Secularism is no spectacle: Inclusive India shines through simple, everyday interactions | The Indian Express

Secularism is no spectacle: Inclusive India shines through simple, everyday interactions | The Indian Express

Written by Irena Akbar |Updated: July 11, 2019 7:05:07 am

Irena Akbar is a Lucknow-based entrepreneur and a former journalist with The Indian Express.

Secularism is no spectacle: Inclusive India shines through simple, everyday interactions

An increasingly majoritarian India, though, seeks to complicate secularism, and burden minorities, especially Muslims, to prove their inclusiveness.

Illustration by Suvajit Dey

I am Muslim. I don’t wear a bindi or apply sindoor. I don’t perform aarti. I visit temples only as a tourist. Does that make me less secular than Nusrat Jahan, the young Muslim MP from Basirhat, West Bengal, who wears bindi, applies sindoor, and inaugurates Jagannath Yatra, a Hindu religious pilgrimage?