Do Only Hindus Need to Prove They’re Secular in India?

In India, being secular is supposed to mean that you believe everyone deserves equal dignity—no matter their faith, name, rituals, or god. But somewhere along the way, something flipped. Somewhere, this noble idea got tangled in expectations, suspicions, and double standards. And somehow, it is often the Hindu—particularly the visibly practicing, culturally rooted Hindu—who is expected to prove, perform, and justify their secularism. Again and again. Publicly. Relentlessly. You can feel it in everyday moments: a temple post that comes with a nervous caption. A namaste that feels like it needs a disclaimer. A saree that invites suspicion. Not because of what it is—but because of what people assume it represents. Let’s sit with that for a while.

Hindus today often walk on eggshells—not because of their beliefs, but because of how easily those beliefs can be misunderstood. If you post about Diwali, you'd better post about Eid. If you share a quote from the Gita, balance it with one from the Quran. Not because you’re insincere—but because if you don’t, someone will ask: “Are you becoming one of them?”
Them. That vague, faceless "other" that society has turned into a warning sign. But here’s a question we never ask: why does the burden of balance fall only on one side? Why does a Hindu wearing their culture openly have to “prove” they’re not secretly nursing hate? Why is the assumption of bigotry so quick, so casual, so automatic? When secularism becomes a loyalty test only for some, it stops being secularism. It becomes performance.

There’s a difference between being proud of your roots and looking down on someone else’s. Most people understand this instinctively. And yet, Hindus expressing their cultural identity often face a dilemma: the world doesn’t know what to do with a Hindu who is confident but not extremist. We’ve grown so used to narratives of polarization that we struggle to accept nuanced realities. It’s easier to assume that if someone chants “Jai Shri Ram,” they must be politically loaded. That a rudraksha means ideology. That a temple visit is a stand.
And in this fear of what might be hiding under the surface, we end up erasing sincerity. Reducing lived traditions to political optics. Turning culture into caution. But how long can a society survive where celebrating your roots feels like walking into a courtroom?

Now let’s talk about what isn’t said. Secularism requires equal participation—but also equal accountability. Yet we rarely ask people of other faiths to “prove” their commitment to peace, to interfaith respect, to national unity. We assume it of them. We offer space, empathy, and understanding—and rightly so.
But Hindus? They're often assumed guilty until proven pluralistic. This isn't just unfair. It’s corrosive. Because when you repeatedly ask only one community to prove its goodness, what you're really saying is: we trust everyone else to be fair, but not you. It’s a quiet kind of exclusion—masked as moral superiority.

True secularism isn’t about asking Hindus to hide their traditions. It’s about creating a society where no one has to hide anything—not a hijab, not a kada, not a tika, not a cross. It’s not about being equal by pretending we’re all the same. It’s about being equal while celebrating the fact that we’re not.
But this vision only works when there’s mutual courage. Mutual trust. Mutual accountability. If only one side is constantly trying to prove its nobility, while others get a free pass, then what we’re building isn’t harmony. It’s hierarchy. And the most dangerous hierarchies are the ones we don’t admit exist.

Let’s start by letting go of the suspicion. Let’s stop assuming that a visible Hindu identity is a political warning sign. Let’s stop treating their festivals like they come with footnotes, and their rituals like they need permission. Let’s remember that the Hindu who loves his Gita is not automatically against your Quran. That the girl who wears a bindi might just like the way it looks. That lighting a diya is not a declaration of war. Let’s make peace with the idea that culture, when practiced with integrity, does not divide. Fear does.
Secularism isn’t something you perform. It’s something you practice—in how you listen, how you assume, how you treat difference. And maybe, the most powerful way forward isn’t by demanding that one group prove their peace—but by trusting that it already exists in all of us, quietly, deeply, and sincerely. Let’s not reduce religion to politics. Let’s not reduce people to templates. Let’s grow up. And more importantly—let’s grow together.