The Lenskart row is not merely a corporate misstep. An internal grooming guide that appeared to frown upon bindi, tilak and kalawa while permitting hijab and turban triggered instant outrage, boycott calls and a hasty reversal.
Yet the episode is symptomatic of a deeper malaise: a society that once prided itself on тАЬunity in diversityтАЭ has lost the ability to let religious markers remain spontaneous expressions of personal faith. Instead, they have become instruments of political assertion and counter-assertion.
For decades, a bindi was simply auspicious, тАЬJai Shri RamтАЭ an affectionate greeting, and Ram Navami processions a local affair. Over the past decade these symbols were nationalised and amplified. What began as cultural reclamation after years of selective secularism soon hardened into majoritarian spectacle.
Huge saffron marches appeared in neighbourhoods where they had never been tradition. The affectionate тАЬRam RamтАЭ yielded to the battle cry. The result was predictable: a reciprocal hardening on the other side.
Beards and burqas reasserted themselves in pockets that had quietly modernised; the hijab controversy in Karnataka became national theatre. Economic life, too, fractured. Muslim vendors found themselves quietly barred from some temple fairs; Kanwar Yatra routes demanded name plates and QR codes; gig workers faced refusals in certain localities. Halal certification rows added to exporter anxiety and consumer suspicion.
This is the FrankensteinтАЩs monster Indian politics has created. Decades of minority appeasement bred resentment; the subsequent majoritarian pushback bred siege mentality. Each side now reads the otherтАЩs symbols as provocation rather than piety.
The spontaneity that once allowed Hindus, Muslims and others to share neighbourhoods, markets and festivals without constant negotiation has evaporated. Religious markers, once parochial and even patriarchal, have been stripped of their lived innocence and turned into badges of loyalty or defiance.
Corporate India is now caught in the crossfire. LenskartтАЩs initial impulseтАФto sanitise its stores of visible faithтАФwas classic overreach dressed as neutrality. Private employers may set grooming standards, but selective erasure of one communityтАЩs everyday markers while carving exceptions for another is not neutrality; it is timidity before the politics of the moment.
Such policies risk driving talent away, normalising arbitrary discrimination and turning workplaces into sites of grievance. The swift market backlash and policy U-turn show that consumer power still works.
But repeated episodes will erode investor confidence and labour mobilityтАФthe very sinews of IndiaтАЩs growth story.
The state cannot wash its hands. Having stoked identity polarisation for electoral gain, it must now enforce consistent, religion-blind rules: prosecute intimidation whoever the perpetrator, uphold public order without optics, and refuse to let economic spaces become segregated by faith.
True secularism is not managed diversity or competitive victimhood; it is the confidence to let modest, personal symbols coexist without turning every tilak or hijab into a political flashpoint.
IndiaтАЩs civilisational strength lies in lived pluralism, not curated uniformity. If we cannot restore the spontaneity of faith markers, we will keep paying in lost jobs, fractured markets and a social fabric that frays a little more with every viral controversy.
The Lenskart apology was a tactical retreat. The real reckoning is whether politics will allow society to breathe freely again.
