75 – Secular Lives & Nonreligiosity in South Asia

October 3, 2025
8:30 am
Neue Aula
As the academic study of non-religion progressively moves beyond the western foci that dominated the early days of this dynamic field, South Asia has emerged as a particular locus for the study of non-western forms of secularism, atheism, humanism and rationalism - not only in organised variants but also less organised ones. While secularism and detachment from forces of religion are of course longstanding concerns in the sociology and anthropology of South Asia, earlier scholarship on the region, as elsewhere, frequently invoked secularism as an abstract intellectual doctrine or in terms of its legal-constitutional status: South Asian secularisms have mostly been analysed with the people left out. Newer approaches, however, have sought to move beyond intellectualised debates to access the lived experiences and practical dimensions of secularism and non-religion. Further, South Asian studies of non-religion have formed the basis for conceptual advancements that have informed the study of non-religion more broadly. This panel attempts to be both summative in reflecting on the recent extremely productive literature on non-religion in South Asia and programmatic in identifying emergent scholars as well as themes and instances of the phenomenon that require more detailed analysis at present and in the future. For instance, it seeks contributions on hitherto neglected regions such as Sri Lanka and Nepal and on non-religion and lived secularity among the South Asian diaspora.

Convenors

Prof. Dr. Johannes Quack
Prof. Amelie Blom
Prof. Jacob Copeman

Presentations

Secular Longing: Memory, Identity, and the Politics of Nostalgia in Contemporary India
Srinivasa Prathiksha - Graduate Division of Religion, Emory University, ATLANTA, United States
‘We only exposed a few things’: Rationalist Dissentiments and the Ambivalent State
Quack Johannes - ISEK, UZH, Zurich, Switzerland
Treatise on the Institution of Varna: Masilamony Moodaliar and the Making of Modern Non-religion in Colonial Tamil Nadu
M.G. Barathy - Department of History, Ashoka University, Sonepat, India
ex-Centricity, Ambivalence, Embodiment, and Situational Nonreligiosity in Josh Malihabadi’s Poetry
Kamal Mustafa - Cultural Studies, Linnaeus University, Vaxjo, Sweden
Holidays “in the name of”: Mathethara Calendar and its Everyday Rationality
Gopakumar Meera - School of Divinity, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom
On rationalist-Hindutva conflictuality in Indian Punjab
Copeman Jacob - IDEGA, University of Santiago de Compostela, Santiago de Compostela, Spain
Secular misfits: Trajectories of doubt and dissidence in contemporary Pakistan
Blom Amelie - Sciences Po Lyon & Triangle, Sciences Po Lyon, Lyon, France