The disenchantment of the Secular Age: Taylor's post-theology, postmodern Europe, and post-Colonial India

The present article analyses the theoretical and practical experiences of the concept of secularism in India. It postulates that India's success and reputation as the largest (not necessarily the best or the most successful) democracy is yielded in part by virtue of the nation-state's commitment to a secular ethos. However, by the same token, the faultlines in cementing and sustaining a rigorous democratic structure also, paradoxically, as I have shown, lies very much in the imbrications of secularism, particularly as it is unable to come to terms with the long history of the nation's religious fabric and is held to ransom by one community that feels woefully marginalized and underprivileged by apparently excessive rights given to another religious community. There are obvious lessons to be learned for those in the West who believe, as Charles Taylor does, that the time has come in the West when the old rigid concept of secularism is perched to give way to a more robust and open-ended conception of "secularity". And so the hermeneutic circle is complete: secularism is born from the underbelly of modernity as the "disenchantment of the world" (Weber); the postsecular marks the birthing of the "disenchantment of secularity".