ABSTRACT
The tragedy of secularism in India is that those who talk about it the most do not practice it themselves. The mullahs claiming to be secular of course sound contradictory in terms, but the so-called liberals and secularists do no better. Historians committed to the politics of secularism and working with the framework of what is referred to as scientific history have tended to ignore or condemn popular myth and superstition. Historians and political theorists have often spoken of the relevance of Akbar and Ashoka, two of the great figures in India’s long history of large-scale state formation. In the Mughal regime for instance, they were perhaps more powerful under Aurangzeb than what they might have been under the more venerated Akbar.
