ABSTRACT
Most writings on the idea and practice of secularism focus on how secular discourse and legal regulation can enable a space of tolerance and non-violent accommodation of religious minorities. One of the hallmarks of secular government, the neutrality of the state in religious affairs, grew historically out of attempts to supersede religious divisions in the body-politic, to protect religious minorities from persecution or to protect political life from religious passions. In the United States, and indeed in India, where there is no thick notion of the secular, the other of the secular has never been religion per se but instead excessively passionate attachments to religious identities that may take violent forms and disturb public order. In independent India, religious plurality has been framed as a Hindu majority being asked to accommodate a number of religious minorities. Those minorities were in turn expected to accept the gift of toleration on the terms defined by the state and the majority population.
