Religious Tolerance in Three Contexts

If you wish to converse with me, Voltaire is believed to have said, then define your terms. His admonition is particularly relevant to us. I would like to add, however, that if he had been a Hindu he might have said: If you wish to talk to me classify your terms. Although the two procedures of defini tion and classification are not mutually exclusive, there seems to be a Hindu epistemological assumption that the more or better you can classify phenomena, the closer you get to the heart of the matter. As a Hindu I am predisposed to succumb to this assump tion, or should I say temptation, and I will. I begin by classifying secularism into three types without falling into the trap of trying to define it: neutral secularism; negative secularism and positive secularism. If one takes the separation of the Church and the State as a basic feature of secularism, then the relationship between the two can take these three forms. The term neutral secularism is used to characterise a