178 Conclusions
favor all religions equally; however, the state's reforming the personal
laws of only the majority community cannot be defended. But the state
does have a duty to protect the cultural diversity and the rights of minority
communities. Such an articulation of diversity is impossible in the unitary
rationalism of the language of rights. The contours of liberal-democratic
theory that define the relation between the state and civil society in terms
of individual rights do not offer any help. Thus the universal form of the
modern nation-state proves to be inadequate for the postcolonial world.^16
So a uniform civil code for all will only create more troubles, rather than a
solution for the problem. Recognizing the reality of separate religion-based
personal laws and the involvement of the state in the affairs of religious
institutions, "equal citizenship stands qualified by the legal recognition of
religious differences," and one has the right to negotiate the status in the
public arena.^17
The secular state could achieve only little through legislation and judi-
cial interventions to bring about reform within minority communities or
tolerance within the majority community. The Aligarh Muslim University
controversy, the Shah Bano case, the Ayodhya crisis, and the Religion Bill
are just a few examples of complete failure.^18 The only option for a minority
protagonist is to engage in a "strategic politics" that is neither integration-
ist nor separatist. On the grounds of autonomy and self-representation,
the protagonist will, on the one hand, resist the assimilationist powers of
governmental technology and its universalist idea of citizenship, and on
the other, struggle to bring about more representative public institutions
and practices within his or her own community.^19
As for the majority community, and even for the minority communities
for that matter, they have to rediscover the role of religion in politics. Gan-
dhi, for one, contended that "my politics and all other activities of mine
are derived from my religion" and that "my religion is ethical religion."^20
Hence Gandhi's religion is not static, obscurantist, and beyond reason but
dynamic, rational, and progressive. If religion is "a constant moral quest,"
as Gandhi wants it to be, it becomes necessary to cut its rigid relationship
off from a particular social and political arrangement and not from social
and political arrangements in general.^21 Gandhi used to describe religions
as "rivers that meet in the same ocean," and that metaphor stressed only
their similarity of the final goal and not the equality or identity in the
essence of the religions. Replacing the attitude of tolerance with equal-
ity since 1930, Gandhi used the metaphor of "branches of the same tree"
to denote the sameness of essence.^22 He wrote, "After a study of those
religions to the extent that it was possible for me, I have come to the con-
clusion that, if it is proper and necessary to discover an underlying unity
among all religions, a master-key is needed. That master-key is that of
truth and non-violence. When I unlock the chest of a religion with this
master-key, I do not find it difficult to discover its likeness with other reli-
gions."^23