Is Religion Alien To India?

Join us this February for a lecture for a lecture that questions one of the most taken-for-granted assumptions of modern Indian discourse, and opens up a deeper inquiry into religion, secularism, and other categories that shape political life.

About the Lecture

A widespread view exists that ideas like religion are timeless, natural, and deeply rooted in Indian civilization but that secularism is not. But what if Religion itself is not an indigenous category? What if it is a modern construct that entered Indian life relatively late, and with far-reaching consequences?

In this lecture, Rajeev Bhargava invites us to rethink how the category of Religion came to take hold in India. He introduces the idea of religionization: a historical process through which Western notions of religion were gradually adopted, internalised, and institutionalised in the Indian context, particularly from the 19th century onward.

Rather than offering easy answers, the lecture unsettles familiar categories. and asks what is at stake when societies inherit concepts without fully examining their origins.

About the Lecturer

Rajeev Bhargava is one of India’s foremost political theorists. He is the Founder Director and Honorary Fellow of the Parekh Institute of Indian Thought at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), Delhi, and served as Director of CSDS from 2007 to 2014. He is a former Professor of Political Theory at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, and an Honorary Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford.

His work on secularism, multiculturalism, identity politics, and constitutional theory has shaped public debate in India and beyond, often provoking rigorous and necessary disagreement.

PS: Your ticket includes a 500/- coupon, redeemable on F&B at the venue.

About unLecture

unLecture brings experts out of classrooms and into cafés, bars and neighbourhood spaces across Delhi. Created by three friends from St. Stephen’s, Delhi who wanted learning to feel warm, social and alive. unLecture turns an ordinary evening into a conversation you’ll think about long after it ends.