Villains, one and all
K.S. Komireddi sets out to establish his secular credentials before he sets up his primary argument: which is that India’s secularism is in danger. In the prologue, we are introduced to the author as a young man who briefly attended a madrassah, where he made a Muslim friend, and the two celebrated the Hindu festival of Diwali together. In the coda, we peek at his bookshelf, where we find the well-thumbed works of a Muslim poet. These bookends establish Komireddi’s secular bona fides, for his name marks him as a Hindu. And yet at first Malevolent Republic seems to be an assault on everything we associate with secularism in India, including the Indian National Congress Party and India’s secular historians. It is a puzzle.
