Contemporary India

18

Why Is Secularism Important for India?

Neera Chandhoke

INTRODUCTION

The novels of Orhan Pamuk, who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2006, are fascinating for many reasons : his style of writing, his imagination, and the sheer power of his prose. But for us in India, his novels are riveting, simply because his representations of the moral dilemmas that confront his country, Turkey, are more than familiar to us. For instance, his novel Snow, in which Pamuk narrates the debate between religious revivalism and secularism in his country in complex ways, practically mirrors the debates taking place in our country. Was the adoption of secularism as one of the main principles of the Indian polity a wise decision? Can secularism prove effective ...