Secular Entanglements: Secularism, Nationalism, and Religion in India Público
Srinivasa, Prathiksha (Spring 2026)
Abstract
My dissertation traces a genealogy of Indian secularism that begins in the mid-nineteenth century. Drawing from a range of Indian secularist periodicals published between 1870 and 2000 and putting them in conversation with contemporary discussions on Indian secularism, my dissertation demonstrates how secularism has been used as an analytical category for engaging questions of religious identity, political representation, and citizenship in India for almost two centuries. Importantly, my dissertation traces a history of Indian secularism that takes shape beyond the institutional parameters of the Indian state. While most contemporary analyses of Indian secularism center the state as the arbiter and enactor of secularism, I suggest that this approach grossly misrepresents the history of secularism in the Indian context and in doing so, limit its political potential. By tracing a genealogy of Indian secularism that finds its roots in the working class politics of British radicalism and the anti-imperialist interventions of British secularist thinkers like Charles Bradlaugh (1833-1891) and Annie Besant (1847-1933), that derives ideological and political inspiration from nineteenth century anti-caste agitations in Madras and Calcutta, that is shaped by the anti-statist politics of Gandhian anarchism, and that is guided by postcolonial approaches to rationalism and humanism, this project demonstrates how secularism in India has historically served to challenge the very networks of caste, class, and religion that authorize Indian statecraft. Additionally, I argue that by attending to a range of concerns beyond the question of religion, the actors, movements, and organizations in this genealogy greatly expand the scope of secularism. Rather than solely serving as a foil for reductive conceptions of religion, secularism, in these alternative readings, becomes a means to critically analyse a range of authoritarian formations and an avenue for collective political praxis.
Table of Contents
Introduction: Envisioning a Secularism Beyond Religion and State 1
Chapter 1. The British Secularist Movement: Class, Empire and the Ethics of Materialism 32
Chapter 2. Popular Representation and Elite Ambition: British Secularists and the
Indian National Congress 68
Chapter 3. Transmuting Truth: Besant, Gandhi, and the Creation of a Divine Politics 106
Chapter 4. Revolution by Consent: Lok Shakti, Faith, and the State in
Sarvodaya Magazine 137
Chapter 5. Towards a Normative Secularism: The Indian Secular Society and
The Secularist 169
Conclusion 200
Bibliography 211
About this Dissertation
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