The opening days of a new year are appropriate for raising a broad question or two. As a nation and a people, are we Indians becoming kinder over time? Are we getting to be more equal, more accepting of one another, less hierarchical, more understanding of persons with disabilities? More understanding also of the needs of the air, rivers, forests, and mountains that sustain us?

Answers to such questions require patient, open-minded research. Yet impressions can be shared, not necessarily as conclusions but as subjects for discussion.

On the question of our natural environment, sadly there is little room for debate. Treating the Himalayas as divine and therefore indestructible, and demanding swift and comfortable access to holy sites located on remote heights, we are building wide roads and tunnels that have already caused visible damage to mountain and man alike.

As for the people nourished by our natural habitat, for what we may think of as India's society, it could be argued that, despite the troubling polarization of which everyone is aware, many Indians are less separated today from one another than they used to be.

The state undoubtedly influences Indian society, of which Hindus form a preponderant share. Over the decades, haven't India's current ruling party, the BJP, and the party's parent, guide and ally, the RSS, both dominated at birth by India's Brahmin minority, become steadily more open to non-Brahmins, to OBCs (Other Backward Classes), and to Dalits?

When a Dalit from Uttar Pradesh, Ram Nath Kovind, became India's president in 2017, and again, five years........

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