This article is a short introduction to Professor Awadh Kishore Saran’s work On the Theories of Secularism and Modernization. More than a plain book review, this is more of a dialogue with some of Saran’s propositions from a few decades ago on this topic, which is of contemporary relevance. The book contains Saran’s lectures delivered on these topics across Harvard University’s Divinity School, the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies-Shimla, Smith College, and Northampton between 1966 and 1972.

The book begins with the following quote from the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein:

Tradition is not something a man can learn; not a thread he picks up when he feels like it; any more than a man can choose his own ancestors. Someone lacking a tradition who would like to have one is like a man unhappily in love.

This is a quote with a profound meaning and deep relevance to our times today. It is interesting to note how this perspective on tradition can be interpreted differently by different faiths. From times immemorial until the colonial era, Hinduism (Sanatana Dharma/Hindu Dharma) operated on these lines. It wasn’t architected in the same way as the Abrahamic religions, namely Christianity and Islam, which have a certain missionary or proselytising traits in them that are absent in the same form in Hinduism. While Hinduism did spread to various lands over time, the manner and nature of this spread were quite different from that of other religions. Proselytizing fury isn’t something that Hinduism has ever been tagged with. In that context, one can say that Hinduism was a “closed” religion for the longest time, i.e., one had to be born into it. Not ignoring sporadic attempts to convert someone back to Hinduism in the past and a more recent “Ghar wapsi” drive, it is sufficient to say that Hinduism as a tradition is something that fits well into the Wittgenstein quote above.

This context is especially important as we proceed into this article, attempting to comprehend the interplay of various forces such as secularism (secularisation), modernity (modernisation), Christianity, Islam, Marxism, and Hinduism, beginning with the colonial era in India.

A cursory excursion into the origins of secularism in Europe might be in order.

From the above-mentioned book by Saran:

The cultivation of natural science and the consequent development of technology were explicitly recommended as a solution to the problem of theological polemics and a cure for religious separatism and even persecution in Europe.

This recommendation has had a far-reaching implication: though science and technology were not to replace religion or theology and metaphysics, scientific studies were certainly to be independently pursued. This was bound to radically upset the traditional hierarchy of knowledge and ultimately end up in the complete autonomy of natural, pragmatically oriented science. And it is this autonomy that is the source and theoretical foundation of secularism. The secularization process that thus started eventually became a rival to religion itself. It is interesting to see how this came about, for it is here that we may discover an important difference between the Western and the Indian context of secularism.

We must pay special attention to the fact that this clash between science and religion is almost absent in the context of Hinduism. This is a crucial distinction between the emergence of secularism in Christian Europe and its applicability in the Indian context in the same form.

Most contemporary Indian discourse on secularism does not go back as far as this to understand the schism between religion and science as it emerged in Europe. We tend to politicise this by framing it as a conflict between dominant and minority religions. However, understanding the historical context is fundamental if we are to better understand the problems that we face today.

It is also worth noting that religious plurality (the presence of a diverse range of sects or traditions) was prevalent in both India’s pre-Islamic and post-Islamic periods. Secularism in the European fashion was not required for conflict resolution among these assorted religions/sects. In the Indian culture, solutions were always sought within the religious framework rather than outside of it.

The difference in how creation is understood in the Judeo-Christian worldview and the Hindu worldview has repercussions for the difference in context between how secularism as a force emerged within Christianity and how it was later superimposed onto Hinduism. According to Saran, a history-centred orientation is essential for secularisation. This historical analysis is relevant to this discussion.

…Judaism and, later, Christianity, being radically different from the prevailing world-view, had to settle their account, so to say, with the people and the world around them: from the very beginning, they had, as religions, to participate in the making of history. This was not the case with Hinduism, which, as a religion, does not have a specific beginning and certainly no founder. Accordingly, as a religion, Hinduism does not have to participate in History.

That the beginnings of the discipline of history as we know it today had a specific religious context is a fact that continues to be ignored in our contemporary discourse.

Citing the works of scholars like van Leeuwen and Toynbee, Saran further elaborates on the need to understand the development of modern experimental science and technology and its relationship to the rise of secularism. According to van Leeuwen, the Judeo-Christian tradition rejects the mythical worldview in which “man, the world and the gods constitute a total reality, self-existent and self-sufficient, without Creator, God or history”.

Unfortunately, many Hindus today see their religious views about gods and theories about creation through the lens of the Christian worldview. The works of such scholars are significant in that context, and thinking Hindus need to understand this better. van Leeuwen also writes about the fact that, starting with the Old Testament, man is given a superior role in relation to the rest of the creation, and that this opens the way for the conquest of nature.

Again, this separation of man-nature and the ideas of the conquest of nature are today taken for granted by many Hindus, and they tend to re-imagine their religion in this mould. This idea of the conquest of nature has profound implications to the questions surrounding the ecological crisis as well. For a detailed take on this refer to Lynn White Jr’s classic writing The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis.

Saran also writes about how, despite some similarities concerning the creation myth, there is no Islamic theory of secularization, nor did modern science and technology emerge within Islamic civilization. Saran cites WC Smith’s work, Islam in Modern History, in this regard. It is here that our attention is again drawn to the two distinct traditions within Christianity, which have never quite integrated.

…one from Greece and Rome and another from Palestine. Throughout, these two have existed and developed side by side: sometimes in conflict, sometimes in uneasy tension, sometimes in harmony, but never fused. Though they have influenced each other profoundly, they have remained distinct.

It follows from this analysis that the origin of modern secularism should be traced to the separation of spheres between Caesar and God which is Graeco-Roman, and not to the Christian theory of creation; in Islam this seperation did not take place until very late and then, too, not really from within Islamic theology.

These are important ideas for Hindus to understand in contemporary times, as we are very ill-educated on the history of Christianity and the history of Europe. That is a topic that we don’t pay enough attention to as we don’t critically engage with a lot of the “received” knowledge that has been a part of our education curriculum for a few generations now. This Caesar-God separation has no parallel in the Hindu worldview or in the Islamic worldview for that matter, as explained above. Hence, both these faiths continue to struggle with the friction between their religious life and secularised life. This friction continues to show up in many walks of life to this day in India.

Discussing further on this topic, Saran proposes three concepts in terms of which secularism can be understood: contemporaneity, co-existence, and autonomy.

Per the first concept of contemporaneity we see the emergence of the separation of the secular and the sacred. To be secular would mean to be concerned with one’s age or time, and by extension, it will stand for interest and involvement in this-worldly affairs. This secularism will be contradistinguished from non-temporal, eternal, supermundane or otherworldly interests and affairs. Hence “secular” has often been opposed to the religious or the sacred, having, from this point of view, mainly a negative value.

This can also be understood in how the term secularism is translated in various Indian languages to mean “aihikavad”- concerning aihika plane, i.e., this-worldly or “loukikavad,” which carries a similar meaning.

The second perspective of co-existence comes from the process by which the nature and sphere of politics and education are separated from those of religion and defined and delimited in relation to them. Each sphere can then function freely without interference from the other. Basic to this whole approach are two ideas Saran writes: “one, that religion can be effectively isolated from all other spheres of social life; and two, that religion is a wholly private affair of the individual.”

This perspective is fairly familiar to a lot of modern Hindus. This separation of the religious sphere and the secular sphere has been a work in progress in Independent India. The process that began with the colonial era continues to operate to this day. Although, as Saran later elaborates in his book, this separation is very difficult to imagine in both Hinduism and Islam. Both the ideas of isolating religion from politics and education and relegating it to the private sphere aren’t compatible with Hinduism as it existed through the ages. This also explains some of the continued conflicts we see to this day on this matter in India.

However, elaborating on the third concept of autonomy is where Saran particularly excels in this book. This is a perspective on secularism and secularisation that should concern all Hindus. This is indeed the direction towards which we seem to be accelerating from the decades of the 1960s and 70s when Saran first wrote this to where we are today as Hindus in India.

This use of secularism, Saran says, “clearly involves the rejection of the sacred, mythological, transcendent worldview and the hierarchical social system and substitutes for it the promise of a fully scientific, humanistic, empirical, relativistic, immanentistic, evolutionary world-view and an open, equalitarian social system.”

The full details and import of the idea of hierarchy with respect to the “sacred” social system can be debated and contested. So too the meaning of the equalitarian social system can be contested, i.e., the vast gap between theory and practice. However, broadly speaking, what Saran captures is the real expanse of secularism as a concept in our times today. A lot of us Hindus today are very disconnected from the transcendental, mythological, and sacred aspects of our religion, primarily because of the secular education we have received over the years. Due to this, we don’t even realise what we are missing and cannot imagine that an alternative formulation of life is possible where the sacred and transcendent anchor us and all else flows from that fount.

Elaborating further on this, Saran says the following:

On this view of secularism, the ultimate basis of all authority is historical and rational, not transcendent, divine and mystical. It proclaims the autonomy and centrality of Man (Homo faber, not Homo religiosus).

As defined in the wiki, “homo faber” stands for “the concept that human beings are able to control their fate and their environment as a result of the use of tools.” The phrase “homo religiosus,” on the contrary, refers to the idea that human existence is inherently religious. This transformation is quite evident in most Hindus today.

These lines by Saran on Marxism and Secularism also need particular attention:

In modern times the most systematic, thoroughgoing and powerful formulation of secularism in this sense is to be found in Marx. All modern philosophy that is not grounded on transcendent metaphysics or Revelation has a fundamental kinship with Marx.

This is a very profound interpretation of secularism that needs introspection from a lot of Hindus who have blindly and uncritically embraced this concept today without understanding its implications. The third concept above, of giving primacy to the autonomy of man and rejecting everything sacred, will eventually become the fundamental meaning of secularism, Saran cautions. This is because what starts with a religious (sacred)-secular separation slowly leads into a ceding of territory, i.e., ceding politics and education to secularism, and this will eventually have to accept the third and final interpretation, which is that of autonomy. One could paraphrase it to indicate a state of utter godlessness. A total loss of a sacred anchor.

It is in this context that Saran begins an elaboration on how this complicated concept of secularism came along with the colonisers in the independence era into an India that was already struggling hard with the clash of religions, i.e., Hinduism and Islam. In the independence era, India thus saw the interplay of many forces like anglicization, westernisation, nationalism, and secularisation.

The nationalist movement is, by its very nature, a secular process: outside of a secular context, nationalism has no meaning, says Saran. He says that Hindu nationalism, strictly speaking, is a contradiction in terms. This is another concept that is understudied and ill-appreciated by Hindus. We don’t know enough about the history of the emergence and context of concepts like nationalism and nation-states. It is not part of our popular cultural consciousness, and the implications of these concepts on our religious lives are underappreciated.

In modern Western theory, the state represents the will of the people; the people are sovereign. This is a common principle accepted by both the liberal and Marxist schools. Saran writes: The concept of a nation and nation-state emerged together with this notion. He refers to Marcel Mauss’s definition of nation that is reproduced below.

We call a nation a society materially and morally integrated, having a stable, permanent central power and determined boundaries, and where there is a relative moral, mental and cultural unity between the inhabitants who adhere consciously to the State and by its laws.

Elaborating further, Saran says that it is implicit here that “the basis of the unity and cohesion of the nation should not be religion; it is, however, to be noted that, on analysis, this crucial exclusion is normative and not empirical.”

This is a very profound point. What is it that unites us as Indians? What is the glue that ties us together as a people? These are questions that need some introspection. The struggle to find an irreligious “glue” that can keep overtly religious people united is evident to this day. It is here that a lot of Hindus today, who say “constitutional patriotism” is the secular irreligious glue that unites us all as a nation, miss the nuance. The religious and cultural life of Hindus is all-encompassing; a lot of what happens there is beyond the scope of the constitution as a book.

In contrast, in the traditional Indian theory, the state does not represent the people and their will but Dharma; the king rules over territory and people in the name of Dharma. This theory rules out not only the modern Western concept of a nation-state but also that of a secular state, except in the sense of political catholicism and tolerance, Saran says.

Furthermore, Saran says the below:

One important reason for the rise and the continued strength of the anomalous concept of Hindu nationalism is to be found in the fact that the Indian leaders superimposed the Western concept of nationalism on the traditional Indian theory of State and Government: in other words, one finds both the Hindus and Muslims adopting the theory of nationalism without at the same time being prepared for the secularism which it implies and to which it must lead.

That nationalism in the Western sense naturally implies secularism is not understood by many. It is a struggle to this day in our country.

In the west, a process of secularization had already been going on; the rise of nationalism was a culmination of certain prior historical processes, which included the religious history of Europe. In India, the idea has been the result of Western dominance, rather than a growth; here it interacts with a different political and religious history.

Amidst all the talk about decolonization in our times, it is important to understand the colonial context of some of these constructs and then attempt to synthesise them within the Indian mould if we are to have long-lasting peace and stability in our society.

After independence, India chose to abandon Gandhi’s vision of freedom and reject his philosophy in all its economic and political aspects, Saran writes. He also writes at length on various facets of Gandhian ideology, which is beyond the scope of the current essay here.

Nehru’s vision of a future India needed modernization. Hence, Saran says, modernization may be said to be the characteristic form of secularism in Independent India just as it was Nationalism in British India. This means that just like nationalism united Indians of various hues and colours during British colonialism, the rallying cry of modernization was to unite Indians post Independence. At least, that was the hope.

It is interesting to note that this process of modernization that shaped up in Independent India didn’t explicitly demand the rejection or westernisation of the Hindu social system as a whole, nor was religion rejected or frontally opposed, as Saran says. The only explicit message was that modernization necessitates “reform” of Hindu society rather than a rejection of its Hinduness. Unlike in the imperial state, social reform thus became not optional but an obligatory task of the Indian state, Saran says.

This is an important distinction since “reform” of Hindu religion has become an obligatory task of the Indian state post-independence, unlike in the past.

For, in a program of centrally planned socio-economic change or revolution, the state becomes the chief agent of change, and hence socio-religious change becomes its unavoidable and major responsibility.

It is in this spirit of the state considering religious reform as its obligation that one needs to see the development of the Hindu code bill. It is now common knowledge that as a part of these efforts to impose a uniform civil code, only the personal law of the Hindus was changed or reformed, and the Muslim personal law was not touched.

In this context, Saran says “there is a tension between the two meanings of secularism—one in terms of religious neutrality, freedom, and toleration, and the other in terms of the autonomy of man. Modernization involves the latter meaning, and this conflicts with the former one, and also implicitly with the theory that Indian secularism is not religious…The modernising developmental function of the Indian state is here clearly in conflict with the religious neutrality ideology of the same state.”

This aspect of secularisation and modernization and its antagonistic relationship with religion is vastly underestimated to this day by us. This is primarily because the Hindu religion is social, personal, and political at the same time. It is all-encompassing and seeps deep into all aspects of the individual’s life. So, the modernization ambitions of the state would lead it to a path of crisscrossing with the religious life of the citizens. It is only those who have a very diluted understanding of Hinduism that cannot see this inherent contradiction between being a Hindu and being a part of a state that has modernization and secularization as its goals.

Separation of religious and political spheres is also not as easy in the Indian context. That demarcation will already be un-Hindu and also un-Islamic for that matter, Saran says.

Elaborating further Saran also says this:

The fact is that the idea of a planned socio-economic system based on humanistic values is the idea of a total system: it is irreconcilable with any other total system, like Hinduism or Islam. Infact, if it at all coexists with any other value-system, it could be only in a superordinate mode. The present practices and trends in India, both on the part of the state and the majority of intellectuals, can make sense only if secularism in the sense of the autonomy of Man ( involving a rejection of Transcendental Reality) has already been accepted.

This is another deep insight from Saran. To this day, a lot of us Hindus don’t quite understand the import of this. A lot of us don’t understand that Hinduism is a total system in the first place. Neither do we understand that the socio-economic system envisioned as a part of modernization is also a total system. Ever since this process got kickstarted in independent India, we are in a situation of death by a thousand cuts with regard to Hinduism. It almost appears like we have embraced the socio-economic system that demands a rejection of transcendental reality yet somehow want to retain our Hinduness without seeing the contradictions and ironies in this process.

Saran elaborates on this:

The idea of synthesis with and preservation of Indian values is always maintained. In doing this we are making a grave error. For, this synthesis syndrome induces in us a wholly false sense of immunity to the serious consequences of a modern, technologically oriented society and an absolutely secular world-view and prevents us from realizing that instead of advancing to a definite goal, we may be just drifting; instead of planning our way, we are only trying to muddle through.

The synthesis syndrome continues to plague us to this day. We have fallen too much in love with our secular lives, not realising the bargain here is what we stand to lose in our religious life. Starting, of course, with the assumption that they can well be separated in the Hindu context. Elsewhere in his works, Saran refers to this synthesis syndrome as the “Nilakanta syndrome”. The assumption that Hindus have is that Sanatana Dharma can absorb and synthesise anything and everything, just like how Lord Shiva consumed poison and transformed himself into a Nilakanta. The prevailing assumption to this day is that we can somehow synthesise the impulses of secularisation and, at the same time, hold onto religious life. The former involves a rejection of transcendental reality, and the latter demands subservience to it. It is impossible to synthesise them both beyond a point.

Writing in the late 60s, Saran remarks thus:

It is surprising that not only has this belief in the synthesis ideology not been carefully examined, but even the following obvious but far-reaching ambiguity has been rarely noticed: when the official and popular belief that a fully modernized India will yet preserve its essential traditional values is repeated, it even does not say which traditional values are meant by this assumption – the Hindu or the Islamic. For, if it is one or the other, will this not be at odds with the religious neutrality of the Indian state?

The question of which traditional values will be preserved by a modernised India is quickly becoming obsolete, five to six decades after Saran first posed it. In our times now, most Hindus seem to take the line that their tradition is always open to reform and they have already reformed themselves and will continue to do so as and when the need arises. Hence, there are no “essential” traditional values that Hindus today cling to except that of reform. Reformism is our only continuing tradition today. Everything else can be an eligible candidate on the chopping block. But reform in itself can’t be a “value” worth preserving. Reform needs a living tradition to tinker with, and a lot of us Hindus do not have any serious conception of what this living tradition is or should be in our times today. In this state of confusion, we may only cede more territory in our lives to the modernization juggernaut, not understanding the implications of this act on the practising aspects of our tradition.

No discussion of modernization is complete without a discussion of science and technology. Saran does deal with that topic in some detail in his book. The popular assumption with which we conduct our lives today is that the problem of undesirable and unanticipated and unintended effects of technology can be solved by further technology. Saran says that this again is self-inconsistent, for the remedial technology is bound to have its unintended effects, and hence technology can only lengthen and strengthen the chain.

This is another topic where a Hindu perspective is thoroughly lacking in our time. We have resigned to the fact that Hinduism has nothing to offer about understanding the implications of any kind of new technology, i.e., both during its conception and after adoption.

Saran says:

The secular world-view depends on absolutization of human freedom. If human freedom is absolutized, man has no ground for his responsibility.

His creativity has no controlling principle and his relation to consequences of his freedom can be only that of indifference.

Even if we disregard contentious aspects of Dharma (such as Varnashrama Dharma), what is the basis for human responsibility today in the Hindu context? This is a question that each of us should consider. As we moved away from being a duty-based society to a rights-based society, we also lost this Dharmic anchor or controlling principle. Our lives, hence, are now a lot more irreligious and anti-religious than most of our ancestors. Dharma and Karma make people conscious of the consequences of their actions. Today, the freedom-based discourse has mainstreamed this idea that one can do whatever one wants so long as the said act is not illegal and lands one in jail. This is an idea that is very different from our ancestral moorings, particularly so when the law that governs us today is also secular, i.e., lacks any appreciation for anything transcendental.

On the other hand, if human freedom is not absolutized, then there must be a higher suprahuman controlling principle and this will be the ground of his responsibility, not only in relating man to the consequences of his freedom, but more importantly in controlling the exercise of his creativity.

These are two very different ways of conducting our lives. More than the effect of the suprahuman principle on consequences, its effect on controlling the exercise of creativity is more pertinent to our times. From the most elaborate (so-called) Brahminical rituals to the most intricate material works of art and craft, everything was religion in India. Dharma controlled the exercise of creativity, and the Dharmic mind was always mindful of consequences. This consciousness and acknowledgement of the need for a higher suprahuman principle in contemporary times would then flip our world altogether. That world would be very different from our world today if one acknowledges that this controlling principle (i.e., Dharma) is indeed missing in our lives today.

From this point of view, the current axiom that science and technological progress must be taken as given and sovereign, has to be rejected. In other words, to see this is to see that it is not man’s spirit which has to change and adapt itself to contemporary human creations. It is human technology and creation that have to be changed in response to human spirit.

This is a tough bullet to bite for most people. To understand this, the reader needs to go back and look at the origins of secularism in Christian Europe, cited at the start of this piece, and the religion-science schism that followed it up. If we are to acknowledge that this schism is unnatural in the Hindu context and if we are to reimagine this relationship between religion and science, then it is a natural consequence that the pecking order on who is sovereign to whom between technology and human spirit (religious spirit) has to change.

Saran then says:

Two objections will perhaps be raised against our arguments: one specific, the other general. The specific one is that India’s secularism as expressed in the process and procedures of planning and modernization is simply in terms of basic needs – hunger, clothing, shelter etc. – and in that context all the preceding discussion is inhumanly irrelevant.The general objection follows from this and takes the form of a question: What is the alternative? Is there a non-secular, religious or spiritual way of solving India’s poverty?

This is a fair question to ask. One can take inspiration from scholars like Dharampal here, who have demonstrated with factual evidence that our pre-Colonial past was not that of penury, backwardness, and technological primitivism. The answer to the poverty problem can’t be to divorce religion from life and embrace secular modernisation. We know how this is shaping up in our time now. This question is particularly relevant in the context of the ecological costs of the current development model. A re-imagination of who we are through a lens other than the colonizer’s is long overdue, as are renewed efforts to forge a new future for us.

For the affluent society, the question is this: Can we turn the clock back? Is there any alternative to more science and technology in dealing with the problems of an advanced technological society.

From the time Saran first asked this question to now, we have had pockets of affluent society emerge within India as well. So this is a common refrain one hears when one partakes in this journey of getting into the roots of the secularisation (and modernisation) process and the challenges facing us as Hindus.

Saran then responds to these objections:

The answer to the first objection is that India’s official solution is conceived in long-range terms. It could not be otherwise.The needs are immediate, stark and unavoidable, but they are also persistent and chronic and cannot but demand a long-term solution. And secondly, even though the immediate needs are compelling, they are not sovereign and ultimate; and even in a short-range solution, religious, moral and philosophical questions will be involved.

That our needs, such as poverty eradication and improved living standards, are chronic and require long-term thinking is lost on us as we scramble to play catch-up using a playbook based on western principles that are far removed from the Hindu locus and reality. We run away from religious, moral, and philosophical questions because either the answers take the time or because the questions make us too uncomfortable with the status quo and throw us into existential dilemmas that we are not prepared to grapple with.

And this leads us to the second objection. The force of this question needs to be carefully examined. If this is a rhetorical question, suggesting, in effect, that there is no such alternative and hence what is going on is good and desirable, then the argument is fallacious, particularly because in the religious and spiritual sphere which is one of the dialectic – and not of deduction and induction – the argument by reductio and absurdum does not hold.

We need to first spend time understanding the fundamentals of the religious and spiritual sphere. Many of us Hindus today have swayed too far away from our religious foundations and do not have clarity on some of the foundational principles of our religion. Thanks to state-sponsored godless secular education that is now seven to eight decades old. Quite a few generations of Indians have been brought up in this mould now. So, even to prepare ourselves to answer these questions with a religious and spiritual anchor, we may need a few years of grounding and intense training. This is indeed an uphill battle. But it is a battle well worth it if we need to look for long-term sustainable solutions anchored in traditions we can call our own. Particularly so in the context of the looming ecological crisis.

If however, the question represents the desire for a positive form of the negative results, it is valid and important. But then it ceases to be an objection and a question, and it becomes a common obligation and a common quest: a quest for a religious-spiritual response to the ominous forces that loom large today. Adaptation and compromise need not be the only forms of this response: it can take the form of resistance too.

“Common obligation”, “Common quest”- important words.

A religious-spiritual response to the problems that plague us today is much needed. The plea herewith in this article is to make concerned Hindus understand the perils of the path that secularisation is leading us down and to emphasise the need for a course correction. This process of course correction would take time, needless to say. The form of resistance to be taken here is not to be read as a Luddite response to the technological way of life or an in toto rejection of all forms of modern technology. It is a call to reimagine the notion of a good life from first principles anchored in Dharmic traditions and then to reimagine a technological way of life that doesn’t leave us in a quagmire of moral, philosophical, and spiritual dilemmas or ecological crisis. This journey would also assist us in reimagining the relationship between the citizen and the state, as well as the relationship between the state and Hinduism.

Professor AK Saran’s works offer plenty of guidance in this regard. This article is a small representation of about 75–80 pages of the aforementioned work, On the Theories of Secularism and Modernization. Some of his books are available for purchase here. A couple of his articles are available here.

Continued in Part 2