Abstract:
Two socio-political phenomena engender the shrinking of civil space in India: (1)
Instead of promoting inclusion and diversity through democratization, the present
political regime, by endorsing authoritarian populism, reversing developmental gains in
human rights, health, education, and welfare, causes democratic decline. (2) The binding
influence of religion on individuals and communities in India.
At this juncture, we attempt to ensure the rights to the freedom of peaceful
assembly, association, and expression by regaining and revitalizing the communicative,
discursive civic space of the Indian public sphere. We aim to explore the possibility of
bringing religious worldviews and civil societies to interface. Then, this article aims to
discuss the modes of realizing the interchange between religions and civil societies.
The Habermasian “linguistification of the sacred” is the fundamental notion from
which our discussion proceeds. We call this liberating process linguistification of the
sacred. Habermas distinguishes between primary linguistification - the transition from
prelinguistic cultic practices to mythical, religious, and metaphysical worldviews and
secondary linguistification - the transition from ‘worldviews’ to the ‘lifeworld’. We
focus on the latter level of linguistification. It operates thus: At the primary level, the
ritual meanings are given linguistic expression in mythical narratives. At the secondary
level, they develop into validity claims associated with regulative speech acts as right/
wrong. However, as Habermas claims, it is not a mere disenchantment and reflexive
dissolution of the sacred meanings; instead, the religious worldviews get transformed
into validity claims. Such a move could, consequently, liberate the democratic civil
society from the inflicted constraints and eventually bring the religious worldviews and
the civil societies to dialogue and expand civic space.
