From multiple modernities to multiple secularities: cultural diversity, secularism, and tolerance as a guiding idea in India

This article addresses the place of secularity within the "multiple modernities" program. We argue that against the backdrop of different "civilizations" modernity creates various forms of distinction between the religious and the secular and engenders multiple secularities. These secularities emerge as specific "local" responses to particular reference problems as well as to Western modernity. By analysing debates on Indian secularism, however, we argue that the outcome is neither determined by religiously impregnated traditions-like the tradition of Hinduism-nor by the mere adoption of Western secularity. Instead, we find a genuinely Indian variation of secularity, which emerges from a specific history of balancing religious and cultural diversity but also from religious conflict.