The Role of the State in Shaping Communalism

When we talk about communalism in India, the conversation usually focuses on rioting mobs, hate speech, or political parties exploiting religious sentiment. But there is a quieter, more powerful actor in this story: the state itself. Governments, courts, police forces, and lawmakers do not simply react to communal tension. Through their policies, silences, and compromises, they actively shape how communalism grows or shrinks. Understanding this relationship is essential to grasping why religious division has remained such a stubborn feature of public life despite decades of constitutional commitment to secularism.

What we mean by communalism and the state 🔗

Communalism is not the same as religious diversity or healthy interfaith coexistence. It is a political ideology that treats religious communities as distinct, homogeneous blocks with fundamentally opposing interests. The historian Bipan Chandra, in his influential work on the subject, argued that communalism is essentially a modern political phenomenon rather than an ancient or purely religious one.

The “state” here refers to the entire apparatus of governance: the executive, the legislature, the judiciary, the police, and the bureaucracy. The post-Independence state inherited a deeply entrenched system of communal categorisation from colonial rule. The British policy of “divide and rule” had already institutionalised religious differences through separate electorates and communal representation, culminating in the partition of 1947 along religious lines. The new republic therefore did not start with a blank slate. It started with communal fault lines already drawn into its institutions.

The two faces of state action 🔗

The state can play two opposite roles. On one hand, it can act as a guardian of unity, using law, education, and impartial administration to contain communal forces. On the other hand, it can become a facilitator of division, either by openly favouring one community or, more subtly, by appeasing communal pressure groups to win short-term political advantage. The same government can shift between these roles depending on electoral calculations, the composition of its institutions, and the broader social mood. This is what makes the relationship a paradox: state intervention is both necessary to fight communal discrimination and potentially dangerous when it reinforces communal categories.

Constitutional commitment versus political reality 🔗

On paper, the framers built strong defences against communalism. The Constitution guarantees freedom of religion through Articles 25 to 28, which protect the right to practise and propagate faith without discrimination. The Directive Principles push the state towards fostering a secular environment, and the 42nd Amendment of 1976 formally inserted the word “secular” into the Preamble. The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that secularism forms part of the basic structure of the Constitution, meaning even Parliament cannot abolish it.

Yet the implementation of these safeguards has been uneven. Researchers consistently point out that state institutions have, at various times, exhibited bias during communal tensions. The constitutional ideal of a neutral state holding “principled distance” from all religions is constantly tested by the messy reality of competitive electoral politics, where mobilising voters along religious lines often proves easier than addressing complex governance problems.

When the state compromises: the Shah Bano case 🔗

Perhaps no episode illustrates the state’s tendency to compromise with communal forces better than the Shah Bano affair. In 1978, Shah Bano Begum, a 62-year-old woman from Indore, sought maintenance from her former husband under Section 125 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, a secular provision that applies to all citizens regardless of religion. Her husband argued that under Muslim personal law his obligation ended after the iddat period of roughly three months.

In 1985, a five-judge Constitution Bench led by Chief Justice Y. V. Chandrachud ruled unanimously in her favour. The court held that the secular maintenance provision applied to everyone, and it found no genuine conflict between this and Muslim personal law. For a moment, the judiciary had asserted the primacy of a common civil standard over religious personal law.

The political reversal 🔗

What happened next is the heart of the lesson. The verdict provoked a backlash from conservative sections of the Muslim community, who saw judicial interference in personal law as a threat to religious autonomy. Facing intense pressure from organisations like the All India Muslim Personal Law Board, the Rajiv Gandhi government enacted the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act in 1986. The Act effectively overrode the Supreme Court’s judgment, restricting a husband’s maintenance obligation largely to the iddat period unless both parties agreed otherwise.

This is a textbook example of the state making a compromise with communal forces. Critics from across the spectrum attacked the move. Liberals argued it denied Muslim women the protection available to women of other faiths and prioritised vote-bank politics over women’s rights. Hindu nationalist groups used it to popularise the charge of “pseudo-secularism”, claiming that the state applied different rules to different communities. Significantly, the controversy energised Hindu communal mobilisation and is widely seen as a moment that helped the political opposition gain ground.

When the state fails to protect: the Ram Janmabhoomi issue 🔗

If Shah Bano shows the state appeasing one set of communal demands, the Ram Janmabhoomi dispute shows how state weakness and political mobilisation can produce open communal violence. The conflict centred on the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, a 16th-century mosque that Hindu groups claimed stood on the birthplace of Lord Ram. The dispute simmered for decades, but it intensified sharply when L. K. Advani launched the Rath Yatra from Somnath to Ayodhya in 1990, a march that sparked communal riots along its route.

The crisis peaked on 6 December 1992, when a crowd of about 150,000 activists, mobilised by Hindu nationalist organisations, overwhelmed security forces and demolished the mosque. The demolition triggered some of the worst communal rioting since Partition, with cities like Mumbai, Surat, and Bhopal engulfed in violence and a death toll exceeding 2,000 across the country.

The state’s role in the breakdown 🔗

The state’s failure here operated at several levels. The state government, then headed by Kalyan Singh, had given assurances about protecting the structure, yet security arrangements collapsed and the government resigned afterwards while President’s Rule was imposed. The central government also faced criticism for its handling of the crisis. The Supreme Court later described the demolition as an egregious violation of the rule of law, since it occurred in breach of the court’s own orders.

The episode reshaped Indian politics permanently. Analysts argue that the demolition created a new binary in public life, sharpening the divide between competing visions of secularism and religious nationalism. The land dispute itself dragged on until 2019, when the Supreme Court awarded the site to a trust for the construction of a temple, while ordering alternative land for a mosque. The case demonstrates that when the state cannot or will not enforce neutrality and the rule of law, communal forces can capture the public sphere with devastating consequences.

Why the state behaves the way it does 🔗

If the state is constitutionally committed to neutrality, why does it so often compromise? Several structural factors explain this pattern.

Electoral incentives and vote-bank politics 🔗

The single biggest driver is electoral arithmetic. In a competitive democracy, parties find it tempting to treat religious communities as ready-made vote banks. Appealing to consolidated religious identities can deliver quicker electoral returns than the slow, difficult work of governance and development. This distorts the democratic process, pushing campaigns towards religious appeals rather than issue-based debate.

The composition of state institutions 🔗

State institutions are staffed by people who carry the prejudices of the wider society. Studies of communal violence repeatedly note that the police, the courts, and the administration can display bias in how they act during tensions, sometimes failing to protect minorities or applying the law unevenly. When the very institutions meant to enforce impartiality reflect communal attitudes, the state’s neutrality erodes from within.

Federal variation 🔗

India’s federal structure means there is no single “state” response. Different state governments adopt very different postures, with some pursuing more explicitly majoritarian policies than others. A government in one state may crack down firmly on communal provocation, while another may tolerate or even encourage it. This patchwork makes the national picture inconsistent and unpredictable.

The state as a force for unity 🔗

It would be misleading to present the state purely as a problem. The same machinery that can deepen divisions also offers the most powerful tools to heal them. The judiciary has, at moments, defended secular principles, as seen in the original Shah Bano verdict and later in the striking down of instant triple talaq. Bodies like the National Integration Council were created specifically to combat communalism and promote unity.

The constructive path for the state lies in impartial enforcement of the law, where action against hate speech and violence does not depend on the perpetrator’s religion. It also lies in strengthening the Election Commission’s power to penalise religious appeals in campaigns, in line with the Supreme Court’s 2017 guidelines, and in depoliticising religion so that parties compete on governance rather than identity. Inclusive education that promotes constitutional values is another long-term lever. The lesson of the past decades is that the state’s choices are decisive: communalism rarely succeeds without either the active support or the passive failure of public institutions.

What do you think? When the state intervenes in religious personal law, is it defending equal rights or interfering in matters of faith? And given how often electoral incentives pull governments towards compromise, what institutional reforms could realistically make the state a more reliable guardian of communal harmony rather than an occasional accomplice to division?

References

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demolition_of_the_Babri_Masjid
2. https://www.studyiq.com/articles/indian-secularism/
3. https://www.drishtijudiciary.com/editorial/the-shah-bano-case
4. https://islamiclaw.blog/2016/07/27/the-shah-bano-case-and-addressing-conflicts-in-indias-muslim-family-law/
5. https://anantamias.com/shah-bano-case/
6. https://www.scobserver.in/journal/timeline-key-events-in-the-babri-masjid-ram-mandir-controversy/
7. https://pucl.org/manage-press-stateme/observing-the-babri-masjid-demolition-as-shaurya-diwas-a-serious-criminal-act-rajasthan/
8. https://www.freepressjournal.in/analysis/india-without-secularism-a-confrontational-combative-state
9. https://www.nextias.com/blog/secularism-in-india/