Secularism as Misdirection

“Nivedita Menon is the leading feminist political science scholar in the Indian subcontinent.” - Achille Mbembe, author of Brutalism

“This book’s two great strengths are that it places contemporary Indian debates in a comparative perspective with similar debates in the global South while bringing an original perspective on the contentious question of secularism and religion in India, with major implications for debates on caste, women’s property rights, and the rights of tribal communities. Nivedita Menon’s research on prehistory, ancient history, linguistic diversity, law, religious history, and ethnography is truly impressive.” - Partha Chatterjee, author of I Am the People: Reflections on Popular Sovereignty Today

“This remarkable book brings together a wide range of concerns to show how we would assess them differently if we no longer approached them with assumptions grounded in secularist logic. Nivedita Menon argues that once one recognizes secularism as a mode of governance that operates by hiding important dynamics from public scrutiny, it becomes possible to trace the logic of this in political debates about issues as diverse as caste and the environment. Thought-provoking and a pleasure to read.” - Humeira Iqtidar, author of Secularizing Islamists?: Jama’at-e-Islami and Jama’at-ud-Da’wa in Urban Pakistan

"Secularism as Misdirection is a dense, erudite, and complex scholarly attempt to respond to a range of pressing political issues facing contemporary Indian society. In many ways, this book marks an important stage that the secularism debate in India has reached. . . ." - Muhammed Shah Shajahan, Economic & Political Weekly