Introduction

This chapter introduces the interaction of politics and religion to contextualize the meanings of the chapters included in the volume. Mapping this interaction in modern times at two levels – first, after the advent of the British and then in post-colonial India – it traces the debate in the perspectives of prominent leaders of the national movement. It argues that the promise of constitutional democracy for a secular state was challenged within two decades in republican India. The seeds of division in electoral politics were dormant in Bharatiya Jana Sangh and finally culminated in the Bharatiya Janata Party, which never hesitated in claiming to be against the secular tenets of the republic. The Congress has also been engaged in propagating soft Hindutva while popularly maintaining secular credentials. Referring to the World Value Survey and the increasing importance of religion, the chapter details the resurgence of the interplay of politics and religion in the world after the 1980s and in India a decade before. Underlining the distinct understanding of Dr. Ambedkar as a pragmatist made a difference among the religions on the one hand and between religion and Dhamma on the other hand, claiming that the latter has no centrality of God but has centrality of the moral, the social, and the rational against the former having centrality of God and the personal in their philosophies. Thus, he realized the indispensability of religion in the larger human society that has been complemented by some of the recent studies in the disciplines of divinity and the neurosciences. Finally, it summarizes major arguments forwarded by different contributors in their chapters in the volume and their interpretations and analysis of the specificities of different states, reflecting upon the interplay of politics and religion in particular contexts.