Platform Sessions II

“Is secularism the solution to communal conflict in India?”

In the last six decades, whenever India faced violent conflict between Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs, intellectuals and politicians have called for more secularism. The liberal secular state has been presented as the neutral arbiter needed to control the communal strife between the religious communities. Secularists have theorized “communalism” as the use of religion for political purposes or secular reasons, while “secularism” as the separation of politics and religion is its antidote.

More and more thinkers are questioning this account. Ashis Nandy and T.N. Madan pointed out from the 1980s onwards that the implementation of secularism in India appears to have led to the rise of communal conflict, rather than countering it. More recently, a group of scholars has joined them in the argument that the political theory of secularism is derived from the theologies of the Protestant Reformation. There is nothing neutral about the liberal secular state, they argue. Rather, this political model provides a normative theological straitjacket that transforms the relations between communities in the Indian society into religious conflict.

The Platform Sessions will consist of a one-on-one debate between representatives of these two positions. One participant will defend the affirmative answer to its central question: “Yes, secularism is the solution to communal conflict in India.” The other participant will argue for the opposite case. Both participants will have the opportunity to select a fellow advocate of their position, who can be requested to take over the task of developing a particular argument or countering an argument of the opponent, in the midst of the debate.

Speakers:

 Debate:

The debate will be held according to the principles of reasonable discussion or rational dialogue. These have been conveniently summarised in the “ten commandments” of reasonable discussion by the pragma-dialectical school of argumentation theory:

(1) Parties must not prevent each other from advancing standpoints or from casting doubts on standpoints.
(2) A party that advances a standpoint is obliged to defend it if asked by the other party to do so.
(3) A party’s attack on a standpoint must relate to the standpoint that has indeed been advanced by the other party.
(4) A party may defend a standpoint only by advancing argumentation relating to that standpoint.
(5) A party may not disown a premise that has been left implicit by that party or falsely present something as a premise that has been left unexpressed by the other party.
(6) A party may not falsely present a premise as an accepted starting point nor deny a premise representing an accepted starting point.
(7) A party may not regard a standpoint as conclusively defended if the defence does not take place by means of an appropriate argumentation scheme that is correctly applied.
 (8) A party may only use arguments in its argumentation that are logically valid or capable of being validated by making explicit one or more unexpressed premises.
 (9) A failed defence of a standpoint must result in the party that put forward the standpoint retracting it and a conclusive defence of the standpoint must result in the other party retracting its doubt about the standpoint.
(10) A party may not use formulations that are insufficiently clear or confusingly ambiguous and a party must interpret the other party’s formulations as carefully and accurately as possible.

(F. van Eemeren et al. Fundamentals of Argumentation Theory: A Handbook of Historical Backgrounds and Contemporary Developments (New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1996), 283-284.)