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Lessons in Secularism for India

Lesson No. 1 Firoze Mohomed Shakir (left) Firoze Mohomed Shakir lives in Mumbai.  I have been haunting him like a ghost in some vague quest for quite a time in the virtual places I was permitted access.  His photographs , for example.  What drew me to him initially was his poetry which I used to read via indiblogger.in .  The poems were entirely different from the ones I had ever come across.  They looked initially like prose broken into arbitrary lines.  As I focused more I realized that secularism has as much hope in India as Sufism. Below is his latest poem that I have copy-pasted from his status update in Facebook.  The postscript also belongs to him. [Dear Firoze, I hope you don’t mind my using you as a lesson. Personally, I’d rather be a Hindu (to use your words) than be religious!] I Would Rather Be a Hindu Than Be a Wahhabi yes   i would rather be called a kafir   than be a wahabbi   i would rather be a hindu   than be a wahhabi   both options   clos