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Old Delhi, May 2024 (#12 in series: walking, alone)

 

 

A little more than four out of five of Delhi’s nearly 34 million residents are Hindus.

A little less than one in seven are Muslims.

In Old Delhi, however, Muslims are the “majority” population.

Old Delhi is ethnically and culturally very diverse.

So is India as a whole.

Neither India’s Hindu “majority” nor its Muslim “minority” – the largest of its various religiously-affiliated “minorities” – is “uniform” or “monolithic”.

Bigotry and prejudice – and their total absence – are evident in the actual behaviour of adherents of whatever “Faith”, as they are among agnostics and atheists.

Q: Knowing all those things, how do you “read” this post’s (unposed, entirely “candid”) photo, taken in a very busy street?

A: That is entirely up to you.

That said, I would note that the pictured individual was not “escorted” by a male, and that her demeanour was that of a confident individual who was not lacking “agency”.

As a “stranger” who has visited many, diverse places, I would suggest that one would do well to avoid making instant assumptions about any individual – most especially, instant assumptions that may be “triggered” when one is “confronted” by the visible manifestations of humankind’s many different notions of what constitutes “appropriate” dress.

A person’s garb does not necessarily tell you anything about that individual’s character…or their “lot”.

 

 

Published in Americas and Eurasia and Africa nature and travel photographs