South Central

Secularism, Religion and the Indian State in 2025 | South Central 53

In this episode of South Central, hosts Dhanya Rajendran and Pooja Prasanna discuss India’s Constitutional value of secularism and the contradictions in its practice.

Dhanya Rajendran, Pooja Prasanna

Published:5th Dec, 2025 at 7:40 PM

In this episode of South Central, hosts Dhanya Rajendran and Pooja Prasanna discuss India’s Constitutional value of secularism and the contradictions in its practice. The panel delves into how India has fared, or not, in prioritising Constitutional values vis-à-vis political agenda. They are joined by journalist and activist Aakar Patel and Seema Chishti, the editorial head of The Wire.

Dhanya starts the discussion by reminding us that the question is not whether India is secular on paper, but whether it feels so when we factor in political interventions and polarisations.

“This year began with good news for the Modi government after losing confidence last year. He won massively in the Maharashtra and Bihar elections. But given the loss of majority, one would have expected more pushback from the court and media and the Opposition, but that did not happen. The locus of interventions in secularism was mainly anchored on the BJP’s regime, which started in 2014. But religious bias has been there even before,” Aakar says.

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Pooja asks Seema what some of her observations are of instances where the state governments went against secular values for leverage.

“A particular example is the recent renaming of the PMO as seva theerth. This attribution of religiosity to Mr Modi as this monarchical head who stands above criticism is problematic. We are in the 12th year of the BJP’s control over the Union government, and there is a bit of a fear of the electorate after 2024. So this fear also creates more control. The WAQF Boards issue also got quite a bit of pushback from parties and the court.

We are at a very dangerous phase, and what is worrying is whether it is Modi or Yogi, speaking about religion openly, it is an election that led them here. A democratically elected party wants the society to become like the Sangh,” Seems says.

Dhanya observes that the WAQF issue was also easy for the government to push because it appeared simple and easy to confuse common people with it.

“There are various parts of society that require correction, including personal laws. But the issue is that the focus is only on minorities. The government does not speak about it to avoid loss of vote banks and interventions are only for the non-Hindus. There is no problem in speaking about reform, but when we only want a few communities to reform and not Hindutva as well, it becomes a problem,” Aakar says.

Pooja adds that the reluctance to look at reforming Hindu personal laws is perhaps what has kept the Uniform Civil Code debate at bay. Speaking about the role of the media in intervening and ensuring debate, Dhanya asks Aakar if he follows the media now.

“I do not follow much of the mainstream media. I have great respect for people like you, but having worked in this space for long, it also becomes very intuitive, we know what we are reading and how it may follow, with most news pieces,” he says.

Pooja touches upon the targeting of women while targeting secularism, especially Christian women.

Seema says later that the purposeful pushing of Hindutva is long work, which the BJP has done when it was out of power. “When they gained power, they began executing it. One example is how a swadeshi is always imagined as a Hindu. The use of the word ‘purification’ by the ECI is also very loaded, where purification also means cleansing the rolls and making it more Hindu. Even the use of pure Hindi is problematic, as it points to something puritan, on the road to making India a Hindutva nation,” She adds.

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Audio Timecodes

00:00:00- Introduction

00:01:07 - CCTV series

00:03:56- Dileep Case Verdict

00:06:07 - Headlines

00:16:29 - Secularism in India

01:29:41- Recommendations