OPINION | India’s Secular Dilemma: Balancing faith and the State

In India, religion is not limited to personal belief; it is deeply woven into the social fabric and continuously shapes citizen–state interactions.

On 11 May 1951, a year after the Constitution came into force, President of India Dr Rajendra Prasad attended the opening of the restored Somnath temple in Gujarat, ignoring Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s disapproval. The event carried significance far beyond religion—it unfolded against the backdrop of intense debates in the Constituent Assembly on the meaning of secularism and the contours of the State’s relationship with faith.

Professor Marc Galanter aptly sums up this dilemma. He writes in his essay, ‘Hinduism, Secularism, and the Indian Judiciary, “There is disagreement about what this secular state implies-whether it implies a severe aloofness from religion, a benign impartiality toward religion, a corrective oversight of it, or a fond and equal indulgence of all religions. There appears, however, to be a general agreement that public life is not to be guided by religious doctrines or institutions.”

Secularism with Indian characteristics

As the process of making of the Indian Constitution came to an end, it became clear that what the majority of members of the Constituent Assembly were envisoning was a model which was unlike the Western model of strict isolation. India’s approach was rooted in ‘sarva dharma sambhav’—equal respect for all religions—where the State would maintain a positive separation from, but not an antagonistic exclusion of, religion in public life.

KM Munshi, who was in charge of Somnath temple's construction, had remarked during a debate in the Constituent Assembly that, “A secular State is not a Godless State. Any State that seeks to outlaw God will very soon come to an end.”

During the framing of the Constitution, there were strong appeals from some members to explicitly insert the word ‘secular’ in the Preamble, while others pressed for beginning it with the words “In the name of God.” Both suggestions were ultimately rejected, as the framers chose a more nuanced path. Instead of declaratory phrases, the idea of secularism was woven into the text through several provisions in Part III on Fundamental Rights, which carefully defined the limits of the State’s interaction with, and intervention in, matters of religion. This ensured that the Indian model would protect freedom of faith while upholding equality, neutrality, and non-discrimination at the heart of constitutional governance.

However, over the last seven and a half decades, there have been several instances where the State has directly regulated certain religious practices, and the Supreme Court has also defined the boundaries between faith and law. From striking down practices deemed unconstitutional to upholding reforms in the interest of social justice, the Court has gradually shaped the doctrine of “essential religious practices” and clarified how the constitutional vision of secularism balances freedom of religion with the imperatives of equality, dignity, and public order.

Shah Bano case 

In 1978, a Muslim lawyer named Mohammed Ahmed Khan divorced his wife, Shah Bano. As required by the Muslim personal law. Ahmed paid 3000 rupees to Bano during the ‘iddat’ period (three months duration, following the divorce).

Bano filed a petition under Section 125 of the CrPC before the Judicial Magistrate's court in Indore. Bano claimed that her husband was an affluent man with an annual income of more than Rs 60,000. The Magistrate Court ordered Ahmed to pay Bano Rs 25 every month as maintenance. Bano filed an appeal in the High Court against this order, and the High Court in 1979 revised the maintenance amount to Rs 179.20 per month. Following this, Ahmed challenged the High Court order in the apex court.

Ahmed contended that, as marriage and divorce in his community are governed by Muslim personal law, which requires the husband to only provide maintenance for the iddat period after divorce, he is not legally bound to give any maintenance to Bano.

There was a clear conflict between personal law and the CrPC, which applies uniformly to all citizens. In the Shah Bano case, the Supreme Court upheld CrPC’s precedence, ruling that maintenance under Section 125 was religion-neutral and applied to all, regardless of faith. However, the Rajiv Gandhi government enacted the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act, 1986, which effectively overturned the judgment by restricting maintenance to the iddat period of about 90 days.

Places of Worship Act, 1991.

The Ayodhya Ram Mandir–Babri Masjid land dispute was among the fiercest legal battles of independent India, carrying profound political and social consequences. It revealed the deep intersection of State, judiciary, and community groups, and exemplified how conflicts rooted in religious belief or practice inevitably draw in the State for regulation and the courts for adjudication.

The Ayodhya dispute had a long legal and political trajectory. It began in 1885 when Mahant Raghubar Das sought permission to build a temple near the mosque, and saw its first major fallout in the 1934 communal riots. The movement gained momentum in 1984 with the VHP’s Ram Janmabhoomi campaign, and escalated sharply after police firing on ‘karsevaks’ in 1990, which intensified communal tensions and led the Narasimha Rao government to pass the Places of Worship Act, 1991.

The Places of Worship Act, 1991, was enacted with the main objective of prohibiting conversion of any place of worship and to provide for the maintenance of the religious character of any place of worship as it existed on the 15th day of August 1947.

It is also important to note that on February 1, 1986, the main gate of the Babri Masjid was unlocked on the order of a district court judge. In his book ‘India After Gandhi’, historian Ramachandra Guha said the judge’s order “was widely believed to have been directed from Delhi, from the Prime Minister’s Office, no less”.

 Swaminarayan Sect & Ramakrishna Mission case 

In India, the State and courts have been drawn into interpreting religion for varied reasons. In cases like the Swaminarayan sect or the Ramakrishna Mission, it was the institutions themselves that approached the Supreme Court, asking it to define concepts such as Hinduism, Hindu, and Hindutva. In other instances, circumstances required judicial scrutiny, such as whether seeking votes in the name of religion was a “corrupt practice” under the Representation of the People Act, 1951, where the Court had to interpret Hindutva in electoral politics.

Similarly, in the Sabarimala case, it was the principle of gender equality that brought the Court into the arena of religious practice, while in Rev. Stainislaus v. State of Madhya Pradesh, the issue of forced religious conversions became the basis for judicial intervention.

State and judiciary have often been forced to enter religious domain

Going through India’s constitutional history over the last 75 years, it becomes evident that despite the constitutional mandate of secularism in India, the State and judiciary have often been compelled to intervene in religious matters. Political, social, cultural, and even economic factors have pushed them into this role.

In India, religion is not limited to personal belief; it is deeply woven into the social fabric and continuously shapes citizen–state interactions. In such a context, maintaining a strict and absolute separation between state and religion becomes exceedingly difficult.

As TN Madan in his essay ‘Secularism in Its Place’ writes that in the prevailing circumstances, secularism in South Asia “as a generally shared credo of life is impossible…It is impossible as a credo of life because the great majority of the people of South Asia are in their own eyes active adherents of some religious faith.” And India is no exception to this.