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 coaching academy the way she had. And at the end, she expresses the hope that others will get a chance to serve the country and says, Dhanyavad (i,e, thank you) and Jazakallal (which mean may god bless you).So intolerant and petty have India’s Hindutva organisations become that one of them, which calls itself the Hindu Legal Fund, complained to the West Bengal government about her use of these three words.“She did not use Vande Mataram or Jai Hind,’ their complaint said, adding, “A serving officer representing the Indian state should maintain neutrality and use national expressions in public communication. Seeking appropriate review and action.” Their complaint was ridiculous and dishonest and should have been thrown in the dustbin. Instead the BJP government of Suvendu Adhikari rushed to punish the officer, removing her as DSP, Karagpur, and transferring her to the state police training academy.Now, ‘Jai Hind’ is the formal salutation used by the police in official settings and frankly, I find it one of the most endearing things – perhaps even the only endearing thing – about the Indian police. But if we are going to start transferring officers every time they say ‘namaskar’ or ‘sat sri akal’ or ‘god willing’ or ‘rab rakh’ or ‘om shanti’ or ‘god bless’ or ‘hai allah’ or ‘oh my god’ in videos or conferences or events or meetings then we will have a major problem on our hands![Modi: “Oh my god.”]And I am not even talking about overt expressions of religion of the kind DGP Anand in Telangana or ASK Choudhury in UP have shown. I find such expressions problematic but what is anyone going to do when the Prime Minister himself has officiated at a Hindu havan to inaugurate the new parliament building.What I want to highlight, however, is the sheer hypocrisy of it all.If a Muslim officer were to invite a Maulana for his first day in office, wouldn’t all hell break loose? And here’s an actual, not hypothetical example of our national hypocrisy. Indian Police Service officer Bushra Bano gets transferred for saying salamaleikum. But the Union home minister – whose ministry is the cadre controlling authority for the IPS – regularly belts out religious slogans like ‘Jai Shri Ram’ and that’s supposed to be OK.When I tweeted this yesterday, some folks commented that Shah is a politician and Bano is an officer. Not so. Shah has taken his oath of office on the same constitution that Bano has and is surely bound by the same discipline.And what about police officers saying ‘Jai Shri Ram’ from now on? If we are honest, JSR is more a political than a religious slogan so it can hardly be considered the equivalent of Salaamaleikum. Even on the religious front, ‘Jai Shri Ram’s equivalents would be ‘Nara e takbeer’ or ‘Bole so nihaal’ and no one is arguing that police officers of any religion go down that route.Bushra Bano used expressions that millions of Muslim Indians use everyday as part of their normal way of conversing. Will a Tamil officer be targeted for saying Vanakkam at a meeting because some foolish person will accuse her of not being ‘neutral’ towards non-Tamils? Will an Adivasi officer be targeted for saying ‘Johar’? The Indian people are not fools. They can recognise when words and phrases are used as part of normal speech and when they are used to divide. Bushra Bano has been unfairly targeted and I hope the IPS Association stands by her.