Multiple fault lines of India's democracy

This is a frightening book to read. Because it describes in detail how difficult it is to survive as a religious minority in India, particularly as an Indian Muslim.

- RANJONA BANERJI

The titles of the book may seem needlessly contentious to many. Why should an attempt at a national identity unmake India's great democracy? What is wrong with giving citizenship to troubled Hindus who belong to other nations? How is India threatened by this? Why should India not document its own citizens and ask for proof that they are indeed Indians?

To ask these questions with naivete or even faked innocence is to deny the birth of India's democracy and the fragile fault-lines that India has had to deal with since Independence. It is to deny the many "ideologies" that formed in modern India and their influence on contemporary life.

It is into these fault-lines that journalist and author Rahul Bhatia delves. In itself, this is an act of courage. The past few years have shown us how even the most brave, the most politically active, have been unable to question and face up to Indian democracy's most dangerous reality: The tendrils of insecurity and confusion that swirl around the word "secular".

These are problems we have always known. They are etched into our beginnings, into the freedom movement and the terrible violence of Partition. Religious divisions, religious politics leading to deaths. We know this. And yet, we chose to create another sort of democracy, to try and overcome our intrinsic weaknesses to look for fairness, equality and justice for all. If we could not create a forced brotherhood, at least the State could ensure that a fractious people could be certain that the State was always on their side.