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Rajeev Bhargava IDRC Photo: tecklesphoto.com

Listen to a excerpt from Bhargava’s talk 

Listen to Bhargava’s entire presentation

Western societies trying to adapt to shifts in their cultural and religious fabrics should look to India and its distinctive approach to secularism, urged Rajeev Bhargava during a public presentation at IDRC’s head office on November 4.

Bhargava, a leading professor of Indian political theory and scholar of multiculturalism and secularism in non-Western societies, delivered his remarks as part of IDRC’s year-long India Lectures series.

“The intensified process of globalization has created a deep religious diversity the like of which many Western countries have never really seen before,” said Bhargava. “This has thrown up issues which they haven’t really confronted, and that makes it even more important that they pay attention to the Indian concept of secularism, which grew out of a response to deep religious diversity under modern conditions.”

Bhargava explained how Western societies such as France and the United States interpret the separation of Church and State, and then compared their models to India’s.

“Secularism is a complex evolving idea. It has no single meaning,” said Bhargava. “Of course, not all meanings are equally valid for every society. Different societies must work out their own distinctive conception of secularism and see which one of them is good for them.”

Bhargava is Senior Fellow and Director at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, a social sciences and humanities research institute in New Delhi. He was educated at University of Delhi and at Oxford University, and has taught at universities around the world, including Harvard, Columbia, and Jawarharlal Nehru. Most recently, he has been head of the political science department at the University of Delhi.

The author of Individualism in Social Science, he is a regular contributor to openDemocracy, a website for debate about international politics and culture. Currently, he is writing a book on secularism. 

The India Lectures series marks the 25th anniversary of the opening of IDRC’s South Asia regional office in New Delhi. The lectures highlight the wealth of eminent thinkers and stimulating ideas emanating from this rising global power. As part of the series, IDRC has also hosted journalist M.J. Akbar, sinologist Alka Acharya, and political analyst Pratap Bhanu Mehta.

IDRC has supported research for development in India since its founding nearly 40 years ago.

The opinions expressed here reflect those of the speaker alone, and not necessarily those of the International Development Research Centre.

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