Some weeks ago, the management committee of the Dargah Khawaja Saheb of Ajmer was dissolved by the Centre. It did this under the provisions of the Dargah Khawaja Saheb Act, 1955, which gives it the requisite authority to do so.

The move has once again brought into focus the role of a secular state in the management and regulation of places of worship. The secular state of India has enacted laws and made rules for the conduct of day-to-day affairs of places of worship. Not just the Central government but state governments have the right to enact laws, whenever required, for regulation of places of worship in their respective states. Recently, for instance, the Left Front government in Kerala decided to set up a tantric university. The state’s minister for temple affairs argued that there was the need for such a university because “spiritual and ritualistic practices in our temples have been deteriorating” and “this is turning people off”.

But all this only means that India is deviating from the essential and basic philosophical and empirical meanings of a secular state. First, the legal involvement of the state in the management of religious affairs obfuscates the distinction between the secular and the sacred. The issue was brought into sharp focus when Rajendra Prasad, the then President of India, wished to participate in the purification rituals of the Somnath temple. Jawaharlal Nehru, as prime minister, had at that point advised the president not to publicly associate himself with the religious ceremonious of a temple because it would be considered a deviation from the principles of secular democracy. But it is not only Prasad but almost every important functionary of the state, including Indira Gandhi when she was prime minister, who has made it a practice to get publicly associated with places of worship.

... contd.