Editorial Note, Sep-Oct, 2023

In the lead article in this issue titled ‘The Constitutionality and Rationality of the Secular Imperative’, Rahul Govind defends the constitutional value of secularism against academic and political critiques which contend either that secularism has no roots in the Indian experience and amounts to an alien– Western imposition, or any value it has already exists as an Indic cultural quality that therefore requires no institutional enforcement. The article does so by historically grounding it in the struggles during the national movement against religiously sanctioned forms of caste discrimination: struggles which included temple entry legislation. While early Supreme Court jurisprudence was concerned with defending such forms of State regulation in the sphere of religion, later, in the Ramjanmabhoomi movement for the restoration of a Ram temple, it was formulated as a national non-discriminatory heritage – though the religious element was undeniable. S.R. Bommai and its understanding of secularism as part of the ‘basic structure’ and thereby essential to protect even against forms of democratic majoritarianism and electoral mobilisation is interpreted as providing for a constitutional understanding of secularism and the need for its political enforcement at particular political junctures.