?"I met Ashis Nandy the other day to find out if the message I got from his writings on secularism was correct. What I understood, I told him, was that he did not believe that secularism was suited to the genius of India. He replied: "You are more or less correct." He's not the only one. In fact, there's a growing breed of intellectuals which has arrived at similar conclusions. They think the secularism agenda has flawed the Indian state right from the beginning. According to some of them, secularism, by virtue of being a western concept, is alien to India. For others, it is anti-religion and, therefore, in contradiction with the bedrock of our society's beliefs. ...."

" Secularism is not communal amity; it is only one way of achieving such amity. As an ideology, it is not even 300 years old. Yet, despite the consistent failure of secularism to contain the growth of both Hindu nationalism and Islamic, Jewish and Christian fundamentalism in recent years?both in India and elsewhere in the world?only a few seem to have the courage to look beyond it. ....

Nayar, whom I have given company in many battles?including some he would call secular?has got me entirely wrong. Actually, my criticism of secularism is an aggressive reaffirmation of these proto-Gandhian traditions and a search for post-secular forms of politics more in touch with the needs of a democratic polity in South Asia. "

"The essay by Ashis Nandy, A Billion Gandhis (June 21), demonstrates once more that this celebrated Indian psychologist and maverick thinker is exactly as dazzlingly clever as he is tiresomely repetitive and profoundly ill-informed"

"Why is secularism at once a serious responsibility, a crucial ideal, and, not infrequently, a hollow piety among our middle classes? It?s because our middle classes, after Independence, did not emphasize the need for transparency and accountability in its own public and private practices, and the importance of equality as a realizable ideal, as much as it has emphasized secularism; it?s when those who speak of secularism are also seen to benefit from, and perpetuate, their own advantages as members of an educated elite that it ? secularism ? begins to sound like a hollow moral dogma.

Our educated elite may, at least in substantial part, be secular, but it is also deeply hierarchical, both in its internal composition and in relation to those who don?t belong to it. You cannot blame the waning of secularism on the fanatic alone ? it cannot flourish in a climate that has been so increasingly inimical to egalitarian impulses, a climate in which the "enlightened" classes are so reluctant to acknowledge their own complicity in pursuing a path of self-promotion and self-interest through nepotism and compromise."