T. N. Madan on the Problem of Secularism

In his 1997 book Modern Myths, Locked Minds: Secularism & Fundamentalism in India, Triloki Nath Madan exposes the hollowness of the secularist premise. In a passage on page 276, he posits that secularism is a political strategy adopted by those minority groups which aim to subvert the culture and religion of the majority. Here’s an excerpt:

“Secularism is the dream of a minority which wants to shape the majority in its own image, which wants to impose its will upon history but lacks the power to do so under a democratically organized polity. In an open society the state will reflect the character of the society. Secularism therefore is a social myth which draws a cover over the failure of this minority to separate politics from religion in the society in which its members live… For the secularist minority to stigmatize the majority as primordiaily oriented and to preach secularism to the latter as the law of human existence is moral arrogance…”

In a secular order, the religious sensibilities of the majority gets suppressed but nothing is done to control the religious fundamentalism and militancy of the minority groups. This enables the minority groups to accumulate an inordinate amount of political power.