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Secularity (adjective form secular)^[1] is the state of being separate from religion, or not being exclusively allied to any particular religion.

For instance, eating and bathing may be regarded as examples of secular activities, because there may not be anything inherently religious about them. Nevertheless, both eating and bathing are regarded as sacraments in some religious traditions, and therefore would be religious activities in those world views. Saying a prayer derived from religious text or doctrine, worshipping through the context of a religion, and attending a religious school are examples of religious (non-secular) activities. Prayer and meditation are not necessarily non-secular, since the concept of spirituality and higher consciousness are not married solely to any religion but are practiced and arose independently across a continuum of cultures.

Most businesses and corporations, and some governments, are secular organizations. All of the state universities in the United States are secular organizations (especially because of the combined effect of the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution) while some private universities are connected with the Christian or Jewish religions. Among many of these, some prominent examples are Baylor University, Brigham Young University, Boston College, Emory University, the University of Notre Dame, Duquesne University, Texas Christian University, Southern Methodist University, and Yeshiva College.

The public university systems of the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and Japan are also secular, although some government-funded primary and secondary schools may be religiously aligned in some countries.

Etymology[link]

Look up secular in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Secular and secularity derive from the Latin word saecularis meaning of a generation, belonging to an age. The Christian doctrine that God exists outside time led medieval Western culture to use secular to indicate separation from specifically religious affairs and involvement in temporal ones. This meaning has been extended to mean separation from any religion, regardless of whether it has a similar doctrine.

This does not necessarily imply hostility to God or religion, though some use the term this way (see "secularism", below); Martin Luther used to speak of "secular work" as a vocation from God for most Christians^{[citation needed]}

Modern usage[link]

Examples of secular used in this way include:

• Secular authority, which involves legal, police, and military authority, as distinct from clerical authority, or matters under church control.
• Secular clergy in the Roman Catholic Church, who, traditionally, do not live the monastic lives of the regular clergy and are therefore, in a sense, more engaged with the temporal world. For a related Roman Catholic reference, see secular institute.
• Secular education, schools that are not run by churches, synagogues, or other religious organizations.
• Secular states with secular governments that follow civil laws—as distinct from religious authorities like the Islamic Sharia, Catholic Canon law, or Jewish Halakha—and that do not favor or disfavor any particular religion.
• Secular Jewish culture, cultural manifestations of Jewishness that are not specifically religious.
• Secular music, composed for general use, as distinct from sacred music which is composed for church use. Secular sonatas, in the 17th century, were those not composed for church services.
• Secular Organizations for Sobriety, a secular alternative to the Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) organization which is a loosely religious one although nondenominational.
• Secular society refers to aspects of society that are not mosque-, church-, synagogue-, or temple-affiliated.
• Secular spirituality, the pursuit of spirituality without a formal affiliation with a church, or other religious organization, or the pursuit of spirituality specifically in the context of temporal affairs.
• Secular peers, in reference to the Peers of the House of Lords that are not connected to the Church.

Related concepts[link]

A Laïcité parade in Beirut Central District, Lebanon

• Laïcité is a French concept related to the separation of state and religion, sometimes rendered by the English cognate neologism laicity and also translated by the words secularity and secularization. The word laïcité is sometimes characterized as having no exact English equivalent; it is similar to the more moderate definition of secularism, but is not as ambiguous as that word.

• Secularism is an assertion or belief that religious issues should not be the basis of politics, and it is a movement that promotes those ideas (or an ideology) which hold that religion has no place in public life. Secularist organizations are distinguished from merely secular ones by their political advocacy of such positions.

• Laïcisme is the French word that most resembles secularism, especially in the latter's extreme definition, as it is understood by the Catholic Church, which sets laïcisme in opposition to the allegedly far milder concept of laïcité. The correspondent word laicism (also spelled laïcism) is sometimes used in English as a synonym for secularism.

See also[link]

• Separation of church and state
• List of state-established religions
• Anti-clericalism
• Secularism
• Islam and secularism
• Secular Student Alliance

Notes[link]

External links[link]

• Conference: Secularity and Religious Vitality
• Iain Benson:"Notes Towards a (Re)Definition of the 'Secular'", University of British Columbia Law Review, Vol. 33, p. 520, 2000
• Research Project: Multiple Secularities

Tanika Sarkar is a historian of modern India. Professor Sarkar's work focuses on the intersections of religion, gender, and politics in both colonial and postcolonial South Asia, in particular on women and the Hindu Right. She is also one of the pioneers of the approach to viewing the Partition of India in 1947 into the two independent nation-states of India and Pakistan as a result of right-wing Hindu rather than right-wing Islamist politics.^[1]

Education[link]

Tanika Sarkar has a first class degree in B.A in History, from the Presidency College, University of Calcutta, 1972. She has a first class degree in Modern History from the University of Calcutta, 1974 . She received her PhD Degree from the University of Delhi in 1981.

Career[link]

She is presently Professor of History at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She has also taught at the St. Stephen's College, and the Indraprastha College, Delhi University. She has also taught modern Indian History at the University of Chicago.

Publications[link]

Professor Tanika Sarkar has published following Monographs; Bengal 1928-1934: The Politics of Protest, Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1987; A World to Win: A Modern Autobiography, ; Hindu Wife, Hindu Nation: Religion, Community, Cultural Nationalism, . She has also co-authored, along with Basu et al., Khaki Shorts and Saffron Flags: A Critique of Hintutva, ; co-edited, with Urvashi Butalia, Women and the Hindu Right,.

Family[link]

Born to Amal Bhattacharya, legendary professor of English at Presidency College, and Sukumari Bhattacharya, eminent Sanskritist and scholar on early Indian culture, she is married to fellow historian, Sumit Sarkar. ^[2]

References[link]

Also refer[link]

• http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl1815/18150930.htm
• http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl1809/18090880.htm
• "Delhi Historians Group's Publication "Communalization of Education: The History Textbooks Controversy", A report in 2002, New Delhi: Jawaharlal Nehru University, India

Manuchehr Jamali is a dissident Persian philosopher and poet living in the USA. He is best known for his exposition and analysis of the Shahnameh of Ferdowsi and his research about the ancient Iranian mythology. Burgwinkel^[1] has reviewed his works and the developments of his thoughts and philosophical ideas.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Manuchehr Jamali, official website
• Jamali.info: comprehensive site featuring Manuchehr Jamali's latest articles
• Exposition by M. Jamali about Rumi: How Molavi Balkhi's (Rumi) thinking takes its roots in the Iranian culture of female deities
• Das andere Iran: Articles by Manuchehr Jamali in German.

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