Idle Thoughts

I had intended to write this in just two parts. But after I uploaded part 2, I went through some of my notes on the book. I realized that there are some more points (disagreements with the book, rather) that I would like to cover. Hence the unplanned part 3. When we started off in part 1, we started with asking some questions. Let us start part 3 with some more questions. What is the relationship between Democracy, Secularism and Tolerance? We might not be surprised to find a religious state being intolerant. But can a secular democracy be intolerant? What is more important – being democratic, secular or tolerant? In the book Gautam seems to prefer secularism above democracy and tolerance. He discusses the cases where secularism prevails over democracy and tolerance with tacit approval. The first is the case of France banning the display of religious symbols such as the hijabs in schools. He philosophizes that since the French state is secular, acceptance of republican virtues me...

Now coming back to the book itself, in what I write here, I might appear to be arguing with the book and the author and agreeing with them. But that is to be expected – we are dealing with a widely debated topic and it would be foolish to expect that the book would convince and convert me to its line of thinking. The book did successfully engage me in a debate with it and with myself. This being a book on democracy and healthy debates, I am sure that the author would be very pleased with the result that it has produced. The author starts out explaining why he named his book as The Intolerant Indian. More than those reasons, I thought it goes well with the more celebrated predecessors like The Argumentative Indian and The Scientific Indian. However, the content of the book is only so much about Intolerance of the Indian – the book talks more about the State than the people, and that too more about not being secular than being intolerant. So a title like ‘the non-secular India’, th...