Conflict, Secularism, and Toleration

This chapter is organized around a contrast between two views relating to religious diversity and toleration and the differing logics implicit in them. The first is that of M. K. Gandhi, in which religious diversity and toleration was taken to be a given feature of the fluid historical, social, and normative texture of India. It therefore did not take toleration as requiring a special intervention. In contrast, the second takes diversity as given, which necessarily tends toward conflict, and hence toward anarchy and ultimately death. The first takes religious identities and diversity as given; the second is reliant on the functioning of the state, because it has to mediate between the contending claims of identity.