In Yann Martel's Life of Pi, the teenage Pi decides to concurrently be baptized a Christian, convert to Islam, and practice as a devout Hindu, all in the space of a few months prior to leaving India to resettle in Canada. Pi's parents, described as utterly secular in a “New India” sort of way, are at a loss as to what to do, and simply watch their son pursue all these religions all at once. In many ways, this captures the challenge that the volume under review seeks to tackle: how to manage difference and define identity in an India where religions intermingle in constant and unexpected ways, and how to approach multiculturalism in Canada where it is associated with people coming from abroad with complex and “different” identities that do not align with established, dominant ones. This is a broad and multifaceted theme, and the 16 substantive chapters in Multiculturalism and Religious Identity: Canada and India cover enormous ground. They come to the interface of religion and identity from the perspectives of law, politics, philosophy, and social sciences, at a conceptual level as well as critically unpacking local situations or policies. The volume begs the question of the justification of a combination of these two countries and interrogates our concepts of secularism, religion, and multiculturalism.

Religious diversity and its impact on the construction of national identities pose challenges everywhere. The fact that there are public discussions, debates, and conflicts around these questions in India and Canada thus cannot in itself provide a justification for putting together two countries vastly different in population scale, history, development, and culture. Sonia Sikka and Lori Beaman, editors of Multiculturalism and Religious Identity, are well aware of these enormous differences, and indeed they comment that few of the essays make a direct comparative analysis of issues of religion and identity in the two countries. Instead, the interest of the combination appears from the complementarity of the insights that emerge from a critical analysis of the ways in which diverse religious communities have managed their identities and been incorporated into broader society. Thus, in Canada, an inherited Christian tradition is more often than not obfuscated under an embrace of multiculturalism that proffers a degree of neutrality of the state vis-à-vis religious beliefs. As noted by Solange Lefèbvre in her chapter, Québec is perhaps an exception in this respect, as exemplified by the debate as to whether a crucifix should be kept in the National Assembly despite the commitment to the secularity of the state. In India, as discussed in essays by Sipra Mukherjee and Anne Vallely, there is perhaps a similar unacknowledged dominance of Hinduism, which nationalists have construed to subsume a number of religious beliefs whose adherents do not necessarily self-identify as Hindus. Canada and India may thus have distinct religious dynamics, but putting them side-by-side brings them to light in a revealing fashion.

Further fruitful interaction emerges in relation to the concept of multiculturalism as it was developed in Canada, largely in reaction to recent waves of immigration, as contrasted to the same concept as transplanted to India, where it has been invoked in the management of the inherent diversity of the subcontinent. Still, each place does have its irreducible specificities, such as the place of First Nations in the Canadian context or the lingering significance of the caste system in India. (As a footnote, André Laliberté's chapter on China seems oddly out of place, despite his valiant effort to suggest some links and his very interesting study of secularism in that context: China is simply too big and complex to be reduced to just an aside.)

The volume offers a collective reflection on a number of important themes, but none perhaps is explored in as creative a fashion as the concept of the secular. Although the five essays in the first section of the book are placed under a heading that refers to secularism, many of the remaining essays also engage in lively conversation about that concept throughout the book. The starting point may well be Bindu Puri's invocation of Gandhi's statement in 1940 that “I cannot conceive politics as divorced from religion” (96), although he also stated that “religion and state should be separate” (97). In their chapters, Gupreet Mahajan and Rajeev Bhargava discuss the manner in which this apparent contradiction plays out in India, where diversity appears so ever present and uncontainable that any suggestion that religion be confined to some degree of private sphere seems untenable. On the other hand, this diversity is highly volatile, as well illustrated in Deepak Mehta's analysis of the dispute between Hindus and Muslims (Sunni and Shia) regarding the Ayodhya temple/mosque, that the alignment of the state and a specific religious identity appears as teeming with danger. The idea of the secular seems rather tamer in the context of Canada. To return to Gandhi's initial statement, the conception of politics as divorced from religion seems far less outlandish in the Canadian context. Indeed, as Peter Beyer notes in his contribution to this volume, religion may indeed have played a significant constitutive function in an earlier time in Canadian history, but it has been displaced. What exactly has replaced religion is a question difficult to answer; a commitment to multiculturalism may have come to take religion's place, more so, it is argued, than a turn to secularism. As noted by Sikka and Beaman in their Introduction, the Canadian constitution still proclaims the supremacy of God and provides special protection for Catholic and Protestant schools. This can explain why multiculturalism as a policy devised in Canada is not averse to religious claims per se. The situation appears different in Québec, where the “Quiet Revolution” in the 1960s against the Catholic Church's stronghold over public and private life led to a deep disaffection, if not distrust, toward religiosity in general. Solange Lefèbvre and Sonia Sikka discuss how the French concept of laïcité has become a significant part of political discourse in Québec, as evidenced by the fact that the province's two major political parties pledged during the 2014 elections to enact a version of a Charte de la laïcité that proclaims the religious neutrality of the state. Sikka analyses the mandatory course on “Ethics and Religious Culture” introduced in 2008 at primary and secondary levels as an instantiation of what is sometimes described as “interculturalism” as opposed to multiculturalism, in part to underscore the dialogic, discursive nature of the process. In 2015, after the publication of this volume, the Supreme Court of Canada issued a decision applying a multicultural outlook to this course, to find that Québec could not force a Catholic school to teach Catholicism from a “neutral” or “critical” perspective.

Any discussion of multiculturalism and religious identity will invariably raise the issue of the balancing of collective rights of minorities internal to religious communities as well as the balancing of collective and individual rights. Ashwani Peetush, Gordon David, and Elke Winter address this thematic at the level of the conceptual viability of multiculturalism as a tool to address exclusion and discrimination, interrogating the place of religious reason in the political process of managing our differences. Lori Beaman traces the legal construction of multiculturalism through a series of cases decided by the Supreme Court of Canada, identifying a shift in claims grounded in religion, moving from a desire to be given equal treatment toward a demand for exceptional accommodation. The situation of particular minority groups is examined in more detail in a number of essays, including Shail Mayaram's discussion of the apparent limits of Indian multiculturalism in the treatment of distinct groups in Jammu and Kashmir and of “scheduled tribes” in areas of Central India touched by Maoist insurgency, as well as Vallely's analysis of the Jains' resistance to being co-opted into the Hindu majority. Finally, the lingering concern articulated by feminists in the 1990s that “multiculturalism is bad for women” is taken up by Gopinka Solanki, who shows through the study of a specific Dalit community in Mumbai that the situation of women is not necessarily undermined by respecting the autonomy of this type of religious community.

Overall, the volume offers a fascinating exploration of the way in which multiculturalism and religion are poles around which public and private conversations about identity are articulated. While it is clear that state policies can play a role in structuring such dialogue, it seems evident that each and every one of us bears a significant responsibility in the management of our differences.