Shylashri Shankar is a senior fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi

Mehr Tarar is a well-known Pakistani columnist and author

Nanditha Krishna is a historian, author and environmentalist, and director of the CPR Institute of Indological Research in Chennai

Makarand R Paranjape, director, Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, is the author of the forthcoming book Swami Vivekananda: Hinduism and India’s Road to Modernity. Views are personal

Sumantra Bose is Professor of International and Comparative Politics at the London School of Economics and Political Science. His next book, Secular States, Religious Politics: India, Turkey, and the Future of Secularism, will be published in early 2018 by Cambridge University Press