We need your support to keep the secularist going
The recent incident in Mumbai where a priest dressed the idol of Goddess Kali as Mother Mary because “she appeared in his dream”, and the subsequent outrage, police complaint, and arrest tell us far more about the state of our society than about religion itself. The scene is almost surreal: An age-old deity dressed in Christian attire becomes the spark for a full-blown neighbourhood crisis in today’s India. Devotees rush to the police; the priest is detained; political actors smell an opportunity; and suddenly the nation is debating a dress code for deities.
But beneath all this noise, one simple question echoes: Do we really believe in the divine if a piece of fabric can shake our faith?
When Devotion Turns into Insecurity
If a goddess as fierce and powerful as Kali, destroyer of evil, symbol of liberation, can be “hurt” by being dressed differently, then perhaps the issue is not devotion but insecurity. The same applies to the uproar in Ranchi, where a Durga Puja pandal with a Vatican City theme triggered accusations of conversion conspiracies. Crosses at the entrance, images of Mother Mary inside, an aesthetic choice and suddenly it becomes a threat to Hinduism itself?
This hypersensitivity betrays a deep fragility. Because no confident faith collapses at the sight of another religion’s symbols. No secure devotee fears a dress.
And certainly, no goddess cares about the stitching on her sari or the symbolism of her shawl.
Gods Don’t Need Protection, People Do
Across cultures, religions evolve, borrow, blend and influence one another. India’s syncretic traditions from Sufi shrines to Christian churches celebrating local harvest rituals have long stood as proof that spiritual expression is fluid and human. What should be sacred is not the fabric on the idol, but the faith in the heart.
If a change of attire “hurts your sentiments,” then perhaps the sentiment never belonged to God, but to your own sense of identity politics.
Because Goddess Kali does not need protecting from a cotton dress. Mother Mary does not stand in opposition to her. It is people who set them up as rivals – gods never asked for it.
The Manufactured Outrage Industry
There is an entire ecosystem in India dedicated to policing hurt sentiments, one that thrives on exaggerated reactions, imagined threats, hyper-nationalistic “guardians” of culture, and a constant, almost obsessive hunt for offence.
A priest’s dream becomes a crime. A decorative theme becomes a “conversion plot.” A cross-shaped light or a piece of clothing becomes a cultural invasion.
Meanwhile, real issues, the ones that actually harm people, are ignored.
Where Is This Energy When It Comes to India’s Real Crises?
India’s education system is in shambles. Government schools lack teachers, toilets, electricity, and basic facilities. Millions of young people graduate without usable skills. Health care remains deeply unequal, public hospitals overcrowded, rural areas underserved, malnutrition persistent.
But the national outrage is saved for a goddess who exchanged her sari for a gown for a single day.
Imagine if people reacted with the same intensity to toddlers dying in hospitals due to lack of oxygen, women giving birth on the roadside because maternity wards are full, schoolchildren forced to sit on mud floors, rising hate crimes, and unemployment soaring to record highs.
What kind of country would India be if we defended human dignity with the same fervour as we defend deity wardrobes?
Faith Should Elevate Us, Not Shrink Us
The truth is simple: no deity or belief system is threatened by a piece of fabric. Ideas, cultures, and traditions don’t panic when they intersect, people do. India has survived and evolved for millennia precisely because its civilisation embraced pluralism, exchange, and coexistence. Reducing religion to costume surveillance not only shrinks our perspective, it betrays the very diversity that has always defined this country.
Time to Grow Up as a Society
If a dress, an inanimate piece of cloth, can shake the foundations of your faith, then perhaps the crisis is not theological but psychological. It is time to get over such micro-offences and grow into a country where people don’t file police complaints over creativity, cultural fusion is celebrated rather than feared, gods are not reduced to symbols in political wars, and faith makes us stronger rather than smaller.
Above all, we need to stop wasting emotional energy on idols’ outfits and start fighting for what truly matters: dignity, education, jobs, safety, health, and justice. Because Goddess Kali does not care about the colour of her dress. Mother Mary does not compete with her.
But India’s children do care whether their schools have teachers. India’s sick do care whether hospitals have medicine. India’s women do care whether the country is safe for them. Outrage should serve people, not the politics of hurt feelings.
And until we realise this, we will keep mistaking cloth for crisis and crisis for background noise.