-letting. Religion therefore came to be viewed in negative terms by the intelligentsia. Moreover, the Indian National Congress, which led the movement for Indian independence, had long opposed partition but accepted it as the price to be paid for independence. It had to justify this change in its stance to the Indian people, which it did by arguing that the division of the country into India and Pakistan was not a division between a Hindu India and a Muslim Pakistan (as Pakistan maintained), but a division between a secular India and a theocratic Pakistan. Secularism thus became a part of the founding myth of the Indian nation. It was then enshrined in the Indian constitution, when it was adopted in 1950, in the following way so far instructionconsent to (Sen, 2010: 105, n. 1). This understanding of secularism as excluding the teaching of religion was an element in what is called the Nehruvian Consensus, which constituted the intellectual legacy of Nehru and was embraced by the Indian intelligentsia in general, along with socialism and democracy. PART II There was, however, another stream of opinion from the time of independence onwards which was inclined to consider the non -confessional teaching of religion as fully consistent with the idea of secularism. The case for introducing the study... 23 An early exponent of this view was Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, the education minister in the government of India. As early as January 1948 he expressed the view the government should promote the study of religion, because 'India's difficulties,