India's post-independence generation of leaders sought to keep
religion at arm's length from politics, regarding religion as a
disruptive force. It was, after all, conflict between Hindus and
Muslims that had led to massive violence and to the partition of
India. These leaders wanted India—unlike Pakistan whose leaders
declared their country to be an Islamic state—to be a secular
state in which all religions were to be given equal place.
India's leaders also interpreted Hinduism as a benign, even
positive, force for democratic development. Hinduism, they
pointed out, is an inclusive, not an exclusive religion. Unlike
Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, it has no conception of
theological orthodoxy, no single text to which all Hindus
subscribe, no single deity whom all must worship, no universally
prescribed rituals whose observance marks one as a believer, and
no single ethical code of conduct. Hinduism is a religion whose
core is mythology, not theology. For Hindus there are no such
categories as heretics and