The ‘nationalist’ duty to demonstrate your love for your nation, in the Hindutva doctrine, requires the ultimate litmus test of hating. This obligation to hate in order to establish that you love is part of a recurring binary.

I can be a proud Hindu only if I hate Muslims. I can love the cow only if I am willing to pulverise all those who I believe do not. I can love India only if I noisily hate Pakistan.

Mahatma Gandhi, a deeply devout practising Hindu, refused to accept the binary that he must hate Muslims. On the contrary, he said that Hindus and Muslims were like his two eyes. He lived for many convictions, but died in the end for Hindu–Muslim unity.

I was speaking in a literature festival in Dehradun on a panel on nationalism with writer Nayantara Sahgal. She said at one point, ‘But I am half-Muslim.’ We . . .