Libertarianism

We concur with Amit that there's a great deal of intersection between our notion of secular-right and libertarianism.

Both believe in limiting government to only such areas whose scale requires that it alone can do the heavy lifting. Because individual freedoms are the fundamental reality of the universe, power has legitimacy only if it flows from free choice of individuals -- and is subservient to their needs, not vice versa.

Indeed our secularism emerges from precisely this expectation of small government. We aren't secular because we deny the validity of faith, nor driven by Western motives to separate church & state. We believe in a secular state because we see no value in having (a usually inept) government meddle around in something so fundamental as people's faith. To the extent the government is best kept away from faith, there is consequently no reason to inject faith in politics (since, ideally, the politician has no power to grant favors on the basis of faith).

Having said all this, we are less sanguine about the fundamentalism of some libertarians. For example, we are perfectly happy to dilute some civil liberties (on the edges & carefully) so that terrorism and terror exhorters are snuffed out. Unyielding battles on abstract principles of civil liberties when our lives are at stake are silly. Too many libertarians lose the forest for the trees on such issues.

We also dispute the bogus denunciation of democracy by some libertarians.

Bottom line, there's sufficient common ground (a very practical standard) for secular-right and libertarian Indians to collaborate on. This is a very good thing.