Spatially Locating the 'Post' of Post-Secularism

<strong>CENTRE FOR THE STUDY OF LAW AND GOVERNANCE Jawaharlal Nehru University</strong> SEMINAR SERIES <strong>NEERA CHANDHOKE&nbsp;</strong> Visiting Professor, Centre for Study of Law and Governance, JNU on <strong>Spatially Locating the 'Post' of Post-Secularism</strong> In his October 2001 speech titled 'Faith and Knowledge' Habermas piloted the concept of post secularism to the centre stage of political theory. 'We' he said in the aftermath of the attack on the Trade Towers in New York, are in a post-secular age. The 'we' certainly did not include the postcolonial world. Notably advocacy of the post-secular thesis has emerged from Western academia, and bears as its referent European histories of the 'divided self', the split between the Church and the state, wars over religion, migrations to the new world, and the political settlement that religion should be privatized and the public stamped with the logic of reason. The experience of the postcolonial world has been radically different. The leadership of the freedom struggle in India adopted political secularism as one of the mainstays of the new political order not because religion had become less, but more relevant as a form of identity politics. That is secularism was not a natural corollary of secularisation. The Indian case teaches us that though we have little choice but to accommodate religion in the public sphere, the outcome of the coexistence of secular and religious principles is, and has been extremely untidy and unwieldy, generating different sorts of political dilemmas and scenarios.This is in direct contrast to the way Western liberal philosophers design procedures that will enable voice to religious beliefs. What are then the implications of the Indian experience for the concept of secularism? <strong>Friday, 30 September, 2016</strong> <strong>ABOUT THE SPEAKER:</strong>&nbsp;Neera Chandhoke is formerly Professor of Political Science, University of Delhi, currently Professorial Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Law and Governance, JNU. She taught political theory and comparative politics, and has written and published widely on civil society, secularism, democracy, affirmative action, representation, social and economic rights, and on freedom from poverty as a human right. She is the author of State and Civil Society: Explorations in Political Theory Delhi, Sage, 1995, Beyond Secularism: The Rights of Religious Minorities Delhi, OUP, 1999, and The Conceits of Civil Society Delhi, OUP, 2003.