Review essay Fundamentalism and the secular state T.N. MADAN, Modern myths, locked minds: Secularism and fundamentalism in India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997. xv + 323 pp. Notes, refs., epilogue, gloss., index. Rs. 475 (hardback). Peter van der Veer Peter van der Veer is at the University of Amsterdam. Just imagine a book to be written by an anthropologist about the Sikh religious tradition, South Asian Islam, the Hindu religious tradition and ideas of secularism, pluralism, and fundamentalism in these three religions. A book which meticu- lously engages all these religions because it wants to grapple with the crisis of secularism in contemporary Indian society. I can think of anthropologists who would like to write such a book, but of none who would do it with the authority, humanity and deep concern of T.N. Madan. Madan’s writing emerges from a life- long professional interest in the anthropology of Indian religions (in the plural) and from a personal engagement with Indian realities today. In that sense it is anthropology at its best, written with detachment and engagement at the same time. Madan was particularly well prepared to write this book because of his participation in the planning and execution of the Fundamentalism project of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. While this project has sometimes been condemned for lumping too many religious movements in the category of funda- mentalism and thus creating an easy dichotomy between bad religion and good secularism, Madan’s position can never be reduced to that. In his controversial and somewhat polemical address to the American Association of Asian Studies of 1987, he made it perfectly clear that his attitude towards secularism is a critical one. The book under review fleshes out his views on fundamentalism and secularism. Madan examines the relation between sacred and secular in the three religious traditions of Hinduism, Sikhism, and Islam. More specifically he is interested in the relation between spiritual authority and temporal power, an interest he shares with Weber and Dumont. When the openness of tradition is frozen, one gets