I will be honest with you. When I first heard Suvendu Adhikari say, moments after he won his constituency, that he would work only for Hindus, my instinct was the same as that of any citizen of India who firmly believes in this country’s cherished tradition of unity in diversity — a profound sense of pain and concern. The kind that does not come from wounded pride but from something deeper, something that has been quietly accumulating for years, watching communities that were once neighbours become strangers, watching a political class discover that division is more electorally profitable than governance. I have felt this before, many times. But I stopped myself. Because I have learned, over decades of public life, that the response that feels most satisfying in a moment of provocation is rarely the response that actually helps the people you are trying to serve.…