The word 'secular' means 'worldly'. Literally speaking, its domain contrasts with the spiritual or transcendental aspects of a person's life. However, the term "secular" does not mean anti-religious, nor does it imply irreligiosity. In no sense does it bear any animosity or grudge towards aspects of life that one considers religious or spiritual. Simply stated, the secular and the religious reflect two different spheres of life, with the possibility of intersection between them. A person's secular concerns relate to his material and earthly life, and include transient subjects such as career, finances, and social relations. They encompass practical knowledge, inter alia, of science, arts, and engineering.
In the realm of politics, that is, in the management of community affairs, or at the highest level where sovereignty predominantly inheres, in the affairs of the State—the term secular connotes keeping the spiritual–religious sphere (and their reciprocal influences) at an arm's length from the governance of the State. Whether these domains are separated by an impervious wall or an osmotic barrier depends on the nature of the polity envisaged in a State's constitutional law.
In modern times, the emergence and normative appeal of the secular state have been shaped by historical experience specifically, by the grave consequences that followed from the absence of secular governance. The principle of secularism has, in this sense, been sanctified through a baptism of blood, most vividly illustrated in the annals of medieval Europe and, closer to us in both time and space, in the partition of the Indian subcontinent. These experiences underscored the destructive potential of religiously inflected state power and reinforced the necessity of institutional separation between religion and the affairs of the state.
The long history of religious freedom
One of the most significant episodes that accelerated the intellectual momentum in favour of the secularisation of the state was the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) in Central Europe, which resulted in the deaths of an estimated four to eight million people. The casus belli lay in struggles for control over parcels of Europe on the basis of the religious affiliations of the rulers, notably, between the Protestant and Catholic powers. This confessional logic of sovereignty continued to haunt Europe for generations, even after the Peace of Westphalia (1648) formally brought the conflict to an end.
It is not surprising that, at roughly the same historical moment, the anxieties of the age and the personal experiences of Roger Williams, a Puritan minister in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, led him to establish Providence Plantation as the first polity to erect a deliberate "wall of separation" between church and state. In this settlement, the government was restricted to only 'civil things' and the citizens declared their determination "still to hold forth liberty of conscience." The settlement, which later evolved into the colony of Rhode Island, became a refuge for those "distressed of conscience." This conception of institutional separation later informed Thomas Jefferson's articulation of the "wall of separation" and was subsequently reflected in the American constitutional tradition, serving as a powerful inspiration for secular constitutional models across the world.
However, the recognition of 'freedom of religion' in statecraft was not a modern invention. The phenomena, in different hues and colors, have existed for millennia. The first major empire in history, the Persian Empire, which stretched from Central Asia to the Mediterranean and encompassed a multitude of nationalities and faiths, ensured that local religions and cults were neither suppressed nor interfered with, but actively protected. The Cyrus Cylinder explicitly refers to the "rebuilding of temples" and the "restoration of cults" in Babylon, while the Bible recounts Cyrus the Great facilitating the repatriation of the Jews from Babylonian captivity. In such contexts, freedom of conscience emerged not only as a desirable ideal but also as a practical necessity for the governance of large and culturally diverse polities.
Millennia later, in the thirteenth century, the much-maligned Mongol Empire emphasized religious coexistence and freedom of belief, while also asserting the supremacy of the state over religion in the governance of public affairs. Möngke Khan, the fourth Khagan of the Mongol Empire, denounced the pernicious enmity among the religions of the world. In his view, the truth-claims of different faiths could not be reliably adjudicated; the only path to concord lay in guaranteeing religious freedom while placing all religions under the authority of the state.
One of the Enlightenment philosophers, John Locke, advanced a powerful rationale for the necessity of religious toleration. First, he argued that earthly judges, including the state, lack the capacity to reliably adjudicate the truth-claims of competing religions. Second, even if such discernment were possible, the enforcement of a single "true religion" would fail to achieve its intended purpose, since genuine belief cannot be produced through coercion or violence. Lastly, Locke argued that religious coercion would generate greater social disorder than accommodating religious diversity.
Spinoza, a contemporary of John Locke, was even more explicit and forceful in his advocacy of religious tolerance. He argued that the state should regulate only external actions, not the private beliefs of individuals, since beliefs in themselves do not harm the state. Spinoza maintained that freedom of thought, belief, and expression is essential both for public peace and for individual flourishing. Conversely, he insisted that religious authorities must never exercise civil power and must always remain subordinate to the sovereign to ensure public order. This line of reasoning exerted a profound influence on subsequent political philosophy and on modern constitutional frameworks, many of which have embraced religious toleration as a foundational principle.
Freedom of conscience, as a principle of statecraft, is thus a distillate of accumulated human experience, bearing the authority of historical suffering and reflection. It carries the force of history. It is not a mere moral aspiration but a hard-won constitutional insight, the disregard of which has repeatedly proven perilous.
The freedom movement and the Constitution
Our founding fathers were deeply cognizant of this. Freedom of conscience and religion came to characterise the values that our freedom struggle espoused. The movement brought together people of diverse faith, challenging religious segregation, promoting shared national identity, even through growing communal tensions. The Nehru Report (1928) explicitly emphasised there would be no state religion, prohibited favoring any religion, thus laid a groundwork for future constitutional secularism.
The defining features of a polity described as secular, together with the normative implications of that term, are explicitly articulated in the Constitution of India. Secularism is enshrined not only in Articles 25 to 28, which directly address freedom of religion, but also forms an inalienable component of the guarantees of equality under Articles 14 to 16, the freedoms of speech and expression under Article 19, and the cultural and educational rights of minorities under Articles 29 and 30.
Collectively, these provisions embody the four established markers of a secular constitutional order. First, the Constitution of India does not establish or endorse any state religion. Second, it guarantees freedom of religion and belief under Articles 25 and 26, reinforced by the broader protection of speech and expression under Article 19. Third, the law accords equal treatment to all individuals irrespective of religious affiliation, as mandated by Articles 14 to 16. Finally, a substantial, though not absolute, separation between the state and religious institutions is achieved, inter alia, through Articles 27 and 28, although these provisions fail to erect a "wall of separation" of the kind found in the American constitution.
This possibility of osmotic exchange, wherein the State permits expenditure for religious purposes, may be traced to Mahatma Gandhi's emphasis on politics informed by dharma, understood not as religion in a sectarian sense but as a system of ethics and a universal moral compass. His espousal of the idea of sarva dharma sambhav, that all religions are equally valid, formed the hypostasis for the principle of equal respect for all religions that finds expression in the constitutional scheme. This idea resonates with the deepest currents of Indian philosophical thought, grounded in the belief in an ultimate truth that unifies all existence. Truth is one, there may be different paths to that truth, Gandhi repeatedly emphasised.
Accordingly, while the constitutional provisions relating to religion do not erect a rigid wall of separation of the kind found in the American constitutional tradition, they nonetheless establish a robust and distinctive framework of secularism suited to the Indian context. Indian secularism is thus not one of strict exclusion, but of principled equidistance, marked by respect, neutrality, and non identification.
A foundational norm, not an afterthought
The norm of India as a secular State is therefore rooted in the freedom struggle that envisioned and gave birth to the modern Indian nation and its post Independence polity. It is further sanctified by the supreme civil compact of the nation, the Constitution of India itself. It is, consequently, entirely misguided to suggest that the term secular entered the Constitution by mere serendipity or as the result of the personal whim of a Prime Minister nearly three decades after the Constitution was framed through the Constitution (Forty-Second) Amendment Act, 1976. Such claims reflect either a deliberate distortion propagated by vested interests or a profound misunderstanding of constitutional history.
The Constituent Assembly Debates, on the contrary, reflect a clear and deliberate intention on the part of the framers to ensure both the religious neutrality of the State and the protection of individual religious freedom. These principles were not incidental. They were carefully deliberated upon and approved by the Advisory Committee before being formally debated, voted upon, and adopted by the Assembly.
Secularism in India is thus a foundational constitutional norm. The Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed it as part of the Constitution's basic structure rather than as a mere word appearing in the Preamble. It is deeply woven into the fabric of the constitutional text and intertwined with its operative provisions. Indeed, the Constitution bears an umbilical connection to the idea of secularism. Any attempt to weaken or sever this bond would strike at the very root of the polity and, veritably, at the idea of India itself.
