India Subscribes To All Religions, Never Declares Itself A Hindu State : Justice NK Singh

Justice NK Singh of the Supreme Court recently said that India's Constitution never declared India to be a Hindu State and India was one of the few countries in the world which subscribed to many religions.

"If you read the Constitution of so many other countries, they subscribe to a particular faith that is, this is a Christian State or this is an Islamic State. There are very very few countries which subscribe to all the religions, like India. India never declares itself to be a Hindu State."

Justice Singh was speaking at the NLUI-SBA Law Conclave 2026 on 'Beyond Colonial Hangovers: Rethinking and Reforming Western Influence On India's Legal System'.

He explained that the term 'Hindu' did not originate in a religious sense historically.

Justice Singh said: "In fact, the word Hindu itself is a word ascribed to this country by foreigners as people who stayed beyond Indus. When the Greeks came, they found all those people who were staying behind this country, it is behind Indus river, the Hindus. So it didn't have any relation to the religion. By the time when Greek came, there was already Buddhism, there was already Jainism, there was already Hinduism flourishing in this country.So this question what is Hindus does not mean anything, as far as my understanding is concerned. There may be people who may not agree with me, but the term Hindu doesn't denote anything. 'Hindu' simply is those who have been staying beyond Indus river."

Justice Singh also spoke on various schools of philosophy in India, such as the Mimamsa school of thought. He stated that no philosophy in the world was as evolved as Indian, but still the West termed us a "land of religion," "land of superstition" or "land of snake charmers".

He added that India's civilisation was far ahead of its time when Europe was in the Dark Ages. He stated that while India welcomed all, the British colonisers treated India with laws like the Criminal Tribes Act, etc.

"When England, Europe was in the dark ages, India had already attained the height of civilisation. When the first Jew temple in Jerusalem was attacked by the Romans, many Jews fled Israel, some of them came to India. Do you know this fact that in 5th or 7th BC, I think, the Jews came to India during that time and again, when the second Jewish temple was attacked by the Roman, again there was a wave of migration of Jews. The first synagogue is still there in Cochin. Jews came, they were accepted, isn't it? Were they persecuted? Were they imprisoned and converted to Hindus or they remained Jews? They continued practising their faith [and] belief. When Persia again was invaded by the Arabic, the Persian Zoroastrians also fled. They came to India with their practice, with their religion intact."

Justice Singh observed that liberty and equality are often perceived as concepts borrowed from the French Revolution, but noted that these values were already embedded in India's own traditions and history, which, according to him, have been overlooked due to the dominance of Western education. He remarked that he himself is a product of Western legal education, but emphasised the need to look beyond that framework.

Referring to a dialogue in the Mahabharata between Sulabha, a learned woman philosopher, and the ancient philosopher-king Janaka, he highlighted their discussion on the qualities required of a debater. He suggested that law schools should incorporate the teaching of Indian philosophy into their curricula.