Nila-Kantha-Chandra on Calcutta, its intelligentsia and much more:

While the intelligentsia of Calcutta prides itself on being fiercely secular and tolerant, the truth is that most educated Hindus in the city would never have had any substantive intercourse with a Muslim in their lives. And yet they would not hesitate to express their opinion on Muslims, Islam etc.

Almost every one in a typical intellectuals’ gathering – like this one I attended – would be Hindu. yet that is considered to be a citizens’ forum, rather than a HIndu one. But a gathering of Muslim intellectuals would be seen by Hindus as an exclusively Muslim affair, rather than a civic gathering.