Breaking down the question

The question asks whether the twin engines of modernity — rising education and economic development — are making Indian society more secular. It rests on the classical assumption that modernisation erodes religion, and invites you to test that assumption against Indian reality rather than accept it.

Secular must be handled carefully, since in the Indian context it carries two meanings. In the Western sociological sense it denotes the declining social significance of religion. In the Indian constitutional sense it denotes equal respect for all religions and the separation of religion from state power. A precise answer distinguishes these and shows that education and development may advance one meaning while leaving the other untouched.

The conceptual foundation is set out in the note on secularization in India.

How to approach it

Take a clear but qualified position. Concede the mechanisms by which education and development can secularise, then marshal the strong Indian evidence that religiosity has persisted and even intensified, and conclude that the relationship is contingent rather than automatic.

  • The case for — rational education, differentiation, and a scientific temper weakening ritual.
  • The case against — religious revival amid prosperity, modern media amplifying faith, and communal mobilisation.
  • A differentiated verdict distinguishing decline of religion from constitutional secularism.

Model answer

The expectation embedded in the question — that education and economic development should make India more secular — flows from the classical secularisation thesis, which holds that rationalisation and differentiation shrink the authority of religion. There is some Indian evidence for it. Modern education spreads a scientific temper that questions superstition, ritual and priestly authority. Economic development pulls people into urban, impersonal, occupationally mixed settings where caste and ritual observance loosen. Institutional differentiation has separated religion from formal governance, law and much of public administration. To this extent modernity does exert a secularising pressure.

Yet the Indian record complicates the thesis decisively. Decades of rising literacy and growing prosperity have not dissolved religiosity; if anything, religious festivals, pilgrimage, godmen, temple-building and televised and now digital devotion have expanded alongside modern infrastructure. The educated urban middle class is often among the most enthusiastic patrons of religious spectacle. Modern media and mobility have amplified faith rather than displaced it. Peter Berger, who once predicted secularisation, later described the modern world as furiously religious, and India illustrates the point.

T. N. Madan argued that secularism as a Western import sits uneasily in a society where religion pervades everyday life, so that modernisation Indianises rather than secularises. M. N. Srinivas showed that mobility itself often takes a religious form through Sanskritisation, in which upwardly mobile groups adopt more, not less, ritual observance. Moreover, development has coincided with sharpened communal and identity politics, so religion has entered the public sphere as a mobilising force rather than retreating from it.

The differentiated conclusion is that education and economic development have not made Indian society more secular in the sense of less religious. What they have produced is greater differentiation — religion separated from many institutions — and a stronger, if still fragile, commitment to the constitutional ideal of equal treatment of faiths. But belief, ritual and religious identity remain vigorous, and are sometimes intensified by the insecurities of rapid change. Secularisation is therefore one possible outcome of modernisation in India, not its inevitable companion.

Examiner's perspective

Examiners use this short question to reward conceptual precision. The single most valuable move is to distinguish the two senses of secular — the decline of religion and constitutional even-handedness — and to show that education and development affect them differently. Citing Madan on the Indian ambivalence towards secularism, Srinivas on Sanskritisation, and Berger's reversal lends authority to the argument.

Weak scripts assume the thesis is obviously true and simply assert that a modern India is becoming secular. Strong scripts test the claim against the visible persistence and revival of religiosity, use concrete Indian evidence, and close with a qualified verdict that religion has been transformed rather than diminished.