Jaishankar on secularism & religion

S Jaishankar was asked if India was becoming a "Hindu majoritarian" country. Here's what he said...

Transcript

00:00For us, secularism doesn't mean being non-religious.

00:03What happened in reality, in politics, we actually got into a sort of a vote-bank politics,

00:12a minoritarian pandemic.

00:30Has India changed from the Nehruvian era?

00:46Absolutely.

00:47Because one of the assumptions of that era, one of the, you know, a thought which very

00:58much guided the thinking of the polity and its projection abroad, was what we in India,

01:07you know, the way we define secularism in India, and for us secularism doesn't mean

01:13being non-religious.

01:14For us, secularism means equal respect to all faiths.

01:21Now, what happened in reality, in politics, was beginning with equal respect for all faiths.

01:29We actually got into a sort of a vote-bank politics, a minoritarian pandemic.

01:37And that, over a period of time, I think, created a backlash.

01:46So, a very powerful word in the Indian political debate is what is called appeasement, which is...

01:54We've got some track record on that too.

01:57I'm speaking here only for myself.

02:01So, the direction in which politics went, I think more and more people started feeling

02:09that, in a way, in the name of being equal, of equality of all religions, in fact, the

02:16biggest religion had to be self-deprecatory and play itself down.

02:22And again, you know, a big part, I think, of that community felt it was not being fair.

02:30So, the changes we have seen, the political changes and the social changes we have seen

02:37in the last years have been partly at an intellectual level a reaction and a political level a reaction.

02:46Do you think tolerance has gone down?

02:48No, I don't think so.

02:49I think, on the contrary, I think people today are less hypocritical about their beliefs,

02:58about their traditions, about their culture.

03:01I would say today, I think you used the word, you said Martin Wolf said, we are less liberal.

03:10And more efficient.

03:11Yeah, that I take as a given.

03:14But I would say we are more Indian.

03:17We are more authentic.

03:19We are not today either currying favour before a global audience or really trying to live

03:29up to some kind of left-wing liberal construct which a lot of Indians felt was not us.