TY  - BOOK
AU  - Menon, Nivedita
TI  - Secularism as Misdirection: critical thought from the global south
SN  - 9788178246970
PY  - 2024///
CY  - Ranikhet
PB  - Permanent Black
KW  -  Secularism -- Political aspects -- Developing countries
KW  - Secularism -- Developing countries
KW  -  Religion and state -- Developing countries
N2  - In the performance of a magic trick, misdirection draws attention away from the trick to another place which appears more fascinating. This book shows how secularism creates such a misdirection.

Menon argues that secularism stands in as an umbrella term for a range of associated ideas – global science, historical progress, general development, individual freedom, rational choice. Within this grid of meanings linked with secularism, certain features become hypervisible (religion, women) while others are obscured (caste, capitalism, the non-individuated and non-rational self). Secularism, Menon shows, is merely a strategy of rule, being compatible with both democracy and authoritarianism, capitalism and socialism
ER  -