Secularism As Misdirection

Nivedita Menon is Professor of Comparative Politics and Political Theory at Jawaharlal Nehru University and author of Seeing Like a Feminist and Recovering Subversion: Feminist Politics beyond the Law.

“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)

• Acknowledgments  xiIntroduction: Thinking Secularism from the Global South  11. State, Religion, and the Bodies of Women  352. Hindu Majoritarianism and the Construction of Religion  913. The Failed Project of Creating Hindus  1264. The Self and Psychoanalysis from the Global South  1985. Capitalism as Secular Science  2616. Insurgent Constitutionalism and Radical Frames of Citizenship  3157. Reshaping Worlds-Beyond the Capitalist Horizon  351Bibliography  389Index  443