Symbolically and discursively, the consecration of a Ram temple in Ayodhya has dealt a monumental blow to India’s constitutional republic. Legally and politically, however, the construction of a Hindu state remains unfinished, and it may not come about. This paradox needs to be understood and explained.

Consider, first, how the consecration represented not only a fusion of the state and religion, but also a union of the state with the majority religion, something that India’s Constitution-makers explicitly fought against and forbade. Even the ghastly violence of Partition, which accompanied the birth of a Muslim homeland in 1947, did not convince the Constitution-makers that post-Independence India should be a Hindu homeland. The Constitution-makers were firmly committed to the idea of religious neutrality of the state and religious equality of citizens.

Such high principles are not easy to practise in politics, in India or elsewhere, which inevitably raises the question of how one should evaluate political practice. In some circles, it is said that Indian secularism, presented as religious neutrality of the state, was an empty shell even under pre-Narendra Modi governments. All that PM Modi has done is taken the pretence away.

This argument is wrong. Political practice is normally not analysed in binary terms (“yes or no”). It is appraised on a scale (“more or less”). We judge whether the practice has been close to the ideal (1) or to its opposite (0). Thus, it is plausible to argue that in the pre-2014 era of Indian politics, the principle of religious neutrality was never fully executed, just as we can legitimately say that the idea of equality was not fully practised in the US or France, despite a constitutional commitment to it. The important thing is that, in India, the principle of religious neutrality was not abandoned for over seven decades, and was in fact........

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