Sharad Bailur is right when he says that we are now in a state of “competitive obscurantism” because ever since the 42nd Amendment (January 1977) to the Constitution made India into a “sovereign socialist secular democratic republic” instead of a “sovereign democratic republic”, all of us have been free to interpret secularism in the way we liked, with politicians being the most creative in this endeavour in order to garner votes.

While several countries have their own interpretations of secularism — France enacted a law as far back as 1905 for this purpose — India has, as Sharad Bailur hints, shied away from dealing with it directly. This should actually not be difficult given that the complexity of ‘Indian-ness’ has been noticed. Herbert Hope Risely, a census commissioner, talked in 1891 of an “equally mysterious thing called national character” and that “beneath the manifold diversity of physical and social type, language, custom and religion, there is an Indian character, a general Indian personality which we cannot resolve into its component elements”.

But for that our politicians will have to rise above the parochial instincts, and we, the citizens, will have to follow Radhakrishnan’s view of religion being ‘what we do when we are alone”, rather than practising it on the streets.