believe in it. A communal mind often leads to a quest for political dominance of one’s own religious community. For those belonging to majority community, this takes the form of majoritarian dominance. For those belonging to the minority community, it can take the form of a desire to form a separate political unit.
Political mobilisation on religious lines is another frequent form of communalism. This involves the use of sacred symbols, religious leaders, emotional appeal and plain fear in order to bring the followers of one religion together in the political arena. In electoral politics, this often involves special appeal to the interests or emotions of voters of one religion in preference to others. Sometimes communalism takes its most ugly form of communal violence, riots and massacre.
India and Pakistan suffered some of the worst communal riots at the time of the Partition. The post-Independence period has also seen large scale communal violence. Secular state Communalism was and continues to be one of the major challenges to democracy in our country. The makers of our Constitution were aware of this challenge.
That is why, they chose the model of a secular state. This choice was reflected in several constitutional provisions that we studied last year: There is no official religion for the Indian state. Unlike the status of Buddhism in Sri Lanka, that of Islam I often crack jokes about people from one religion. Does that make me communal?
in Pakistan and that of Christianity in England, our Constitution does not give a special status to any religion. The Constitution provides to all individuals and communities freedom to profess, practice and propagate any religion, or not to follow any. The Constitution prohibits discrimination on grounds of religion. At the same time, the Constitution allows the state to intervene in the matters of religion in order to ensure equality within religious communities.
For example, it bans untouchability. Understood in this sense, secularism is not just an ideology of some parties or persons. This idea constitutes one of the foundations of our country. Communalism