I want you to look at this photo – of a uniformed police officer in Uttar Pradesh, ASP Anuj Choudhury, taking part in a religious procession with kanwariyas in January 2025.

And now look at this video which the Telangana director general of police tweeted, showing a puja he held in his office on the day he took charge.

In both instances, we have police officers in uniform indulging their personal religious beliefs in public and I can’t remember any complaint being filed against the DGP for this, or any punishment being handed down to Choudhary for supposedly not being “neutral”.

Now let’s look at what happened this week to a Muslim police officer in West Bengal, Bushra Bano.

In a video address praising the help she received as a student from Aligarh Muslim University’s Residential Coaching Academy, Bushra began with the customary greeting many Muslims use, i.e. SalaamAleikum, which means ‘peace be upon you’. It is not a religious expression, any more than, say, Namaskar is, even if said with folded hands. Later in her 90 second recording, she uses the common Urdu expression ‘Inshallah’, or God willing, when speaking of AMU’s students benefiting from the........

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