Once upon a time, social scientists treated “secularism” as a benign referent to the absence of theocratic governance. Thanks to a series of critiques and correctives, many of which have come from scholars and experiences in South Asia, secularism is now recognized as a set of ideological constructions in its own right. As a result, the term has been increasingly problematized. Along with the consensus that there is not simply one, but multiple modernities, scholars have recognized that each of modernity’s constitutive components – including secularism – come in a variety of forms. The task now is to understand what the different forms of secularism are, and what they do.
Secularism in Nepal is a particularly rich, yet remarkably understudied, source of information for global discussions related to the proper relationship between religion and politics. This interdisciplinary panel presents the ongoing work of three graduate students, working in the disciplines of legal history, anthropology, and sociology. Together, the panel explores the answers to three distinct, but intimately intertwined questions: How is secular Nepal shaped by the history of ideas about modern, rightsbased states? How do various groups of political actors use the claim that “Buddha was Born in Nepal” both to build a sense of national unity based on religious harmony and to challenge that very same concept? And, finally, what do debates about secularism in Nepal tell us about the way democracy works?