Seema Mustafa reveals her first encounters with the need for secularism.
It was the History period for Class IV in the Convent of Jesus and Mary in New Delhi. The topic was the history of Islam. Not a particularly interested student at the best of times, I was delighted to find that I knew something that perhaps others did not and so jumped up to narrate a story about Abraham – except that I had confused him for Prophet Mohammad.
So, according to my version, Mohammad was against idol worship, and spent a great deal of time trying to convince idol worshippers to stop the practice. One day when the elders all left for work, he cut off the limbs of the idols and left an axe near the largest idol.