A Hindu soldier and a Muslim poet show how religious identities overlapped in 19th-century India

A researcher of late 18th- and 19th-century India examines two memoirs — those of Hindu soldier Sitaram Pande and Muslim poet Mirza Ghalib — to argue that religious identity in that era was layered and porous rather than fixed.

Pande, a Brahmin soldier in the British East India Company's army, maintained strict Hindu ritual practices while also marrying a woman outside prevailing norms of religious and sexual purity. Ghalib, a devout Muslim living through the 1857 revolt and the fall of the Mughal empire, drank wine and described Delhi as a cosmopolitan garden shared by Hindus, Muslims and the British alike.

The piece situates this history against a 2025 Washington-based research report documenting rising hate speech against religious minorities in India since 2023, and Human Rights Watch's tally of increased communal violence in 2024. The scholar frames both as being justified in the name of defending religious identity.

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