secularism

someone asked what is the meaning of secularism, without referring to dictionaries

My take on it...

Secularism at present, at least in India is just a cliche..

It is a stick now to beat the majority religion and its staunch followers in our courntry..

You should understand, words are just the creations of a language and even well intended coining of words at their birth could be distorted by intererested people, lawyers and politicians..

Someone said, the president of USA wishes its people happy holidays and not Happy Christmas.. and he is of the view that that is secularism

I beg to disagree . There is no rule that the American president should not wish Merry Christmas..

In America prayers are allowed even at the start of sessios of legislature..

"In God We Trust" is the official motto of US.. Usuallly the swearing in is in the name of God..

Of course that has nothing to do with secualarism..

Secularism is perhaps that faith in a particular type of worship or a particular name of God, or lack of faith in any such God or worship should not affect the rule of law in a state..

In India, many personal laws, sectarian and minority interests and even petty politico religious ideas are safeguarded by law and we too call ourselves secular too.. I wonder..

The asking for the meaning of a word without dictionary is not of any use.

Dictionary is a collection where the meaning, etymology etc of a word in a language are recorded.. and all types of usages are expected to be reorded that way..

It is only that some words take more time to appear because such words would have been used in a different sense for some period but that is yet to appear in dicitionary..

There is nothing called dictionary meaning in absolute terms.. If you say without looking into dictionary, you should also mention which dictionary..

Because in every language there are innumerable dictionaries..And dictionaries on subjects.. Like law dictionary, Religious Dictionary, Technical Dictionary, and so on..

There cannot be two language.. one for use by people and one for the use in dictionaries..