Kolkata's rousing Christmas message

Few cities anywhere in the world glorify the Christian holiday with such pomp and pandemonium

One moment loud carols in Bengali seemed to echo up and down Kolkata’s Park Street, the next minute the familiar silhouette of a small woman in a white and blue saree striding purposefully onstage appeared on the big screen at the open-air Christmas celebration that would go on for a couple of days. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s appearance at Allen Park seemed that evening part of a docudrama of Kolkata’s secularism. Against the backdrop of Madhya Pradesh where carol-singing clergy were detained by the police on suspicion of forced conversions and in Aligarh (Uttar Pradesh) where schools were warned by