SOAS Research Online

Abstract

This chapter discusses four ways of understanding the political management of religious diversity in India. It assesses the efforts of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government to implement new policies and practices to improve the social and economic conditions of religious minorities after 9/11 and the Gujarat pogroms of 2002. These efforts were directed at all religious minorities, but especially Muslims, who were identified as suffering a serious development deficit. The chapter describes the historical institutionalism and path dependence theory that holds particular policies and choices made at a critical juncture can have a persistent. The highly normative analyses by proponents of state secularism and anti-secularists have produced an equally profound counter-reaction. The paradox of managing religious diversity in India is that of a secular polity governed by a political party committed to establishing a Hindu state and the primacy of Hindu values. Finally, the chapter focuses on the constitutional framing of religious minorities and is institutionally path dependent.