Privatisation of religion describes the process by which religious belief and practice become a matter of individual choice and domestic life rather than a public authority binding the whole community. Religion does not necessarily disappear; it is relocated — from the constitution of society to the conscience of the person.
How it works
Casanova disaggregates secularisation into three separable propositions: differentiation of secular spheres such as state, economy and science from religious institutions; decline of religious belief and practice; and privatisation. Privatisation is the third, and it concerns location rather than intensity. Berger's earlier account tied it to pluralism: once several faiths compete in the same society, none can supply a taken-for-granted sacred canopy, so religion becomes a preference sustained by voluntary commitment — what he later called the heretical imperative. Legal and institutional arrangements reinforce the shift, as religious law is displaced from public governance and religion becomes protected as personal liberty.
Points of debate
Casanova's central claim is deprivatisation: from the 1980s religious movements re-entered public life across very different societies — liberation theology in Latin America, Catholic mobilisation in Poland, the American religious right, Islamic political movements — not as a reversion to establishment but as participants in civil society making public normative claims. Berger himself substantially revised his position, conceding that the world had not become as secular as expected. Deprivatisation therefore separates the differentiation thesis, which largely holds, from the privatisation thesis, which does not.
Why it matters
India complicates the thesis from the start. Religiosity here is conspicuously public — festivals, processions, pilgrimage, temple economies, personal laws administered by the state, and religious identity as a basis of electoral mobilisation — yet institutional differentiation is real. Madan and Nandy argue that the privatising assumption is itself a Christian and Western trajectory, and that Indian secularism was built not by removing religion from public life but by requiring the state to treat all faiths with equal respect. The Indian pattern thus looks less like an incomplete privatisation than a different arrangement.
For the UPSC answer
Separate the three components of secularisation and show that only privatisation is seriously in dispute — this earns marks that a blanket answer on religion declining will not. Use Casanova for deprivatisation, Berger's revision for candour, and the Indian case, with Madan's critique, to argue that public religiosity coexists with institutional differentiation.
References & further reading
- Casanova, J. (1994). Public Religions in the Modern World. University of Chicago Press.
- Berger, P. (1967). The Sacred Canopy. Doubleday.
- Madan, T. N. (1987). Secularism in Its Place. Journal of Asian Studies.