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Nov 23, 2022
The Secular Imaginary
Gandhi, Nehru and the Idea(s) of India
Summary
Given the popularity and success of the Hindu-Right in India’s electoral politics today, how may one study ostensibly ‘Western’ concepts and ideas, such as the secular and its family of cognates, like secularism, secularisation and secularity in non-Western societies without assuming them simply as derivative, or colonial legacies or contrast cases of Western societies? While recognizing that the dominant language of political modernity of Western societies is not easily translatable in non-Western societies, The Secular Imaginary: Gandhi, Nehru and the Idea(s) of India (Cambridge UP, 2022) elaborates upon an intellectual history of secularity in modern India by focusing on the two most influential political leaders – M.K. Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. It is an intellectual history of both idea(s) and intellectuals, which sheds light on Indian narratives of secularity – the Gandhian sarva dharma samabhava, Nehruvian secularism, and unity in diversity. It revisits this dominant narrative of secularity of the twentieth century that influenced and shaped the imagination of the modern nation-state.
Tiatemsu Longkumer is a Ph.D. scholar working on ‘Anthropology of Religion’ at North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong: India.
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Tiatemsu Longkumer
Dr. Tiatemsu Longkumer is a faculty in the Dept. of Anthropology at Royal Thimphu College, Bhutan. He specializes in 'Anthropology of Religion.' Dr. Longkumer's Ph.D. work was on Indigenous religion and Christianity among the Nagas of Nagaland: India. He is currently working on Buddhism in Bhutan.
