Authored By: Shruti Dwivedi
Dr. D. Y. Patil Law College, Pune
Abstract
This article examines how the principle of secularism shapes public education in India, with specific focus on how religion interacts with schooling policies and practices. It considers the constitutional framework governing religious freedom and education, reviews judicial interpretation, highlights current controversies in school‑contexts, and proposes a refined model of principled neutrality for schools. The key argument is that Indian secularism demands inclusion of religious diversity without privileging or coercing any faith, particularly in the classroom.
Introduction
The classroom, once a symbol of equality and learning, is increasingly a microcosm of India’s larger debate on secularism, whether it means the absence of religion or the equal respect for all faiths. In recent years, schools in India have become focal points for tensions between religious expression and institutional regulation. For instance, controversies around headscarves in government schools, or circulars mandating devotional chants or dietary restrictions, have raised urgent questions about how secularism applies in the classroom. Secularism in India occupies a distinctive constitutional and philosophical space, differing markedly from its Western counterparts. While the French model1 of laïcité seeks an exclusionary separation between religion and the State, and the American model2 prohibits State establishment of religion, the Indian model rooted in what Rajeev Bhargava3terms “principled distance” strives for a context sensitive engagement between religion and State authority. This model reflects the pluralistic ethos embedded in the Preamble, which commits the Republic to be “sovereign, socialist, secular, democratic.” The central normative question is: What does secularism require of public education institutions in India, should it privilege uniform exclusion of religion, or facilitate equal‑respectful accommodation of religious diversity? This question is especially salient given that schools are not only sites of learning, but of socialization and identity‑formation, making the neutrality and inclusiveness of educational practices constitutionally significant.
Constitutional Framework: Secularism and Education
The insertion of the term ‘secular’ into the Preamble through the Forty-second Amendment Act, 1976 did not introduce a new value; rather, it formally articulated what the Constituent Assembly debates and early jurisprudence had already recognized as implicit in the constitutional scheme.4Granville Austin famously described the Indian Constitution as a “seamless web of three strands liberty, equality, and fraternity” within which secularism was not a foreign graft but an indigenous principle ensuring fraternity among diverse communities.5 The constitutional architecture from the outset embodied a non‑religious establishment ethos and religious freedom. 6The dominant doctrine is that the State must treat all religions equally, without favour or discrimination. In the domain of education, secularism assumes tangible importance. Schools are not merely administrative units of the State but foundational institutions for civic identity formation.7 They represent the first site where the constitutional value of tolerance is transmitted. Hence, when the State mandates or prohibits religious symbols, prayers, or dietary codes, it directly tests the boundaries of constitutional secularism.
Articles 25–28 of the Constitution8 provide the primary legal foundation for religion in relation to education. Article 25 guarantees freedom of conscience and the right to “profess, practise and propagate religion” subject to public order, morality and health. Article 26 allows religious denominations to manage their affairs. Article 27 prohibits taxation for promotion of any religion. And Article 28(1) prohibits religious instruction in educational institutions wholly maintained by the State; while Article 28(2) allows religious instruction in institutions administered by the State but established under an endowment requiring it. 9 Article 28 embodies the constitutional codification of secular education. The Supreme Court’s interpretation of Article 28 underscores voluntariness and neutrality rather than strict separation. In Aruna Roy, the Court upheld the “National Curriculum Framework for School Education, 2000,” which included lessons on India’s diverse religions, reasoning that teaching about religions as opposed to religious instruction is consistent with secularism. The Court clarified that a secular State may legitimately encourage value-based learning that draws on moral precepts common across faiths.10
Thus, Article 28 does not impose an atheistic barrier but rather ensures equal exposure without indoctrination. As Upendra Baxi notes, the Article’s true spirit lies in fostering “critical religious literacy,” enabling students to understand faith as a cultural and ethical phenomenon rather than a sectarian imposition.11
Together, these provisions craft a nuanced architecture of secularism in education accommodative rather than exclusionary, pluralist rather than monolithic. The Constitution envisages not a wall but a negotiated boundary between State and religion, designed to protect conscience without permitting proselytization or discrimination. Thus, the State’s role in education must respect individual religious freedom, while also ensuring that institutions wholly maintained by public funds do not become vehicles of doctrinal instruction. The basic‑structure doctrine of the Constitution confirms that secularism is part of the constitutional identity of India and not subject to amendment. 12
Judicial Interpretation: Navigating Freedom and Neutrality
Indian jurisprudence has developed a nuanced balance between (i) individual rights of religious expression and (ii) institutional neutrality in state‑funded education. The landmark decision In Bijoe Emmanuel v State of Kerala13, remains the cornerstone of constitutional protection for religious freedom in educational institutions. In Bijoe Emmanuel v. State of Kerala (1986), the Supreme Court held that three Jehovah’s Witness students who refused to sing the national anthem on religious grounds could not be expelled. The Court emphasised that coercion of religious belief or practice amounted to violation of Article 25 and the right to education under Article 21. Justice O. Chinnappa Reddy’s judgment stressed that secularism in India is not about imposing uniformity but respecting diversity, “Our tradition teaches tolerance; our philosophy preaches tolerance; our Constitution practices tolerance; let us not dilute it.” This articulation established that the State’s duty in education is one of neutrality, not enforcement of ideological conformity. The case remains a guiding precedent in debates over prayer, attire, and symbols in schools.
Although S.R. Bommai v Union of India (1994) 14did not concern education directly, its influence permeates all subsequent secularism cases. The nine-judge Bench held that secularism is part of the Constitution’s basic structure, and that the State must maintain “complete neutrality” toward all religions. The Court’s reasoning, particularly Justice Sawant’s, affirmed that the State can neither identify with nor favour any religion, but it can regulate secular activities associated with religious practice under Article 25(2). This distinction between “religious” and “secular” aspects of religion has had far-reaching consequences in the educational sphere, legitimizing the State’s authority to impose neutrality in publicly funded institutions while safeguarding personal conscience.
The most recent and contentious decision in this line is Aishat Shifa v State of Karnataka (2022)15, commonly known as the Karnataka Hijab Ban case. The petitioners, Muslim girl students challenged a Government Order issued under the Karnataka Education Act, 1983, which prohibited wearing the hijab in classrooms, arguing that it violated their rights under Articles 19(1)(a), 21, and 25. The two-judge Bench of the Supreme Court delivered a split verdict. Justice Hemant Gupta upheld the ban, while Justice Sudhanshu Dhulia struck it down. Justice Gupta reasoned that school uniforms ensure discipline and secular equality, and that wearing the hijab was not an essential religious practice under Islam. Conversely, Justice Dhulia held that the order violated personal autonomy and dignity, observing that “the classroom is a space for education, not exclusion.”
The divergence in judicial reasoning highlights the unresolved conceptual tension in Indian secularism, whether neutrality means non-accommodation (treating all religious expressions alike by restricting them equally) or equal accommodation (allowing expression so long as it does not disrupt public order). Scholars such as Faizan Mustafa argue that the Karnataka High Court and Justice Gupta’s reasoning leaned toward an “exclusionary secularism,” borrowing from the French model rather than India’s pluralist ethos.16
The hijab controversy reflected the tension between institutional uniformity and recognition of individual identity.17 Further, Devika Mittal’s empirical study at Delhi University 18 shows that “secular” schools may still reproduce majoritarian cultural norms. These findings underscore that neutrality in education cannot merely mean absence of religion it must be inclusive of plural identities.
Philosophical and Juristic Perspectives: Secularism, Pluralism, and the Classroom
The philosophical underpinnings of Indian secularism are neither monolithic nor derivative. They emerge from a confluence of Western liberal thought and indigenous pluralist traditions, synthesizing the ideas of equality, tolerance, and moral autonomy within a constitutional framework. This section situates Indian secularism within the larger philosophical discourse, exploring how thinkers such as John Rawls, Amartya Sen and Upendra Baxi contribute to our understanding of the State’s duty in educational and religious matters.
Rawlsian Public Reason and the Idea of Neutral Education
John Rawls’ conception of public reason provides a normative justification for State neutrality in the educational sphere. 19 In Political Liberalism, Rawls argues that in a society marked by “the fact of reasonable pluralism,” political decisions must be justified by reasons all citizens can reasonably endorse, independent of any particular comprehensive doctrine. Schools, as State institutions, therefore serve as spaces for cultivating “reasonable citizenship” rather than religious conformity. From a Rawlsian lens, mandatory recitation of a religious hymn or imposition of dietary restrictions may violate the principle of public reason unless justified on publicly accessible grounds such as health, discipline, or civic unity rather than faith. This does not preclude moral education, but it requires that the content of such education be expressed in terms consistent with “constitutional essentials.”20 The State may teach values like compassion or honesty, but not through sectarian symbols or prayers that presume shared belief. Thus, in the Indian context, Rawls’ framework supports non-coercive pluralism the idea that schools should cultivate civic virtues compatible with a diversity of worldviews.
Amartya Sen: Reasoned Pluralism and the Capability Approach
Amartya Sen’s writings reframe secularism through the lens of reasoned pluralism and capability freedom. In The Argumentative Indian, Sen underscores that India’s civilizational ethos rests on “the freedom to reason about faith,” not the mere coexistence of different religions.21 Secularism, thus, is not State aloofness but State facilitation of reasoned choice among diverse life-views. Within education, Sen’s capability approach implies that true freedom of conscience requires not only formal non-discrimination but also the substantive ability to exercise choice through critical thinking, exposure to diverse ideas, and non-coercive environments.22 A student compelled to recite a religious hymn lacks genuine freedom, as coercion undermines her capability for reflection. Sen’s framework enriches Indian secularism by shifting the focus from negative liberty (freedom from interference) to positive liberty (freedom through empowerment).
Upendra Baxi: The Transformative Constitution and the Pedagogy of Rights
Upendra Baxi advances a transformative reading of constitutional secularism, emphasising its role in the “pedagogy of emancipation.”23 For Baxi, the Constitution is not a static legal document but a living instrument of social transformation, particularly for marginalized groups. In this view, secular education becomes a site of transformation where constitutional values are internalized as lived experience.24 The imposition of a singular religious or cultural norm in schools, therefore, represents not merely administrative excess but a failure of transformative pedagogy. Education, in Baxi’s sense, must cultivate a “constitutional identity” rooted in equality, empathy, and dissent.
Synthesizing these perspectives, the Indian classroom emerges as a microcosm of the Republic, a site where the ideals of justice, liberty, equality, and fraternity are performed daily. Thus, secular education in India should neither mirror the French laïcité of erasure nor the American separationism of distance. It must embody a constitutional pluralism that recognises faith as a fact of life but not a ground for privilege. The task before the State is not to expunge religion from the classroom, but to ensure that no child feels alienated within it.
Conclusion
The classroom in India’s plural society must remain a site of inclusion, rather than imposition. The practice of secularism in public education does not mean the same thing as a banishment of religion. Secularism ensures that no religion is privileged and no student is proscribed. The principle of principled neutrality mediates between respect for belief and constitutional equality, both of which fit within India’s educational ethos and plural democratic identity. India’s experiment with secularism remains simultaneously philosophically robust and practically fraught. The classroom, an ostensibly neutral academy, has become the primary locus of exploration, negotiation, and transmission of the constitutional ideal of secularism to future citizens. Judicial and academic discourse reveal that secularism is neither the doctrine of an absolute separation of church and state, nor is it a doctrine of official endorsement of certain religions, but rather a practice of principled neutrality about religion, and accommodation in context.
Reference(S):
1 Loi du 9 décembre 1905 concernant la séparation des Églises et de l’État (Law on the Separation of the Churches and the State, 1905) (France).
2 US Const amend I.
3 Rajeev Bhargava, Political Secularism: Why It Is Needed and What Can Be Learnt from Its Indian Version (2010) 59(1) Dædalus 82, 88.
4 Constituent Assembly Debates, Vol. VII (6 December 1948).
5 Granville Austin, The Indian Constitution: Cornerstone of a Nation (OUP 1999) 50. 6 Aniruddha Shrivastava, ‘Analysis of the Concept of Secularism in India’, Asian Law & Public Policy Review (2024).
7 Martha C Nussbaum, *Liberty of Conscience: In Defense of America’s Tradition of Religious Equality* (Basic Books 2008) 212.
8 Constitution of India 1950.
9 Geeta Shrivastava & Tulika, ‘Secularism Under Indian Constitution And Judicial Response of Freedom of Religion’, Ilkogretim Online – Elementary Education Online (2021). 10 Aruna Roy v Union of India (2002) 7 SCC 368.
11 Upendra Baxi, ‘Preliminary Notes on Law and Secularism’ (2005) 27(3) South Asia Research 233, 239.
12 S.R. Bommai v Union of India (1994) 3 SCC 1, 239–40.
13 Bijoe Emmanuel v State of Kerala (1986) 3 SCC 615.
14 Ibid.
15 Aishat Shifa v State of Karnataka (2022) 10 SCC 1.
16 Faizan Mustafa, ‘Hijab Judgment and the Idea of Indian Secularism’ (2022) The Hindu, 14 October 2022 (https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/the-hijab-judgment-and-the-idea-of-indian secularism/article66012738.ece)
17 Shreyasi Bhattacharya & Shuvro P. Sarker, ‘Unveiling Secularism: The Hijab Judgment and the Boundaries of Religious Expression in India’, International Journal on Minority and Group Rights (2025).
18 Devika Mittal, ‘India’s Secular Paradox: A Study of a Non‑Religious School in Contemporary India’, ICAS, Delhi University (2021).
19 John Rawls, Political Liberalism (Columbia University Press 1993).
20 John Rawls, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (Erin Kelly ed, Harvard University Press 2001) 27.
21 Amartya Sen, The Argumentative Indian(Penguin 2005) 15.
22 Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom (OUP 1999) 75.
23 Upendra Baxi, The Future of Human Rights (OUP 2008) 119.
24 Upendra Baxi, ‘Preliminary Notes on Transformative Constitutionalism’ (2013) 14 ICL Journal 1, 5.
