870,” The Journal of Modern History 69, no. 1 (1997): 82–86; Daniel
Nexon, “Religion, European Identity, and Political Contention in Historical
Perspective,” in Religion in an Expanding Europe, ed. Timothy Byrnes, and Peter
Katzenstein (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 278.
47 Craig J. Calhoun, Mark Juergensmeyer, and Jonathan VanAntwerpen,“Introduction,” in Rethinking Secularism, ed. Craig J. Calhoun, Mark
Juergensmeyer, and Jonathan VanAntwerpen (Oxford: Oxford University Press,2011), 15; Wolfgang Reinhard, “Reformation, Counter-Reformation, and the
Early Modern State: A Reassessment,” The Catholic Historical Review 75, no. 3(1989): 384, 393, 398; Harrington, and Smith, “Confessionalization, Community,
and State Building,” 86; Nexon, “Religion, European Identity,” 258–61, 277–78;
16

tremendous power of established churches was felt to be disproportionate
and meddlesome by various social actors in these European states, as well
as by the states themselves, as they sought to increase their own powerover their societies. This culminated in the separation of church andstate.48 Secular states therefore emerged in European countries which
possessed a high degree of religious homogeneity, and which had tended
to meet sectarian diversity with homogenisation. The notion that politics
must be separated from religion, having gained wider currency in Europe
only from the mid-19th century,49 also emerged within this context. When
Lajpat Rai stated that Europe separated religion from politics as a responseto religious diversity and conflict, he overlooked the extent to which
diversity had already been ironed out in European societies by the time
secular states and the notion of secular politics emerged. He also failed
to sufficiently consider that this politics was often the result of politicalobjectives other than the management of religious diversity and conflict.
Nevertheless, Rai understood European history differently, believing theidea of religious-political separation to be a response to religious diversity
and conflict. So, in an article in 1926, he went on:
Europe eventually decided to divorce religion from politics […]. Religion
has become an affair of the individual, it has been completely relegated toits proper and legitimate function of forming and regulating the inner

Gorski, “Historicizing the Secularization Debate: Church, State, and Society in
Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ca. 1300 to 1700,” 157–58.
In the ‘multi-confessional’ German lands, the assumed need to manage
sectarian diversity and conflict led to confessional (not secular) states.
These confessional German states resulted in ‘confessional cleansing’, forced
migration, expulsion, homogenisation, unequal treatment of minorities, andthe hardening of confession-specific Protestant and Catholic identities, which
reproduced confessional conflicts and intolerance. Harrington, and Smith,“Confessionalization, Community, and State Building,” 77–78, 84–92.
48 See Rajeev Bhargava, “Is European Secularism Secular Enough?,” in Religion,
Secularism, and Constitutional Democracy, ed. Jean Cohen, and Cecil Lamborde(New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2016), 167; Calhoun, Juergensmeyer,
and VanAntwerpen, “Introduction,” 7, 15; Mark Juergensmeyer, “Rethinking
the Secular and Religious Aspects of Violence,” in Rethinking Secularism, ed.
Craig J. Calhoun, Mark Juergensmeyer, and Jonathan VanAntwerpen (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2011), 187; Andrew Copson, Secularism: A Very ShortIntroduction (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2019), 61–70.
49 Juergensmeyer, “Secular and Religious Aspects of Violence,” 187.
17

consciousness of each individual in matters spiritual. As a result, Europe
has been completely rid of all religious influences in the political andeconomic fields. Men can freely join in political and economic organisations
irrespective of all religious differences. 50

Clearly, Lajpat Rai believed that the differentiation of separate religious andpolitical spheres and the privatisation of religion was how “modern Europe
and modern America” had transcended differences of religion to – as statedin his first quotation from 1924 – “become nations”. Rai did not explicitly
use these terms while articulating this specific reasoning, but he evidently
saw secularism and secularisation as the West’s answer to religious conflict,and as a precondition for the transformation of Western countries intomodern nations.51
As for India, Lajpat Rai wrote that ancient Hindu lawmakers, assumingthat India would always be inhabited by Sanskrit-speaking, Vedaworshipping Hindus, had not conceived of a body-politic containing nonHindus.52 But, with the presence of non-Hindus in the modern body-politic,
sticking to old Hindu laws was out of the question. Rai evidently considered
the idea of a Hindu-theocratic state, or even simply a state with Hinduism
as its established religion, to be inappropriate for India’s religiously diverse
society. Yet, this modern-day religious diversity was causing conflict,particularly as religions were mixed with politics, and preventing India fromemerging as an ‘effective’ nation.53 For him, the ideal remedy for this religious
conflict was to follow the modern West by divorcing religion from politics
and ending all religious distinctions in politics.54 Thus, Lajpat Rai saw the
separation of religion from politics and, as we saw above, the privatisationof religion as the ideal means for members of India’s religious communities
to unite into an Indian nation. His vision went beyond the establishment

50 Lajpat Rai, “Religion and Politics,” 12:352–53.
51 Both Skinnerian and German conceptual history approaches allow for aconcept being possessed in the absence of a word to express it. Melvin Richter,
The History of Political and Social Concepts: A Critical Introduction (New York,
NY: Oxford University Press, 1995), 9, 133.
52 Lajpat Rai, “My Political Creed,” 11:382.
53 Lajpat Rai, “My Political Creed,” 11:382; Lajpat Rai, “Hindu-Muslim Unity,”
11:145–46.
54 Lajpat Rai, “Hindu-Muslim Unity,” 11:147.
18

of a state free of religion, to also advocate that all politics be entirely free of
religious markers; political organisations intending to control or influence
the state also had to be free of religious markers, with Rai even dreaming ofprivatisation as a means of facilitating this. Therefore, he saw a secular stateand secular politics as essential preconditions for Hindus and Muslims tounite as members of an Indian nation.55
Interestingly, Lajpat Rai’s opposition to the politics of religious
communities was also driven by another purpose. He considered the victoryof “secular power” – the removal of religion from political and economic
domains – as directly linked to Europe’s global ascendancy:
Europe decided to divorce religion from politics. Churches protest and contest,
rebel and resist but eventually secular power wins […]. This has directly led toEurope’s ascendency in the world. Europe is today the master of the world, infact practically of the whole world, as America is only a child of Europe […].56

Lajpat Rai argued that once religion was divorced from politics, as it had
been in Europe and America:
Racial and credal prejudices may still prevail but the real determining
factor in the governance of every body-politic is [now] economic. Everynation recognises that its place and position in the council of nations
depends on the efficiency of its people, [which is] determined by its
intellectual and economic potentialities. It is the latter that determine thepower of a body-politic and not its religious faiths. We have yet to realisethat politics must be divorced from religion if the Indian nation is ever tobe efficient in the modern sense.57

55 A politician deeply embedded in everyday politics, Rai articulated his ideas in
the thick of a political context that was fast-changing and extremely polarised,
often violent, and charged with fear. He did not, therefore, explicitly elaborateon the nuances of precisely what he meant by the unity of Hindus and Muslims
as a single Indian nation. However, it is likely he meant their existence andconduct – despite differences, divisions, and frictions – as a relatively
harmonious, conflict-free, and cooperative political community or nation. The
imperative of functioning in this manner was felt more urgently in the context
of British colonial rule and the need to fight it.
56 Lajpat Rai, “Religion and Politics,” 12:352–53.
57 Lajpat Rai, “What Is Political Work,” 12:417–18.
19

Possibly reflecting his long (but intermittent) association with left-wing
circles, Rai believed that once religion had been divorced from politics,
the real determining factor in the governance of Western nations had
become economic. Unshackled by religion, they became free to reach theireconomic potential, and became “efficient in the modern sense”, which inturn determined their position in the international council of nations.
The strict separation of religion from politics was therefore necessary forthe future Indian nation to attain a respectable international status in the
council of nations.
Lajpat Rai himself only began using the terms ‘secular’, ‘seculargovernment’ and ‘secularism’ from late 1926. But in conceptualising a politicaldomain entirely free of markers of religion, he was already elaborating theconceptual blocks of what may be called a hard-line secularism from late1924 onwards. Like other Indian nationalists, Lajpat Rai mostly contrasted
the term ‘communal’ with the term ‘national’ because he saw the politics ofreligious communities as violating the national. But, for him, the ‘communal’violated the ‘national’ precisely because it mixed religion with politics, andthus defied ideas of a ‘secular’ state and politics, which he considered crucial
for the foundation of a united Indian nation. It was this secular vision thatpropelled his opposition to communal representation and his agenda of
Hindu political consolidation.
Although sometimes dreaming of a more aggressively hard-line
secularism, entailing the privatisation of religion, the version of secularism
that Lajpat Rai aimed to establish in India closely resembled the UnitedStates’ model of a strict wall of separation. This is evident in how heenvisioned the future government of independent India in the Draft
National Pact (DNP), which he drafted in 1923 alongside the Indian
nationalist Muslim leader, M.A. Ansari. He imagined a democratic, federal
Indian government, that would guarantee
full religious liberty, that is liberty of belief, worship, propaganda,
association, and education to all communities forming the Indian nationand shall form a constitutional right which it shall never be lawful for any
Government to annul, modify, suspend or otherwise interfere with.

20

Moreover, the DNP stated thatto prevent any particular religious denomination being given any undue
preference over any other, no Government funds or funds collected by local
bodies from public revenues and public taxes including cesses shall be
devoted to the promotion and furtherance of any denominational
institutions or purposes.58

This came close to the United States’ conception of secularism: a strict
separation of the state and religion, such that the state interfered in religion
neither negatively to hinder or reform it, nor positively to assist it (withthis strict non-interference being conceived as guaranteeing religious
freedom).59 However, interestingly, the DNP accepted proportional
communal representation in the state and central legislatures, albeit
alongside strictly joint (territorial) rather than communal electorates.
Lajpat Rai accepted proportional communal representation for a fixed (butas yet unspecified) time, before it was to be abolished. He was therefore
willing to depart from strict separation – and, also, quite significantly fromhis ideal of a hard-line secularism – to allow political representation basedon religious communities. This concession to religiously defined minorities
acknowledged their fears regarding Hindu majoritarian domination. That
Rai was aware of such fears is indicated by his following statement:
The Hindus […] form the majority and the Muslims are afraid of notreceiving justice at their hands without the necessary guarantees for
projection and safeguarding of their communal or minority interests.60

In fact, much of the fury of Lajpat Rai’s politics of Hindu consolidation was
directed against what he considered Muslim attempts to push communal

58 A. M. Zaidi, ed., “Report of the Indian National Pact Committee, All-India
Muslim League, Fifteenth Session,” in Evolution of Muslim Political Thought in
India (New Delhi: Michiko and Panjathan, 1975), 2:463–67.
59 For more on the American ideal of secularism, see Bhargava, “Is European
Secularism Secular Enough?,” 165–67. Also see Leonard Levy, The Establishment
Clause: Religion and the First Amendment (New York, NY: Macmillan, 1986).
60 Lala Lajpat Rai, “Presidential Address to the Bombay Hindu Mahasabha Conference,
Supplement to The People, 5 December 1925,” in Collected Works, 11:272.
21

representation beyond ‘reasonable’ limits.61 Muslim leaders proposed
having their representation in legislatures extended beyond demographic
proportionality. Additionally, they pushed for extending communal
representation beyond legislatures, to government services, local bodies,and educational institutions. Rai largely viewed these proposals as attempts
by the Muslim minority to attain political dominance.62 A historicalmemory of Muslim rule seemed to converge with the contemporary
context of an unrelenting atmosphere of terrible violence, anxieties about
Muslim conversions, and a proliferation of newspaper reports on alleged
cases of abduction of Hindu women by Muslim hooligans.63 It is also worth
noting that Lajpat Rai belonged to a Hindu minority in one of India’s few
Muslim-majority provinces. Together, these factors combined to encourage
Rai’s fears that the Muslim minority’s demands for progressive increases
in communal representation were designed to secure untrammelled
dominance, rather than – as they repeatedly insisted – simply adequate,
meaningful political representation, and protection against Hindu
domination. In January 1926, Lajpat Rai stated:
Mr. Jinnah [a prominent leader of the Muslim League and future founderof Pakistan] […] has invented the plea of adequate and effective
representation of minorities in all elected bodies as a necessary conditionof Indian political progress towards Swarajya [self-rule]. He, however, is
not content with that […] Mr. Jinnah’s object seems to be to get an extensionof Muslim representation every time there is a constitutional advance on
the plea that there can be no advance without Hindu-Muslim agreement,
and no Hindu-Muslim agreement without a revision of the [Lucknow] Pactin favour of the Muslims […]. Let us examine a little bit closely the
implication of the formula “adequate and effective”. Effective against
whom? Against the majority of course […]. They simply want Muslim

61 Lajpat Rai, “Hindu-Muslim Unity,” 11:173; Lajpat Rai, “On Sarojini Naidu’s
Criticism,” 11:261; Lajpat Rai, “Presidential Address to the Bombay Hindu
Mahasabha Conference,” 11:272.
62 Lajpat Rai, “Presidential Address, Eighth Hindu Mahasabha,” 11:229; Lajpat Rai,
“Presidential Address to the Bombay Hindu Mahasabha Conference,” 11:271.
63 Pradip Kumar Datta, Carving Blocs: Communal Ideology in Early TwentiethCentury Bengal (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999), chap. 4; Gupta,“Hindu Masculinity”; Lala Lajpat Rai, “Need for Hindus to Organise Themselves,
The Bombay Chronicle, 19 April 1927,” in Collected Works, 13:214–15.
22

minorities everywhere to be in a position to make Hindu majorities
ineffective by a combination with Government blocs.64

A month earlier, he had expressed similar fears regarding Muslim intentions:
They insist on communal representation all along the political line andalso organising their separate communal entity so completely as tobecome the dominating communal entity in India. This is bound to comeabout if other communities refuse to organise themselves. Their refusal
to do so means acquiescence in a condition of things which must sooner
or later end in their merging into or subordination to the othercommunity. If the Muslims organise and Hindus refuse or neglect toorganise the consequences are plain.65

Indian Muslim leaders sought to gain what they believed was an adequate
share of political representation for the Muslim minority, in an India witha majority Hindu population. This often comprised demands for weighted
representation, and even parity with Hindus. In the uncertain context ofcolonial domination, and against memories of Mughal rule, Rai often readthese demands as signifying an intent to dominate. And the Mahasabha’s
Hindu politics were conceived by him not as belligerence but as a legitimate
defence against perceived designs of Muslim domination, to ensure that
communal representation was kept within a ‘reasonable’ limit.
However, this limit of reason – beyond which Muslim demands provoked,
for Lajpat Rai, fears of Muslim domination – was defined in terms of Muslim
representation in legislatures in proportion to their numbers. Rai never
explicitly clarified why he defined the limit of reasonable representation to
be that which was proportionate to population demographics. But his belief
likely stemmed from the emergent and increasingly dominant modern
democratic conviction that there must be an integral connection between
numbers and share of political power and representation.66 Guaranteed
64 Lala Lajpat Rai, “Sir Abdur Rahim’s Speech and Mr. Jinnah’s Comments, The
People, 24 January 1926,” in Collected Works, 12:322–24.
65 Lajpat Rai, “Presidential Address to the Bombay Hindu Mahasabha Conference,”
11:272–73.
66 For more on the link between democracy and the politics of numbers, see Farzana
Shaikh, Community and Consensus in Islam: Muslim Representation in Colonial
India, 1860–1947 (Delhi: Imprint One, 2012), 114, 158. Also see Sudipta Kaviraj,
23Muslim representation over and above their numbers was labelled a serious
encroachment on the rights and interests of Hindus, whose acceptance ofsuch a system would amount to committing “political hara-kiri”.67 In short,a just political arrangement was one where communal representation for
the Muslim minority did not impinge on the Hindu majority’s ‘rightfulplace’ in the future government of India.68 For Rai, one important aim
behind the Hindu Mahasabha’s sangathan (‘organisation’) movement
was to maintain and display a Hindu majority, in a context where efforts
were afoot to renegotiate the extent of political representation for each
community in India’s constitution.69 This sangathan involved opposition to
the newly emergent emancipatory caste politics (of the kind represented
by B.R. Ambedkar),70 believed to weaken urgently needed Hindu political“On Thick and Thin Religion: Some Critical Reflections on Secularization
Theory,” in Religion and the Political Imagination, ed. Ira Katznelson, andGareth Stedman Jones (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 352;
Arjun Appadurai, “Number in the Colonial Imagination,” in Orientalism and
the Post-Colonial Predicament, ed. Carol Breckenridge, and Peter van der Veer
(Philadelphia, PN: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), 332.
67 Lajpat Rai, “Two Wrongs?” 11:267; Lajpat Rai, “On Sarojini Naidu’s Criticism,”
11:261.
68 Lala Lajpat Rai, “Presidential Address at the Provincial Hindu Conferenceof Agra, The Tribune, 30 October 1928,” in Collected Works, 15:241. While
Rai, again, did not explicitly elaborate on this, he seemed to believe that thenumerical preponderance of Hindus legitimately entitled them to a substantial
share of political power and representation. Rai yearned for a future politics
where democratic decision-making – and majorities and minorities – would bebased on, and continuously shift according to, the aggregation of preferences.
Here, religious identities would not matter. However, he also worked withreligious identity-based conceptions of democratic decision-making and ofmajorities and minorities. Here, these statuses, as majority or minority, would
not shift, but remain permanent, as they were conceived according to the
supposedly permanent religious identities of individuals. Thus, Rai seemed tobelieve that India was inhabited by a Hindu majority and Muslim minority, andthat the numerical preponderance of Hindus entitled them to a greater shareof political representation than the Muslim minority. This once again links
back to the modern democratic conviction that there must be an integral link
between numbers and share of political power and representation. For moreon the difference between preference-based and identity-based majorities andminorities, see Bhargava, Promise, 16–19.
69 Lajpat Rai, “Presidential Speech, Punjab Provincial Hindu Conference,” 11:246–48;
Lajpat Rai, “Presidential Address, Provincial Hindu Conference of Agra,” 15:219.
70 Ambedkar, the influential leader of the ‘untouchable’ castes, and one of theprincipal architects of India’s future constitution, had in the 1920s begun to24

consolidation.71 Sangathan demanded that Hindus temporarily retreat fromany potentially fracturing projects of egalitarian reform of the hierarchical,
unequal caste relations in order to symbolically unite as a Hindu community.
It even entailed an exhortation to Hindus to oppose the Gandhian idealof ahimsa (nonviolence), believed to emasculate Hindus and blunt theircapacity for violence in supposed self-defence.72 Renouncing Gandhianahimsa, and retaining the capacity for violence, was considered necessary
to endow Hindus with a more assertive, ‘masculine’, and action-readycharacter. Hindus were also encouraged to establish akharas (gymnasia) tophysically train their bodies.73 Made in a context of periodic rioting, and theMahasabha’s promotion of physically trained ‘volunteer’ groups who could
defend Hindus if needed, these suggestions came close to a direct sanctionof Hindu violence. Lajpat Rai therefore wished to engineer a muscular, evenviolence-ready consolidation of the Hindu majority. This militant Hindu
mobilisation ultimately aimed at realising either his more hard-line secular
ideal of strict separation without any communal representation, or the
more minority-sensitive secular state he envisioned (as in the DNP) which
permitted limited, proportionate communal representation.
Lajpat Rai’s secularism was predicated upon a strong desire to limit
community rights, which, as noted by Rochana Bajpai and Shabnum Tejani,also forms part of the history of India’s constitutional secularism.74 It also
clearly assumed the existence of the Hindu majority, which he was willingto defend, even violently if necessary. At the same time, while he wished
Hindus to benefit from the advantages that would accrue to them under‘democratic raj’ (democratic rule), he did not want Hindus to misuse theirnumerical strength to dominate over other religious communities. In oneof his articles, he wrote:demand separate political representation for these ‘depressed classes’. Assertive
politics by India’s untouchables had similarly emerged in other parts of India,
most notably in Uttar Pradesh and the Punjab.
71 For more, see Bhargav, “Between Hindu and Indian: The Nationalist Thoughtof Lala Lajpat Rai,” 186–87.
72 Lajpat Rai, “Presidential Address, Eighth Hindu Mahasabha,” 11:226–27;
Lala Lajpat Rai, “Ahimsa Paramodharmah, The People, 18 October 1925,” inCollected Works, 11:406–7.
73 Lajpat Rai, “Presidential Address, Eighth Hindu Mahasabha,” 11:227.
74 Rochana Bajpai, Debating Difference: Group Rights and Liberal Democracy inIndia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), chap. 2; Tejani, Indian Secularism.
25

To the Hindus, I will say, if there are any among you who still dream of a
Hindu Raj [rule] in this country, who think they can crush the Mussulmans
and be the supreme power in this land, tell them that they are fools or, to be
more accurate, that they are insane, and that their insanity will ruin theirHinduism along with their country […].75

The absence of a desire for Hindu domination was evident in his imaginingof a state that neither privileged nor established the Hindu religion,
abstained from funding any religion, and granted religious freedom. Thisis reflected in his advocacy of Hindustani, a language with a more or lessequal number of Sanskrit and Persio-Arabic words, in both the Sanskrit
Devanagri and Persian scripts, as India’s national language.76 His desire
for a federal government meant substantial autonomy for India’s Muslim
majority provinces like Punjab, Bengal and the Northwest Frontier
Province. Finally, as already noted, in conceding proportionate communal
representation for a limited time, Lajpat Rai acknowledged Muslim fears of
Hindu domination. Therefore, Rai’s secularism was predicated on a clear
awareness of, and even insistence on, a democratic advantage for the Hindu
majority (in the sense of India’s secular democracy putting Hindus in afavourable position). But he did not wish this advantage to translate into
domination (untrammelled power and influence) over minorities. He thussought political arrangements and mechanisms to prevent the degenerationof democratic advantage into majoritarianism.
4 The ‘Hindu communalism’ vs. ‘secularism’ dichotomy

Since the 1990s, revisionist scholarship on South Asia has sought tochallenge the strict oppositional dichotomy between secularism and
Hindu communalism, long drawn by Indian nationalist historiography.
Ayesha Jalal has argued that, historically, the secular Indian nationalist
ideology often “compromised” with Hindu majoritarianism, while the75 Lajpat Rai, “Hindu-Muslim Unity,” 11:181. Until the 1940s, the terms ‘Hindu
Raj’ and ‘Muslim Raj’ had no territorial connotations, but implied the ability to
exercise power over the other ‘community’. See Markus Daechsel, The Politics of
Self-Expression: The Urdu Middle-Class Milieu in Mid-Twentieth Century India
and Pakistan (New York, NY: Routledge, 2006), 76–79.
76 A. M. Zaidi, ed., “Report of the Indian National Pact Committee,” 2:463–67;
Lala Lajpat Rai, “Problem of National Education in India, 1918,” in Collected
Works, 7:198–99.
26

latter comfortably claimed the mantle of secularism.77 For Shabnum Tejani
and C.S. Adcock, Indian secularism rests on the engineering of a Hindu
majority, and has been complicit in denying Muslim demands for politicalrepresentation.78 Commenting on contemporary times, Partha Chatterjee
has pointed out that, rather than opposing the secular state, the Hindu rightapproves of the secular idea of separation, using the ideological resourcesof the secular state to forcibly assimilate India’s religious minorities intoa homogenised notion of Indian/Hindu ‘national culture’.79 Collectively,
this scholarship has promoted the impression that one can comfortably
champion both secularism and Hindu communalism or majoritarianism
simultaneously, and that therefore Indian secularism was, and still is,compromised by Hindu majoritarian communalism, consisting of little
more than Hindu majoritarianism.80 This, such scholarship holds, renders
Indian secularism inadequate as a political ideal.
Lajpat Rai’s political thought in the mid-1920s certainly shows thatsecularism and Hindu politics are not necessarily mutually exclusive
intellectual positions. Rai’s vision of political secularism was articulated
alongside a militant politics of Hindu consolidation, which aimed, by force
if necessary, to safeguard a Hindu majority and oppose – or at least restrict– separate Muslim representation. Indeed, as a politician who advocated apolitics of Hindu consolidation, Rai did not oppose the secular state, butrather approved of the idea of separation for the sake of certain ends. My
research, illustrating that Rai simultaneously championed both a Hindu‘communal’ politics and a vision of secularism, appears to align with theabove-mentioned scholarship. It seems to suggest that Rai’s simultaneousarticulation of both a militant Hindu politics and a vision of secularism
proves a) the deceptive and empty nature of his secularism, b) the

77 Ayesha Jalal, “Exploding Communalism: The Politics of Muslim Identity inSouth Asia,” in Nationalism, Democracy and Development: State and Politics inIndia, ed. Sugata Bose, and Ayesha Jalal (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999).
78 Tejani, Indian Secularism, 236, 255–56; Adcock, Limits of Tolerance.
79 Partha Chatterjee, “Secularism and Tolerance,” in Secularism and Its Critics, ed.
Rajeev Bhargava (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), 347–60.
80 For one example, see how Tejani has been read by Nandini Chatterjee, The
Making of Indian Secularism: Empire, Law and Christianity, 1830–1960 (NewYork, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 4–5.
27

contaminated and compromised nature of Indian secularism, and/or c) the
inadequacy of secularism as a political ideal more generally.
In fact, I wish to use Rai’s ideas as a prism through which to challengethese conclusions. In my view, Lajpat Rai’s Hindu communal politics
does not invalidate the intellectual significance of his secularism. The
latter – as we shall see in greater detail in the next section – continued
to possess positive, multi-layered content and meaning. While Rai did
engineer a politics of Hindu consolidation and seek to safeguard a Hindu
majority, he nonetheless sought the separation of religion and the state andpolitics, for the sake of values like inter-religious peace, religious freedom,
equality and equal citizenship irrespective of religion. He was also not
guided by the desire for Hindu domination over religious minorities, andwas open to establishing certain institutional measures to prevent Hindu
majoritarianism. In short, I argue that his secularism is not reducible toeither Hindu communalism or Hindu majoritarianism. Rather than being
dismissed as a mere cover for his underlying and more deeply held Hindu
communalism, Lajpat Rai’s ideas on secularism should be taken seriously.
At the same time, and equally importantly, the implications andsignificance of his militant Hindu politics also cannot be ignored. Rai didarticulate a genuine value-guided secularism, and his Hindu communal
politics never aimed at a politics of anti-secular Hindu domination.
However, his adoption of a militant Hindu communal politics, which heconsidered a temporary and instrumental means to realise this vision,certainly made his secular position unstable, and threatened to undermine
the very secularism he wished to enshrine. Rather than a stable and seamlessintellectual position, Rai’s co-articulation of a secularism and a militant
Hindu politics constituted a complex, dynamic, and precarious balancing
act between sets of ideas in deep tension. While his co-articulation does
flout any strict dichotomy between Hindu communalism and secularism,
this by no means implies that his secularism can be equated with his Hindu
communalism. The instability, tension and risk within what may be called
Rai’s ‘secular-communal complex’ must be recognised.
It is vital to recognise the instability, friction, and tension within
Lajpat Rai’s complex intellectual position. In doing so, we recognise thatthe simultaneous articulation of the categories of secularism and Hindu‘communalism’ by the same individual does not justify a reductive reading
and a near-complete elision of the conceptual distinctions between these28

categories. It serves as a reminder of the analytical tension, contrast, andeven incompatibility that still exists, to a large degree, between categories
of secularism and Hindu communalism. In short, it reminds us to retain
and respect the meaningful analytical distinctions that exist between thesecategories, even as we discard assumptions of absolute mutual exclusivity.
Rai’s complex ideas do not prove that secularism and Hindu communalism
or majoritarianism can be seamlessly championed together, or that Indian
secularism is compromised by Hindu communalism, thus constituting
an inadequate and futile political ideal. Rai brought secularism andcommunalism into an internally combustible relationship, in which, overtime, one was bound to destroy the other. Once we see this, we can see
how Indian secularism – and secularism in general – can be admitted
as a meaningful and valuable political ideal, and Rai’s communalism as
something which threatened to undermine it.
Another reason why revisionist scholarship views Indian secularism as
a deficient ideal, compromised by Hindu majoritarianism, is the conceptual
overlap between them – at least in articulations of Indian secularism byHindu political thinkers. The two concepts share the assumption of, andin some cases even attachment to, the notion of a Hindu majority. Thisoverlap – an important intervention of revisionist historiography – cannot
be denied, and is evident in the thought of Lajpat Rai. Yet, once again, theacknowledgement of this overlap between Indian secularism and Hindu
majoritarianism or communalism has often slipped into an unhelpful
tendency towards subsequent conceptual conflation. It has also been used tosuggest the deceptive, compromised, and inadequate nature of secularism,
whether in its Indian form, or as a concept more generally. The slippage
between these categories needs to be admitted, while still remembering themeaningful differences that exist between them. Rai’s attachment to theidea of a Hindu majority was not equivalent to a desire to establish Hindu
cultural-political domination over India’s religious minorities (it was not
equivalent to a Hindu majoritarianism). Recognising (and even critiquing)
his attachment to a Hindu majority does not have to end in the invalidationof his secularism, which was conceived as an attempt – in however limited aform – to establish a nation state grounded in inter-religious peace, religious
freedom and equality. He also sought certain political arrangements toprevent Hindu domination. Similarly, the recognition of this overlap
between secularism and Hindu majoritarianism or communalism can and29

should co-exist with an alertness to the several analytical distinctions thatexist between these positions (and their normative ends). Once again, thiscan help us remember that while articulations of Indian secularism may
have certain imperfections and risks, which evidently need to be checked
and improved upon, secularism is no different to other political ideals inthis regard. More importantly, it reminds us that these imperfections do
not render secularism a compromised or ineffectual political ideal, as it
continues to possess normative features aiming at a religiously peaceful,
free, equal, and just society in some form.
In the next section, I more deeply explore the meaning of thesecularism Lajpat Rai articulated as a staunch Hindu politician, as well asof his militant Hindu politics. In the final section, I briefly compare andcontrast Rai’s secularism to the following: the secularisms of the West, theideal of secularism found in the Indian constitution, and the positions ofGandhi and Nehru – men much better known for their secular credentials.
Finally, I will very briefly compare it to the Hindutva nationalist ideology,
as articulated by its most influential founder-ideologues.
5 A ‘Hindu communal’ articulation of Indian secularism

Quentin Skinner argues that the clearest sign of a society having enteredinto the self-conscious possession of a new concept is the generation ofa new vocabulary, in terms of which the concept is then articulated anddiscussed.81 The Skinnerian approach therefore admits the possibility ofthe expression of a concept – albeit perhaps a relatively less self-conscious
one – before the production of a new vocabulary with which to express
it. This approach aligns with German conceptual history, which allows
that an individual or group may possess a concept without having a wordby which to express it.82 If secularism, broadly speaking, and in its mostelementary form, is a vision seeking the separation of organised religion
from organised political power, for the sake of a specific set of values, Lajpat
Rai was clearly elaborating the concept by 1924. He first did so without
using the terms ‘secular’ and ‘secularism’. From 1926, he took up (albeit still
infrequently) the use of these terms, with this new vocabulary signifying

81 As cited in Richter, History of Political and Social Concepts, 133.
82 Richter, 9.
30

a more self-conscious articulation of the concept. This challenges scholars
who, mistaking either word with concept or concept with elaborate theory,
posit that secularism was irrelevant to Indian political discourse prior to
India’s independence in 1947.83
The question I am more interested in here, however, is less historicaland more theoretical: what was the specific conceptual structure of thesecularism elaborated by Lajpat Rai in the mid-1920s? As political theorist
Rajeev Bhargava has argued, secularism may be a universal normative
doctrine, but its elements are interpreted and related to each other indifferent ways, adding up to different conceptions of secularism.84 Each
conception unpacks the metaphor of separation differently, selects different
elements from the stock of values that give separation its purpose, or placesdifferent weight on the same values. In this section, I ask in what precise
way Lajpat Rai, as a Hindu ‘communal’ politician, interpreted and arranged
the basic conceptual elements of secularism.
How, then, did Rai conceive separation? As we saw, his secularism
entailed a rejection of a Hindu theocracy. Rai did not envision the future
Indian state as having a union or alliance with a Hindu religious order,or as being guided by Hindu religious ends and purposes, or being
directly administered by a priestly order or other religious authority.
Further, he did not affirm the idea of a state establishing Hinduism as thedominant religion.85 Though such establishment would have entailed adegree of separation, in that the state would not be governed by priestlyor other religious authority, it would have still granted Hinduism official,
83 Akeel Bilgrami, “Jawaharlal Nehru, Mohandas Gandhi, and the Contextsof Indian Secularism,” in The Oxford Handbook of Indian Philosophy, ed.
Jonardon Ganeri (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2014). Tejani,
Indian Secularism, chap. 6. My historical findings substantiate scholarshipthat assumes a longer history of the concept, stretching back to India’s preindependence period. This assumption runs through the work of Rajeev
Bhargava. For one example, see Promise, 4. Also see Rochana Bajpai, “The
Conceptual Vocabularies of Secularism and Minority Rights in India,” Journalof Political Ideologies 7, no. 2 (2002); Triloki N. Madan, “Secularism in Its Place,”
The Journal of Asian Studies 46, no. 4 (1987): 747–59; Chatterjee, “Secularism
and Tolerance”; Sudipta Kaviraj, “Languages of Secularity,” Economic andPolitical Weekly 48, no. 50 (2013): 93–102.
84 Bhargava, Promise, 65.
85 For a clear explanation of the analytical distinction between theocracies andstates with established religions, see Bhargava, 70–75.
31legal recognition, and promoted state laws and policies that supported
Hinduism over other religions. Lajpat Rai endorsed a secular state withends entirely separate from the divine ends of religion; a state whose roles
and functions were imagined as being distinct from the roles and functionsof religion; and which did not privilege Hinduism. However, as Bhargava
points out, secular states are marked by a relation with religion not just at
the level of ends and institutions, but also at a third level of law and public
policy.86 In some cases, like that of India, disconnection at the former levels
is seen in conjunction with some connection at this third level. Differencesin how the metaphor of separation is unpacked at this third level, heargues, open up the possibility of distinguishing varieties of secularism.
As stated in the DNP, “to prevent any particular religious denomination
being given any undue preference over any other”, Rai envisioned that “noGovernment funds” should be devoted to the “promotion and furtheranceof any denominational institutions or purposes”. In his belief that thestate must not actively fund any religious institution or purpose, Rai’ssecularism resembled, as noted already, the ‘wall of separation’ ideal of
secularism found in the United States. This is also evident in his granting“full religious liberty”, including “liberty of belief, worship, propaganda,
association, and education to all communities forming the Indian nation” asa “constitutional right”.87 It is also shown in his desire to abolish communal
political representation altogether. However, that Rai’s secularism cannot
be simply straightjacketed into the strictly separationist ideal of secularism
is suggested by his willingness to grant, if reluctantly, community-specificpolitical rights (communal representation) for a limited time. Rather thanbeing indifferent to religious communities, Rai’s secularism breached thewall of separation to countenance political rights for religious communities.
What, then, were the substantive values or ends for which Lajpat Rai
imagined separation?88 Clearly, the unrelenting waves of Hindu-Muslim
violence that ravaged Indian society were a cause for Lajpat Rai stressing

86 Bhargava, 74–75.
87 Emphasis mine.
88 For contemporary theorists of secularism, mechanical separation does not, in
itself, amount to secularism. While amoral secular states can exist, secularism
entails separation for the sake of some values. Once again, see Bhargava,
Promise, 67, 76–77.
32

the importance of state-religion separation. This interreligious violence
particularly undergirded his discomfort with community-specific politicalrights, at least beyond ‘reasonable limits’. One of the values his secularism
therefore sought to achieve was peace, i.e. the prevention of what he called
a “never-ending civil war”, arising out of a clash of incompatible religious
visions. Secondly, the secular state he envisioned would guarantee theconstitutional right to religious liberty to all religious groups in India.
Further, the granting of the right to religious liberty to all groups orcommunities meant that no one religion would determine the rights andfreedoms granted by the state. Religious freedom would be granted not justto the numerically preponderous religious community of Hindus, but to all
religious communities in India. Rai’s secularism was therefore concernedwith the value of equality (of all religious groups). Finally, the prohibitionof government funding for any religious purposes, to prevent preferential
treatment for any particular religion, also seems to be guided by thevalues of equality and justice. Although not mentioned in the DNP itself,
Lajpat Rai had in previous years indicated his belief in individualisticallyconstrued equal citizenship. In 1918, he had forcefully argued that “every
human being born in India, or of Indian parents, or who has made India
his or her home, is a compatriot, a brother or a sister, regardless of colour,
creed, caste or vocation”.89 In 1928, he enthusiastically embraced the Motilal
Nehru Report, which granted universal suffrage and defined the word
citizen as “every person who was born, and whose father was either born or
naturalised within the territorial limits of the Commonwealth”.90 He took
for granted that every such Indian would possess passive citizenship rights
to claim entitlements from the state, without discrimination on groundsof religion. His endorsement of the Nehru report, which granted the rightto vote to every citizen above the age of twenty-one, reveals his acceptanceof equal active citizenship rights for all Indians, irrespective of religion.

89 Lajpat Rai, “Problem of National Education,” 7:32.
90 B. Shiva Rao, The Framing of the Constitution: Select Documents (Delhi: Universal
Law Publishing Co, 2004), 1:59. The report was produced by a committee chairedby the father of Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister, who is believed tohave played a major role in drafting it, along with his father.
33

All persons, irrespective of religion, were recognised as active citizens i.e.
equal participants in the political domain.91
Yet, the value that remained supremely important for Lajpat Rai’ssecularism was nationalism – the principle that the people of India
must form a united and self-ruling political community. As we saw,
Rai opposed communal representation, as he believed that dividing
India into two compartmentalised religio-political communities would
pre-ordain religious division and strife, which would, in turn, thwart
the unity and autonomy of the Indian national-political community.
His secularism aimed at inter-community peace, precisely because
peace was indispensable for Indian national unity and autonomy. It
could also be argued, however, that Rai’s granting of religious liberty,
equality, and justice to all religious groups, individualistically construed
equal citizenship rights, and even limited community-specific politicalrights to religious minorities, intended to promote a particular kind of
Indian nation. In this sense, while his secularism remained supremely
concerned with national unity, its other ends – peace, liberty, and equality
for individual citizens and religious communities – while appearing as
subordinate, less significant normative purposes, in fact give insight into
the ways in which Rai attempted to forge an inclusive national community,
and therefore into the nature of his secular Indian nationalism.
Finally, Rai also believed in secularism’s vital importance for the
Indian nation’s achieving economic prosperity and international status
after gaining independence from the empire. This concern with economic
prosperity and international rank does not reduce Rai’s secularism to anamoral secularism, without any commitment to moral values.92 National
prosperity, recognition, and respect themselves constitute values, which, in

91 For the distinction between passive and active citizenship rights, see Bhargava,
Promise, 78–79.
92 For Bhargava, secularism must necessarily be constitutively tied to substantive
values like peace, tolerance, liberty, and equal citizenship. He terms states thatespouse moral values, but that are in fact only interested in maximising power
and wealth, as amoral secular states (what I have here called amoral secularism).
Rai’s secularism demonstrates that, apart from peace, tolerance, liberty, andequality, secularism can also be guided by national prosperity, recognition, andrespect, and that this, too, can constitute a project of values. Bhargava, 76.
34

turn, co-existed with other liberal, egalitarian, and communitarian moral
principles, which guided Rai’s secularism and nationalism.
It is precisely due to this layered, multi-value nature of Rai’s secularism,that it cannot be reduced to a cynical, value-less Hindu-majoritarian grab
for power. As noted, this secularism was attached to the notion of a Hindu
majority, which had to be protected, through a Hindu politics, against the(exaggerated, and even paranoid) perception of a threat from the Muslim
minority. In the atmosphere of uncertainty, mistrust, polarisation, andviolence, India’s main Muslim organisations were intermittently perceived
as being motivated by the desire to encroach upon, and even dominate
over, Hindus. But even as Rai’s Hindu politics strove to protect a Hindu
majority advantage, they were not driven by the desire to establish Hindu
domination over minorities. They sought to establish a secular state andpolitics, guided by values such as peace, religious liberty, religious equality,and equal citizenship irrespective of religion. Rai’s secularism granted
minority rights in their socio-cultural form, and countenanced allowing
community-specific political rights for minorities for a fixed period, if sucha concession was unavoidable. Rai’s secularism thus considered establishingcertain institutional measures to prevent Hindu majoritarianism. Rather
than being a farcical secularism that existed only to veil an ulterior motiveof securing Hindu majority domination, Rai’s secularism possessed positive
content, was guided by multiple values, and attempted to accommodate,and do justice to, India’s religious diversity. At the same time, as alreadynoted, Rai’s adoption of a militant politics of Hindu consolidation, which
he considered a temporary and instrumental means to establish his
secularism, was precisely a contributing factor in rendering this secularism
unstable. It threatened to undercut the very secularism that he wished toestablish – particularly through its permissiveness towards violence, which
undermined inter-community peace.
Before turning to the question of Hindu violence, let us pause to explore
a little more deeply how Lajpat Rai conceptualised the ‘Indian nation’in this period. Rai most clearly elaborated his conception of the ‘Indian
nation’ in cultural terms, in his writings between 1915 and 1920. As withmost things with Rai, his stance was fluid, in flux, and defied simplicity. On
one occasion, he endorsed a pamphlet which stated that the Indian people,
despite their religious diversity, were united by a timeless Hindu culture,35

and their apparent common descent from the ancient Hindu Aryan race.93
While this was a way of endowing India’s Hindus and Muslims with a senseof common belonging, the pamphlet’s emphasis on an immemorial Hindu
culture and Aryan race privileged Hindu tropes, in a manner that could
potentially alienate Indian Muslims. Calling itself an ‘Indian nationalism’,
this nationalism can be legitimately regarded as a particular form of Hindu
nationalism. Yet unlike V.D. Savarkar, the famous founder-ideologue of
Hindutva nationalism, Rai’s Hindu nationalism never demanded that IndianMuslims and Christians abandon their religious cultures to assimilate into
Hindu culture. Instead, it constituted a distinct non-assimilationist, diversityaccepting Hindu nationalism. More importantly, in several other writings,
Lajpat Rai elaborated an Indian nationalism which attempted to endow
India’s Hindus and Muslims with a sense of common belonging, through abroader, more inclusive, pluralist path. This included shunning the Hinduleaning trope of the Aryan race, instead asserting that Hindus and Muslims
belonged to a common ‘Anglo-Mongolian’ racial admixture:
No Indian, Hindu or Mohammedan, ever attaches any importance to his
racial origin or to the racial origins of the rest of his countrymen. There isno country on the face of the globe which has a pure race. The sons of man
have so freely mixed and mingled in the past, that racial distinctions are
only a matter of imagination and conjecture. More often than not they
are a cloak for political dominance and economic exploitation […]. In
India there is no race conflict. Hindu and Mussulman and Christian are
all a racial “mix up” [sic]. The Mussulman descendants of Persia, Afghan,
Turkaman [sic], Mogul and Arab invaders have a great deal of Aryan
blood in their veins and the Hindu descendants of the Aryans have a great
deal of Mongolian blood. The Anglo-Indians, too, have all these veins. It
is stupid and mischievous to talk of race conflict in India. Mother India
knows and recognises no race distinctions […].94

Lajpat Rai also attempted to fashion a pluralist public national culture for
India, which assertively included Islam and Muslim culture:
The present writer [Lajpat Rai] has expressed several times that thesenational festivals are the milestones on the road to national life, landmarks

93 Lala Lajpat Rai, “Self-Determination for India, 1918,” in Collected Works, 7:244.
94 Lajpat Rai, “Problem of National Education,” 7:183–84. Emphasis original.
36

in the history of the nation, and he is glad to notice there is a conscious
awakening to their value and significance in the life of the nation. The
Hindus and Muslims would do well to take part in each other’s festivals
instead of making them the occasion of breaking each other’s heads. With
the exception of a very few festivals, most of the Hindu and Mohammedan
festivals can be given an all-India character. One cannot understand why
Mohammedans cannot take part in in celebration of Basant Panchami,
Bisakhi, Dussehra and Diwali; nor why Hindus cannot join in the celebrationof Muharram and the Shab-i-Barat […]. 95
We modern Indians can be as well proud of a Hali, an Iqbal, a Mohani as ofa Tagore, Roy and Harish Chandra. We are as proud of Syed Ahmed Khanas of Rammohan Roy and Dayanand.96
In his person, Akbar [the medieval Mughal emperor] combined the bestelements of real Islam and real Hinduism. That in itself is evidence of
Akbar’s greatness of soul. May his memory inspire his countrymen,
Hindu and Mohammedan, in building the future national edifice in sucha way as to combine not just the best of the two old cultures, but also thebest of the new one, that has since been born in the West, from which
India is drawing copiously.97

Rai’s attempt to craft a pluralist Indian nationalism was evident in hiscompromise-driven advocacy of Hindustani – a language shared by bothcommunities – written in both the Sanskrit Devanagari script (usually used byHindus) and the Urdu script (usually by Muslims) as India’s national language:
I may assume that the country will readily adopt Hindustani as the futurenational language of India […]. The provincial vernaculars must be themedium of instruction in primary schools of each province, with theaddition of Hindustani as an All-India language, the Hindus learning it in
Deva Nagri and the Mussulmans in Urdu characters.98

95 Lala Lajpat Rai, “Review of ‘Footfalls of Indian History’, Modern Review,
September 1915,” in Collected Works, 5:373.
96 Lajpat Rai, “Problem of National Education,” 7:186. Here, Rai refers to Muslim
and Hindu personalities from the 19th and early 20th centuries, who wererenowned for their literary, philosophical, cultural, or political achievements.
97 Lala Lajpat Rai, “Akbar, The Great Mogul, Young India, July 1918,” in Collected
Works, 7:287. Emphasis mine.
98 Lajpat Rai, “Problem of National Education,” 7:198–99.
37

Thus, Lajpat Rai attempted to unite India’s Hindus and Muslims into asingle Indian nation, by emphasising their common jumbled racial origins,encouraging an Indian national culture which respected both Hinduism
and Islam, and advocating Hindustani as India’s national language. By 1924,
however, the atmosphere of mistrust, polarisation, and violence had shaken
Rai’s confidence in this Indian nation. Rai ceased to elaborate the cultural
identity of the Indian nation, and instead focussed his energies on opposing
separate electorates and communal representation. But it was very likely
this same conception of the Indian nation which underlay his opposition
to these political mechanisms. These, he now firmly believed, were sureto undermine the possibility of a united Indian national community ever
emerging. In the mid-1920s, Rai’s cultural imagination of the secular
Indian nation could perhaps still be deconstructed into a narrower, butdiversity-accepting, Hindu nationalism, co-existing alongside a broader,more pluralist Indian nationalism. But in political terms, Rai’s secular
Indian nationalism was consistently firm in its explicit willingness togrant individualistically-construed equal citizenship rights, and religious
liberty, equality, and justice to all religious groups. It was also willing tocountenance community-specific political rights for religious minorities.
Rai’s cultural imaginations of Indian nationalism could occasionally veer
towards Hindu cultural assumptions, with potentially marginalising effects
on the sense of national belonging of minorities. But these also co-existed
with, and were tempered by, his cultural imaginations which sought tocraft a pluralist public national culture for the Indian nation, as well as byhis imagination of a civic nationalism in the political domain. The latter
aimed to achieve an inclusive, united Indian nation, through the abovementioned political rights and freedoms. These – as much as his cultural
imagination – provide insight into the nature of Lajpat Rai’s nationalism,
which was the central value fuelling his urgent desire to substantiallyseparate the religious and political domains. Rai’s secularism was driven
by a secular Indian nationalism which can be deconstructed into what may
be called a culturally Hindu-leaning, but non-assimilationist, diversityaccepting Hindu nationalism and a culturally pluralist Indian nationalismthat was even more accommodative and celebratory of diversity.
But how should we understand Lajpat Rai’s authorisation of violence?
Rai’s sanction of Hindu violence in ‘self-defence’ aimed, as noted above,at protecting the Hindu majority from the perceived threats of Muslim
38

violence and desires of domination. The sanctioning of Hindu violence
here was performed not through an appeal to any intellectual resources
within Hinduism, analogous to the manner that the concept of Jihad isappealed to in Islam – or, indeed, how many Hindus, including Rai, hadpreviously justified political violence, predominantly against the British,
through appeal to the Bhagavad Gita (100 CE). Instead, violence wasrendered permissible by undermining the concept of ahimsa (nonviolence),
which Gandhi wished to make central to Hinduism. Hinduism was defined
to stress its compatibility with violence. This constituted what may becalled a religious justification for political violence, guided by what may
be understood as a religiously-defined political end: to protect a religious
majority (from the perceived threat of Muslim domination).99 Yet, as we saw,
Rai’s militant Hindu consolidation, and even violence, ultimately aimed toestablish a secular nation state, not a Hindu one. In a sense, then, Rai can beseen as once again flouting conceptual dichotomies by permitting ‘religious’
violence for the sake of a secularism in the future. Rather than constituting a
revolt against the oppressiveness of secularism, as violent modern religious
politics has often been understood,100 Hindu political violence here wasintended to serve the ideology of secular nationalism. So, religion appears
neither as the means to criticise the secular ideal, nor as a rival of secularnationalism.101 Instead, it is imagined as the servant of secularism, eager toassist it, with violence if necessary. In this way, Hindu violence for the cause
of secular nationalism was also a form of secular violence.
Religious violence in opposition to secularism, and to establish a religious
state, has been frequently noted. The terrible violence associated with modern
secular ideologies in the 20th century has also been acknowledged.102 The
worst massacres of the 20th century – the slaughter of millions in the First
99 Here, I mean religion in the sense of thin rather than thick religion. That is, thisreligion is unconcerned with, and de-emphasises, the finer points of doctrine
and practice. It is also more interested in this world rather than the next, and ismore politically oriented. For more on the differences between thick and thinreligion, see Kaviraj, “Thick and Thin Religion,” 347–49.
100 Juergensmeyer, “Secular and Religious Aspects of Violence”; Ashis Nandy “ThePolitics of Secularism and the Recovery of Tolerance,” in Secularism and Its
Critics, ed. Rajeev Bhargava (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998); Madan,“Secularism in Its Place”.
101 Juergensmeyer, “Secular and Religious Aspects of Violence,” 192, 196.
102 Juergensmeyer, 199.
39

World War, the communist terror in the Soviet Union, the Nazi Holocaust,
and the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki – were the resultof secular ideologies rather than religious fanaticism and intolerance.103
Secular violence for the sake of establishing or maintaining secularism has
also received attention. Some varieties of secularism have been recognised
as hostile and oppressive towards religion, such as those found in China
since the late 19th century, or in Soviet Russia. Similarly, a particularinterpretation of French laïcité, that took hold from 1905, was less hospitableto public expressions of religions. In Turkey, too, an institutionalised secularhostility to religion was seen from the time of Atatürk until Erdogan’s rise
to power in the early 2000s. These cases variously entailed the repression of,
and/or violence towards, religious institutions and actors. For instance, in
China, secular violence took the form of the destruction of temples.104 The
Soviet Union prohibited most religious activities, persecuted clergymen,
and even blew up the largest place of worship in Russia.105 French laïcité
was similarly predicated on anti-clericalism, or hostility towards the clergy.
Atatürk’s Turkey saw authoritarian measures to repress religious leaders.106
Lajpat Rai sanctioned neither Hindu violence to establish a Hindu state, nor
secular violence against religious authorities and institutions for the sakeof secularism. What is distinctive about Rai is his sanctioning of religionrelated violence for the sake of a particular vision of secularism. This
brings to light the theoretical possibility of a counter-intuitive relationshipbetween ‘communal’ violence and secularism or secular nationalism.
Rai’s permissiveness towards violence aimed at readying Hindus for self-

103 Charles Taylor, “Western Secularity,” in Rethinking Secularism, ed. Craig J. Calhoun,Mark Juergensmeyer, and Jonathan VanAntwerpen (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2011), 70; Juergensmeyer, “Secular and Religious Aspects of Violence,” 198.
104 Peter van der Veer, “Smash Temples, Burn Books: Comparing Secularist Projects in
India and China,” in Rethinking Secularism, ed. Craig J. Calhoun, Mark Juergensmeyer,
and Jonathan VanAntwerpen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).
105 Geoffrey Hosking, “The Russian Orthodox Church and Secularisation,” in
Religion and the Political Imagination, ed. Ira Katznelson, and Gareth Stedman
Jones (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).
106 Whilst both were assertive and interventionist, for the differences between
French and Turkish secularisms, see Alfred Stepan, “The Multiple Secularisms ofModern Democratic and Non-Democratic Regimes,” in Rethinking Secularism,
ed. Craig J. Calhoun, Mark Juergensmeyer, and Jonathan VanAntwerpen(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 119–20.
40

defence against Muslim violence and perceived designs of Muslim politicaldomination. But this organised Hindu violence simultaneously also aimed toprotect – from the perceived threat of ruination – the possibility of realising
for a free India his ideal of secularism, grounded in equal citizenship andreligious freedom for all religious communities and, potentially, limited
political rights for religious minorities. Violence is permitted not togenerate unbridled Hindu domination over Muslims and eliminate religious
diversity, but to realise a secularism that granted minority rights, even as it
protected Hindu democratic advantage.
Here, my argument differs from that advanced by Ashis Nandy, for whom
secularism, due to its oppressive attitude towards religion, is necessarily thereal culprit and cause behind modern religious violence.107 Rai’s politicalthought certainly seems to substantiate Nandy’s point that modern religious
violence, rather than a spontaneous expression of religion in the sense offaith, was a product of religion as ideology, which itself – like secularism – isa product of modernity.108 Given that Rai’s sanctioning of Hindu violence
was ultimately for the sake of a future secularism, I would agree with its
characterisation as a form of what Nandy calls “secular communal” or secularviolence.109 I also acknowledge Nandy’s argument about the false opposition
drawn between religious violence and modernisation, and perhaps evensecularisation. However, recognition of Rai’s simultaneous advocacy of
secularism and Hindu violence does not imply that his secularism determined
his sanction of Hindu violence. Hindu violence was the perilous andcounterproductive path chosen by Rai to establish his vision of secularism.
Rai’s permissiveness towards Hindu communal violence does not nullify
the analytical significance of the substantive moral content underpinning
his secularism. But by heightening the mutual mistrust, estrangement,
polarisation and violence between Hindus and Muslims, Rai’s sanctioningof Hindu communal violence threatened to preclude the realisation of thesecularism he longed to establish.
107 Ashis Nandy, “An Anti-Secular Manifesto,” India International Centre Quarterly 22,
no. 1 (Spring 1995): 56–57.
108 Nandy, “The Politics of Secularism”. The link between modernity, the thinning of
religion (in Nandy’s terms, the transition from religion as faith to religion as ideology),
and violence has also been made by Kaviraj, “Thick and Thin Religion,” 348.
109Nandy uses the term ‘secular communal violence’, and refers to India’s contemporary
religious riots as ‘secular riots’. Nandy, “An Anti-Secular Manifesto,” 59, 62.
41

6 A brief comparison with ‘Western’ secularisms, Indian constitutional
secularism, Gandhi-Nehru, and the Hindu right

Having analysed the internal texture of Lajpat Rai’s secularism, I now
turn briefly to compare it with other ideals of secularism, both globallyand within India, as a means of further clarifying its specificity. As
noted, Rai’s secularism came close to the strictly separationist American‘wall of separation’ model, in terms of its generally non-interventionist
bent. Neither actively hostile to religion, nor actively attempting to assist
religion, Rai’s secularism in large part followed what Bhargava calls the“mutual exclusion” model, whereby the state passively respects religion
by leaving it alone.110 This was quite different from the model of “onesided exclusion”, where the state, more hostile to religion, retains thepower to interfere in its affairs to control, tame or marginalise religion.111
While attracted by the privatisation of religion for the sake of a radicallysecularised domain as an ideal, Lajpat Rai’s secularism was clearly willingto allow for its public presence. Yet, as noted already, Rai’s secularism
was not identical to the idealised American model of secularism, given
its breach of the wall of separation to grant minority rights, both in theirsocio-cultural and political forms. Therefore, rather than passive respect, it
entailed an active engagement with religious minorities, though this active
assistance consisted of possible political recognition rather than publicfunding. Importantly, it also differed from the secularisms of most Western
European states (except France), which disconnected from religion by
granting formal rights to all individuals irrespective of religion, whilst
nonetheless remaining connected to religion through their active andpositive accommodation of the countries’ respective dominant religions.
Due to their conceptualisation in historical settings in which non-Christianreligions were sociologically and politically insignificant, if not absent,
Western European secularisms granted monopolistic privileges to one ormore branches of Christianity.112 Lajpat Rai’s secularism had to grapple
with India’s specific socio-cultural context of profound religious diversity
which, at the time, included the world’s largest Muslim population, as well

110 Bhargava, “Is European Secularism Secular Enough?,” 165–67.
111 Bhargava, 165.
112Bhargava, 167–68; Stepan, “Multiple Secularisms,” 121–25.
42

as numerous small religious minorities.113 Unlike European secularism,it faced the problem of inter-religious conflict. In dealing with this issue,
Rai’s ideal went beyond Western European secularism, even though it
emanated from within a Hindu communal political organisation, and wasless minority-sensitive than the secularisms of other Indians of his time. It
mirrored the “moderate secularism”114 of Western Europe in breaching of
the wall of separation. But it differed from the European model in doing so
not to propose any sort of (even weak) establishment of Hinduism, but in
an attempt to better accommodate India’s deep religious diversity throughcontemplated socio-cultural and political rights (and federalism).
How did this Hindu ‘communal’ politician’s articulation of Indian
secularism compare with the conception that would be enshrined in
the Indian constitution a quarter of a century later? Like the latter, Rai’svision follows the principle of non-establishment, and grants religious
liberty and equal citizenship to all individuals. It, also, similarly rejects
strict separation, to actively grant community-specific rights to religious
minorities. A difference lies in Rai’s refusal of state aid for any religious
institutions or purposes. This is unlike the Indian constitution, which
commits the state to intervene to provide aid to educational institutions
established by religious communities. Additionally, Indian constitutional
secularism would allow the state a much more interventionist role inreligious affairs, permitting it to undermine certain aspects of religion,and to promote others.115 Rai mentioned nothing about the state’s active
interference in religious communities to make them more liberal andegalitarian. Instead, he sought to grant religious communities substantial
freedom to manage their own internal affairs. At the same time, thisHindu ‘communal’ politician was willing to concede community-specificpolitical rights to the enormous Muslim population of undivided India,
even if reluctantly and as a necessary evil.116 Here, he differed from the

113 Faisal Devji, The Impossible Indian: Gandhi and the Temptation of Violence(London: Harvard University Press, 2012), 74.
114 The phrase is Tariq Modood’s. Bhargava, “Is European Secularism Secular
Enough?,” 164.
115 For a forensic analysis of India’s constitutional secularism, see Bhargava,
Promise, 81–96.
116 By the end of his life, Rai no longer viewed communal representation forminorities as merely a necessary evil. In 1928, just before his death, he43Indian constitution which, following India’s Partition and the formationof the Muslim-majority state of Pakistan, would reject such separate
representation for India’s substantially reduced Muslim minority.117 At thesame time, Rai sought to establish his secularism through militant Hindu
consolidation. India’s constitutional secularism is certainly predicated ona history of reluctance towards granting, and then eventually denying,political rights to Muslims.118 But it is also predominantly based on ahistory of top Congress leaders rejecting militant communal politicalconsolidation – whether Muslim or Hindu – as a means to achieve
secularism. The Indian constitution instituted a version of secularism,
which sought to discourage ‘communal’ politics, through its emphasis onindividual rights, via non-violent, democratic, and institutional means.

straightforwardly urged Hindus to accept the Nehru Report “out of a profoundsense of necessity, the necessity of reconciling Mohammedan sentiment andfeeling”. Cited in Nair, Changing Homelands, 89.
117Tejani, Indian Secularism, chap. 6. Indian Muslims are severely underrepresented in the Indian parliament, with their representation declining
since the 1980s to a mere 4.42% in 2019, despite forming 14.2% of the
population, according to the 2011 census. Shakil Sana, “Yet Again, No Muslim
Face in BJP’s Bandwagon Headed to Parliament,” The New Indian Express,
24 May 2019, https://www.newindianexpress.com/nation/2019/may/24/yetagain-no-muslim-face-in-bjps-bandwagon-headed-to-parliament-1981129.
html. Reservations, considered by Rai in the mid-1920s but eventually
rejected by the Indian constitution, have been intermittently demanded sincethe 1990s, by some certain Muslim groups, as well as a small Muslim party
called AIMIM (All-India Majlis-e-Ittehad-Muslimeen), based in Hyderabad
in Southern India. See Bhargava, Promise, 193–94, and Rochana Bajpai,
and Adnan Farooqui, “Non-Extremist Outbidding: Muslim Leadershipin Majoritarian India,” Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 24, no. 3 (2018):
276–98. Pondering the unjust political under-representation of Muslims,
Bhargava considers a particular form of Muslim political representation(reservations) as a desirable mechanism for political inclusion, arguing for
its compatibility with the principle of secularism. He warns, however, that a
vicious majoritarian backlash against Muslim reservations might ultimately
make conditions worse for India’s Muslims. Bhargava, Promise, 210–16.
While the regrettable under-representation of Muslims seems to support
Tejani’s critique of India’s constitutional secularism, this critique overlooks
the ways in which Partition itself was responsible for a strengthening ofIndia’s Hindu majority, while simultaneously massively weakening its
Muslim minority.
118 Bajpai, Debating Difference, chap. 2; Tejani, Indian Secularism.
44

Certainly, India’s constitutional secularism cannot be said to sanction
militant Hindu consolidation for its own sake.
How does Rai’s mid-1920s secular-communal complex comparewith the ‘Gandhi-Nehru tradition’ that steadily grew to become thehegemonic discourse of Indian secularism up until the 1970s?119 Rai’svision overlapped with that of Gandhi and Nehru in numerous ways: inenvisioning a free India that was neither a theocracy nor a nation that
established any particular religion;120 in not assuming a hostile stancetowards religion, but conceding it public space,121 and in going beyond
strict separation to recognise community-specific socio-cultural rights
for religious minorities.122 While Gandhi seldom used the language ofrights, he remained concerned about the freedom of religious minorities,
and ultimately endorsed the Congress’ language of rights, includinggroup rights. More thoroughly contextualised studies of Gandhi and
Nehru are required, however, to ascertain their positions on the questionof political rights for minorities in the mid-1920s. Gandhi seems to havebeen willing to concede them, even whilst disagreeing with them inprinciple,123 whereas Nehru’s discomfort with institutionalising religion
in the political domain was evident by the late 1920s.124 Collectively,
Gandhi and Nehru mirrored the dilemma felt by Lajpat Rai over thequestion of accepting political rights for India’s religious minorities.
119 Sushmita Nath, “Narratives of Secularity in 20th-Century India,” in Companion
to the Study of Secularity, edited by HCAS “Multiple Secularities – Beyond theWest, Beyond Modernities”, Leipzig University, 2019, https://www.multiplesecularities. de/publications/companion/css_nath_narrativesofsecularity.pdf.
120 Bhikhu C. Parekh, Gandhi: A Very Short Introduction, Very Short Introductions
37 (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2001), 85; Rajeev Bhargava, “Nehru
against Nehruvians,” Economic and Political Weekly 52, no. 8 (2017): 36–38.
121 Parekh, Gandhi, 85; Bhargava, “Nehru against Nehruvians,” 36–38. For more
about Nehru’s secularism not being anti-religious, see Stepan, “Multiple
Secularisms”; Kaviraj, “Languages of Secularity,” 100; Charles Taylor, “Can
Secularism Travel?,” in Beyond the Secular West, ed. Akeel Bilgrami (New York,
NY: Columbia University Press, 2016), 24; Sushmita Nath, “Jawaharlal Nehru and
the Question of Indian Secularity” (Lecture, Conference of the KFG “Multiple
Secularities – Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities”: Secularities – Patterns ofDistinction, Paths of Differentiation, Leipzig University, October 2018), 13.
122 For Nehru, see Bhargava, “Nehru against Nehruvians,” 38; Nath, “Nehru andIndian Secularity,” 13.
123 Page, Prelude to Partition, 121.
124 Nath, “Nehru and Indian Secularity,” 13.
45

It is also due to this convergence of Gandhi and Nehru – seen as theforemost representatives of Indian secularism – with Hindu communal
politicians such as Rai, that Indian secularism has been recently treated asa diaphanous concept – merely ”Hindu confessionalism by another name”,
as one scholar put it.125
But, again, the acknowledgement of convergence between thepositions of Gandhi, Nehru and Lajpat Rai – their collective assumptionof the existence of a Hindu majority and discomfort over institutionalising‘communal’ representation – must be accompanied by a recognition of
their distinctions. This once again prevents us from collapsing Indian
secularism into Hindu communalism, and reminds us not to forget themeaningful distinctions between these categories. Gandhian secularism
aimed at a secular state which allowed for the public presence of religion,and granted socio-cultural rights to minorities. As for politics, it considered
Religion ­(with a capital R) – i.e. religion in the sense of universal truth or
morality that underlies all faiths – as essential to politics.126 In fact, desiring
less reliance on the state and its language of rights, Gandhian secularism
urged an everyday Religious (moral) politics of tolerance, and even selfsacrifice, for ‘the other’, as a way of showing mutual respect for even radical
difference between religious communities.127 Such mixing of Religion andpolitics was Gandhian secularism’s answer to interreligious conflict andviolence.128 At the same time, it opposed the mixing of politics with religionsin their mutually exclusive, organised forms, and the rivalrous, divisive,and polarising religious politics of Hindu and Muslim consolidation.
Gandhian secularism was sympathetic to a Religious politics striving
towards mutual tolerance, but rejected a politics of a rivalrous religious
political consolidation, instead encouraging the representation of the‘mutuality’ of Hindu and Muslim interests by the ‘national’ Congress.129

125 Perry Anderson, The Indian Ideology (London: Verso Books, 2013). For asimilar view, see Jalal, “Exploding Communalism: The Politics of Muslim
Identity in South Asia”; Tejani, Indian Secularism.
126 Ajay Skaria, “Gandhi’s Politics: Liberalism and the Question of the Ashram,”
The South Atlantic Quarterly 101, no. 4 (2003): 958–60, 969; Bhargava, “Nehru
against Nehruvians,” 36; Parekh, Gandhi, 69.
127 Skaria, “Gandhi’s Politics,” 976–79; Devji, Impossible Indian, chap. 3.
128 Adcock, Limits of Tolerance, 143, 146.
129 M.K. Gandhi, “Conundrums, Young India, 2 April 1925,” in Collected Works
46

Finally, Ahimsa (nonviolence) was fundamental to Gandhian secularism,
which rejected Hindu (and Muslim) communal violence.
Nehruvian secularism was marked by a greater reliance on the state, anda greater emphasis on rights, than Gandhian secularism, with its insistenceon an everyday religio-moral politics of nonviolence and tolerance,
based on respecting deep religious difference. Nehru was more willing toaccord the secular state an interventionist role in fighting religion-based
oppression, particularly in terms of caste and gender. Nehru did not regard
religion as being essential to politics in the way Gandhi did.130 Reflecting
the influence of socialism upon him, Nehru went further than Gandhi,in harshly castigating religious community-based politics (not only of the
Muslim minority, but also of the Hindu majority) as a backward-looking,pre-modern form of politics, as well as a sort of false consciousness arisingfrom what were actually economic grievances.131 For Nehru, as for Gandhi,
the path to secularism could never lie through a religious community
based-politics, but rather had to begin by strongly repudiating precisely
such politics, and firmly conceiving the Indian nation as comprised ofindividual citizens.132 Viewing India’s Hindus and Muslims as membersof the Indian nation, he viewed any mutual suspicion in their relations
as regrettable. Devoid of fears of domination by a Muslim minority ina future democracy, he saw no sense in Hindu majority consolidation,
which could only intensify Muslim fears of the Hindu majority, to whichof Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 31 (Delhi: Publications Division, Ministry ofInformation and Broadcasting, Govt. of India, 1965).
130 Bhargava claims that, like Gandhi, Nehru considered religion – in the sense ofuniversal morality and ethics – as being essential in politics, and – once again,
like Gandhi – opposed the mixing of politics with religion in its institutionalised
forms. “Nehru against Nehruvians,” 35–36. Others disagree, arguing that
Nehru was deeply uncomfortable with religion in all forms, due to its capacity
to both introduce emotion and diminish reason in politics. Nath, “Nehru
and Indian Secularity,” 13. It seems to me that the two interpretations can besquared. Nehru may have simultaneously considered morality as essential topolitics (sometimes, but not always, equating it with religion), been wary of
emotional religious-based appeals (in a manner that Gandhi was perhaps not),and strongly opposed religious community-based politics.
131 Gyanendra Pandey, The Construction of Communalism in Colonial North India(New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006), 244; Nath, “Nehru and Indian
Secularity,” 10–11.
132 Pandey, Construction of Communalism, 238.
47

he was sympathetic.133 Sanctioning Hindu violence would only aggravatecommunal rioting, which Nehru once called “black religious savagery”.134
Rather than serving secularism, this could only do it harm.
Rai’s secularism was closer to Nehru’s than Gandhi’s, in its greater
reliance on the state and its guarantee of rights, than on an everyday moral
politics of tolerance. While Rai was sympathetic to the Gandhian approach
during the Khilafat movement (1919–22), the new context of the mid1920s had him roundly dismissing the notion that “the Hindu-Muslim
problem” could be solved through “sentimental talk”.135 Yet, unlike Nehru,
Rai did not seem to accord the secular state an interventionist role, to makereligion more liberal and egalitarian. Rai’s belief that the separation ofreligion from politics was essential for individuals to unite over economic
issues, and for India to reach its economic potential, again overlapped with
Nehruvian secularism. But where Lajpat Rai’s secularism unmistakably
diverged from both Gandhi’s and Nehru’s secularism was, of course, in
its obsessive fear of Muslim domination, and what he thought was his
temporary reliance on Hindu communal consolidation and violence. This
stance at least partly resulted from the Hindu minority status in his own
state of Punjab. As we have seen, for Rai, the path to secularism lay throughcounteracting Muslim attempts to institutionalise what he perceived asa dangerous, divisive and even domineering Muslim politics, through amilitant Hindu politics of consolidation. Unlike Gandhian and Nehruvian
secularism, which stood on firmer ground, Lajpat Rai’s secularism was
unstable, relying as it did on an instrumental Hindu communal politics,
which threatened to undermine the core values of his imagined secularism.
This is why Rai’s articulation of Indian secularism needs to beacknowledged as a stance distinct from the more robust and minoritysensitive secularisms embodied by both the Gandhian-Nehru tradition
and India’s constitution. Recognising the distinctiveness of Rai’ssecularism, given his role as a Hindu ‘communal’ politician, will also
allow us to arrive at a more nuanced understanding of the historical

133 Benjamin Zachariah, Nehru (New York, NY: Routledge, 2004), 74.
134 Sarvepalli Gopal, British Policy in India, 1858–1905 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1965), 200.
135 Bhargav, “Between Hindu and Indian: The Nationalist Thought of Lala Lajpat
Rai,” 151.
48

and conceptual relationship between Indian secularism and the ‘Hindu
right’. Some sections of the latter, however small, historically articulated
what should be recognised as a genuine secularism, and played at leastan indirect role in shaping India’s secular constitution. While one aspectof this convergence between a section of the Hindu right and the Indian
constitution certainly relates to the attenuation of community rights, anda reluctance regarding political rights for minorities, another relates to
the granting of minority rights. This challenges the assumptions of somewithin the contemporary Hindu right, that they have had no historical
relation to India’s constitutional secularism and its granting of minority
rights, which they associate only with Nehru and the Congress. Further,acknowledging Rai’s articulation of secularism opens the theoreticalpossibility of genuine secularisms existing among sections of the Hindu
right today. Some sections of the Hindu right articulate a secularism evenmore hard-line and minority-insensitive than the hard-line secularism
desired by Rai, considering socio-cultural rights for minorities as“pseudo-secular” and anti-secular.136 More importantly, the secularism
Rai articulated as a Hindu communal politician throws into relief thenature of the self-proclaimed ‘secularism’ promoted by much of theSangh Parivar (the ‘family’ of Hindu nationalist organisations) sincethe 1990s. As Partha Chatterjee rightly notes, the Parivar has often used
the language of ‘secularism’ to assimilate minorities into a homogenised
notion of Hindu culture. However, this represents an instrumental
deployment of the term, with the aim of establishing Hindu culturaland political domination, and severely undercuts the core substantive
values that constitute all versions of secularism. In my view, Chatterjee ismistaken in interpreting the Hindu right’s instrumental reliance on thelanguage of ‘secularism’ to promote its own agenda of Hindu domination
as revealing the flawed nature of secularism itself. Much of the Hindu
right cannot be said to be guided by any genuine secularism, and rather
is guided by normative ends opposed to it. In fact, it very likely longs
for a strong establishment of Hinduism as the privileged religion of the
Indian state (much like Islam in Pakistan),137 an idea that departs from136 Tejani, Indian Secularism, 9.
137 Bhargava, Promise, 83.
49

secularism in all its forms. India’s current dramatic turn away fromsecularism is symbolically reflected in the near-disappearance of the termfrom political discourse,138 and most starkly and tangibly in the Bharatiya
Janata Party (BJP)’s linking of Indian citizenship to non-Muslim religions
through the Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019. By linking religion to
citizenship, the BJP seeks to fulfil the vision of ultra-Hindu nationalist
ideologues like V.D. Savarkar, who wished India’s religious minorities tolive as second-class citizens, or perhaps even of M.S. Golwalkar, whose
Hindu nationalist vision did not even grant them citizenship rights.139 In
its attempt to subjugate minorities through, among other things, cultural
assimilation and hierarchically arranged religion-based citizenship,
dominant strands of the Hindu right today diverge from the secularism
represented by Hindu politicians like Lajpat Rai. This despite Rai still
being claimed by the Hindu right (including the BJP) as its icon. Rai
articulated a secularism that, although less accommodative and robust
than the Gandhian-Nehruvian or Indian constitutional variants, wasstill always predicated on equal citizenship, respect for India’s religious
diversity, and a concession of minority rights.
7 Conclusion

Secularity denotes a modality of making distinctions between the religious
and the non-religious. This paper has focussed on secularism as a specificnormative form of secularity. In doing so, it recovers a distinctive, Hindu‘communal’ articulation of Indian secularism and secularity, which
overlaps with, but remains analytically distinct from, other versions
exemplified by Gandhi, Nehru and the Indian constitution. Of the four“reference problems” identified by the Multiple Secularities project,140
historical actors in colonial India were evidently most concerned with a)religious heterogeneity and its potential for conflict or actual conflict, andb) the related problem of social and national integration and development.
In contrast to Europe and even the United States, colonial India was

138 Rajeev Bhargava, “How to Rescue Genuine Secularism,” The Hindu, 28 May 2019,https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/how-to-rescue-genuine-secularism/
article27267143.ece.
139 Jaffrelot, Hindu Nationalist Movement, 28–30, 57.
140 Kleine, and Wohlrab-Sahr, “Research Programme,“ 20.
50marked by a longer historical engagement with long-standing and deep
religious diversity. The major presence of Islam in the subcontinent
from the 13th century meant that, along with its Hindu majority, India
was home to the world’s largest Muslim population, alongside numerous
other smaller minorities – Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains andParsis. This sociological fact of astounding diversity posed considerable
challenges for national integration. All Indian secularisms responded to,and offered solutions to, the two specific and related reference problemsof religious diversity and conflict, and national integration. Yet, in doing
so, they espoused different versions of secularism, which they sought toestablish in multiple ways. These in turn were better or worse for realising
the desired ends of secularism. As such, while Multiple Secularities sees
the diverse secularisms and secularities of different countries as being
shaped by their particular responses to specific reference problems, thispaper demonstrates that the same set of reference problems can also resultin multiple secularisms and secularities within the same country.

51

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