Between Inequality and Identity

Abstract

Recent attention to the history of constitution-making in India reflects ongoing concerns about the difficulties and limitations of India’s secular, democratic experiment. Scholars assessing India’s secularism have pointed to the failure to separate the state from its involvement in religion from the outset. Through a study of the Constituent Assembly debates, this article suggests that the emphasis on ‘religion’ as the problem for secularism has been a distraction, taking the gaze away from the substantive arguments minorities were making about how their equal citizenship should be guaranteed. It remained unclear what recognition of ‘minority’ status was meant to achieve in postcolonial India and what it signified. In failing to recognise the claims of religious minorities for their equality, the Constituent Assembly reified their position as permanently unequal communities in the newly independent state.