"Communal Polarisation Erodes Governance Accountability, Argues Opinion Piece"
Communal polarisation
the political process of organising citizens primarily along religious identity lines, displacing other civic demands.
Accountability gap
the failure of citizens to demand state performance when communal mobilisation replaces governance as the primary political frame.
India's constitutional framework rests on a distinctive model of secularism. It does not demand a strict separation of religion from public life, as in France. Instead, it guarantees equal respect for all faiths. Article 25 protects freedom of conscience and the right to profess, practise, and propagate religion. Article 26 allows religious denominations to manage their own affairs. Article 15 prohibits discrimination on grounds of religion. Together, these provisions create a framework where religious identity is protected in the private sphere but cannot be used as a criterion of citizenship or governance.
Yet constitutional guarantees alone do not determine political behaviour. As NCERT's analysis of vote-bank politics notes, competitive electoral politics can lead parties to prioritise short-term emotive appeals over long-term governance. When religious or sectarian identity becomes the primary lens through which political competition is organised, substantive issues, road safety, building regulations, healthcare access, women's security, are displaced from the centre of public accountability. This is not a new tension in Indian democracy. The salience of religion as a social identity has historically competed with caste, region, and sect in shaping political mobilisation. What changes across periods is which identity cleavage becomes dominant, and at what cost to governance.
The post-independence political settlement attempted to hold this tension in balance. The Constituent Assembly debates reflect a conscious effort to distinguish between the private sphere of religious belief and the public sphere of equal citizenship. That balance has been tested repeatedly, by communal mobilisation, by personal law controversies, and by debates over the Uniform Civil Code under Article 44 of the Directive Principles of State Policy.
The 80-20 political frame refers to the approximate Hindu-Muslim demographic ratio in India. When political competition is organised primarily around this ratio, it creates a structural incentive for parties to consolidate majority sentiment against a minority, rather than compete on governance delivery. The danger this poses is not only to the minority. It also insulates the majority from demanding accountability for failures that affect them directly: unsafe buildings, broken roads, inadequate public health infrastructure, and violence against women.
This dynamic has a well-documented logic. When citizens are mobilised primarily as members of a religious community rather than as taxpayers or rights-holders, their political demands shift accordingly. Outrage becomes selective and episodic. …
Analyse the salience of 'sect' in Indian society vis-a-vis caste, region and religion.
With reference to the constitutional provisions relating to religion in India, consider the following statements:
1.Article 25 guarantees freedom of conscience and the right to profess, practise, and propagate religion to citizens only.
2.Article 26 protects the right of religious denominations to manage their own religious affairs.
3.Article 15 prohibits discrimination by the state on grounds of religion, among others.
4.Article 44 makes the Uniform Civil Code a justiciable fundamental right.
Which of the statements given above are correct?
Which of the following pairs is/are correctly matched?
1.Article 25 — Freedom of conscience and right to profess, practise and propagate religion
2.Article 26 — Prohibition of discrimination on grounds of religion
3.Article 44 — Uniform Civil Code
4.Article 17 — Abolition of untouchability
Select the correct answer using the code given below.
Consider the following statements regarding India's model of secularism:
1.India follows the French model of strict separation between religion and the state.
2.The Indian Constitution permits the state to intervene within religious communities to ensure social equality.
3.Article 17, which abolishes untouchability, is an example of the state intervening within a religious community in the interest of equality.
Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
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