In the western experience modernisation and secularism come in a single package. “Real modernity must be democratic, runs the logic; and real democracy must be secular” says Lois Lee.
However, outside of Europe, modernity is emerging without secularism. In modernised India for example the organisation of public space and the place of religion in it is quite different. The historian Dipesh Chakrabarty has suggested that Indian history challenges western conceptions at their core. Given that India became “modern” without it secularism, do we in fact need the concept of “secularism” at all?
While religious experience and practice seemed to be declining in many parts of the world there was no need to question western presumptions, says Lois Lee. The the impact of the realisation that decline in religion is not inevitable is hard to overstate. “It amounts to a dethroning of one of the longest-held and deepest-seated aspects of modern understandings and identities. It has led to one of the most profound shifts in general and academic thought about what modernity means and how it can be conducted most progressively,” she says.
Image: The Guardian
