US, China, India: Secular States & Regimes of Religious Pluralism

The United States, China and India represent three different types of secular state with very different regimes of regulation of religion and different systems of religious pluralism.  All three countries are characterized by pronounced religious diversity, yet have very different models of ‘religion’ and different constitutional principles of freedom of religion. As post-colonial states, all three have developed their systems in dynamic contraposition with European patterns, while drawing differently upon their pre-colonial histories and heritages in the mutual constitution of the religious and the secular.

José Casanova is Professor of Sociology and Senior Fellow at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs at Georgetown University. He has published works on a broad range of subjects, including religion and globalization, migration and religious pluralism, transnational religions, and sociological theory. His best-known work, Public Religions in the Modern World has been translated into six languages and is forthcoming in Indonesian, Farsi and Chinese. He is the author of Europa’s Angst vor der Religion and Genealogías de la Secularización.

Shail Mayaram is Professor at Centre for the Study of Developing Societies.

Friday, 6 December 2013, 5.30 pm
CSDS Seminar Hall