“[W]hat if we view the state as less sanctimonious vis-à-vis society than insecure? In addition, what if the secular state’s moments of feverish emotionality are a result of its cognizance, perhaps covert, that in state-society relations it is society that holds the upper hand? Or, in scientific terms, what if the story here is less about simultaneity and correlation and more about causation? Or, alternatively, in artistic terms . . . what if state-society relations were best captured, not in the canvas arts and portraiture,
but in the dramatic arts and tragedy?
In short, what if secular need undergirds the secular state’s hatred and love of the Islamic non-state? Or put another way altogether, what if the state is not an aloof or impervious state but, rather, a feeling and vulnerable state? Indeed, a feeling state is one that does not simply ‘dialect’ with the non-state in a back-and-forth ‘contest’ that has all the dynamism of a game of tic-tac-toe but, rather, a state that finds a certain kind of ineluctability in its non-state interlocutor, but antagonism and amour too.”
A Secular Need: Islamic Law and State Governance in Contemporary India (University of Washington Press, Global South Asia series, 2020)
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