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Sometimes democracy is amazing.  Or rather, living in a democratic secular state with a religiously rich and diverse culture is really amazing.  There is a Ganesh temple next to the play area of our apartment complex, the pace of our neighborhood slowed considerably during Ramadan and we live just down the street from a Catholic church that has absorbed a lot of Hindu practice; last Wednesday was a national holiday and celebration for Independence Day and Monday was a holiday and celebration for Eid.  Moving beyond tolerance to a celebration of its religious and cultural diversity, India is an inspiring experiment in democracy.         

But sometimes democracy is really hard.  Or rather, living in a democratic secular state with a religiously rich and diverse culture is really hard.  As we are currently experiencing here in India, local injustices can quickly become projected onto a particular other and turn to violence, and even more quickly become religiously marked, and often reduced to this religious marking, making it possible for that violence to spread across a nation.  This is not, of course, the only cause of violence, and in this case there is a real economic injustice at play, but this economic injustice has unfortunately disappeared behind religion.  Beyond this loss at the local, with the claimed universality of religion the projected claims of difference, hatred, victimization – all the religious claims that seem to too often lead to violence – also become universalized, spreading well beyond the local instance.  As an outsider it is not easy to follow politics here, but it seems like the temporarily effective response of the state and many non-state actors here in the south has been a neutral secularity, paying little heed to claims of difference, remaining only interested in stopping violence.  This has especially been the case among the Catholic universities and local Islamic communities, who have been very outspoken in their articulations of an inclusive community and their blanket condemnations of violence.  Certainly this secular neutrality will require, at some point, an attempt at social equality if society itself is to remain.  But it is intriguing to see in this instance what appears to be a neutral stance against any violence as a possible precursor to a neutral stance against social inequality and injustice in any form.