Religion, community and development : changing contours of politics and policy in India / editors, Gurpreet Mahajan, Surinder S. Jodhka.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Religion, community and development / Gurpreet Mahajan -- Political communalisation of religions and the crisis of secularism / D.L. Sheth -- The Sachar Committee report and multiculturalism in India : questions of group equality and the public sphere / Amir Ali -- Hindutva's discourse on development / Pralay Kanungo -- Seva, sangathanas and gurus : service and the making of the Hindu nation / Sujata Patel -- Development as liberation : an Indian Christian perspective / Rudolf C. Heredia -- Indian Christians : trajectories of development / Rowena Robinson -- Sikhs today : development, disparity and difference / Surinder S. Jodhka -- Contemporary Muslim situation in India : a long-term view / Javeed Alam -- Between identity and equity : an agenda for affirmative action for Muslims / Tanweer Fazal -- Struggle for the margin or from the margin / Gopal Guru -- Literacy, education and gender gap among socio-religous communities / Ravinder Kaur -- Cultural rights of minorities during constitution-making : a re-reading / Rochana Bajpai -- The Goan Muslim : presence through invisibility / V. SriRanjani.

By making religious community a relevant category for discussing development deficit, the Sachar Committee Report (that was submitted to the Prime Minister of India in 2007) initiated a new political discourse in India. While the liberal secular framework privileged the individual over the community and was more inclined to use the category of class rather than the identity of religion, the Sachar Committee differentiated citizens on the basis of their religious identity. Its conclusions reinforced the necessity of approaching issues of development through the optic of religious community. This volume focuses on this shift in public policy. The articles in this collection examine the nature and implications of this new approach to the Indian social reality. Taking a close look at the findings of the Sachar Committee Report (SCR) they highlight the challenges posed by inter-community comparisons. At another level the articles supplement the debate initiated by the SCR by constructing a profile of religious communities in India so as to factor in their concerns of development into the present discourse and to nuance and modify the simple indicators to which development is often reduced. As most religious communities are themselves engaged in development-related activities the volume also examines some of these initiatives in order to see what development connotes to the members themselves and what receives attention by the community. Students of social sciences and development studies as well as those dealing with issues of marginalization will find this collection an invaluable resource for understanding contemporary India and for undertaking further theoretical and empirical research .