India is secular in law, but the reality is contested

What the Constitution says

“Secular” was not in the original 1950 Preamble. It was added by the Constitution (Forty-second Amendment) Act, 1976, which substituted “Sovereign Socialist Secular Democratic Republic” for “Sovereign Democratic Republic”; the amendment was enacted on 18 December 1976 and took effect on 3 January 1977. ¹³

The religious-rights provisions are also explicit. Article 25 guarantees freedom of conscience and the right freely to profess, practise, and propagate religion. Article 26 gives religious denominations the right to manage their own affairs in matters of religion. Article 27 bars taxes whose proceeds are specifically used to promote or maintain a particular religion, and Article 28 limits religious instruction in fully state-funded schools. ²

What the Supreme Court has said

The Supreme Court’s own constitution page describes India as a “Sovereign Socialist Secular Democratic Republic” and says the Constitution provides “a secular state that recognizes freedom of conscience and religion.” ⁴

In S.R. Bommai v. Union of India, the Court treated secularism as part of the Constitution’s basic structure. That matters because basic-structure principles cannot be removed by ordinary constitutional amendment. Later Supreme Court materials have repeated that India is secular and that secularism is a core constitutional feature. ⁵

A practical reading follows from those texts: Indian secularism is not a rule that religion must disappear from public life. It is a rule that the state must not establish a religion as the national faith and must protect equal religious liberty, while still retaining some power to regulate the non-religious side of religious institutions. That is an inference from Articles 25 to 28 and the Court’s basic-structure language. ²⁵

Why people still argue about it

India’s Constitution does not impose a hard wall between religion and the state. Article 25(2) expressly allows the state to regulate “economic, financial, political or other secular activity” associated with religious practice and to make laws for social welfare and reform. So Indian secularism has always allowed some state involvement in religious life, especially where the law is trying to reform or regulate institutions rather than endorse a faith. ²

That gap between constitutional promise and lived experience is why the question remains politically charged. Freedom House’s 2025 report says India is formally secular and that freedom of religion is constitutionally guaranteed, but it also says academic freedom has weakened and notes pressure around political and religious issues. USCIRF’s 2026 annual report says religious-freedom conditions in India deteriorated in 2025, and Human Rights Watch’s 2026 report says India’s slide toward authoritarianism continued with increased vilification of Muslims and government critics. ⁶⁷⁸

So there are really two answers. In law, India is secular. In practice, observers disagree about how well that promise is being honored, especially for religious minorities. ²⁴⁶⁷⁸