In Gujarat, Hindu militants in broad daylight butchered a father who was on his way to work. In revenge, Muslim militants killed a woman and her child with machetes in a nearby village. Elsewhere, in Poso-Sulawesi, Indonesia, Islamic extremists beheaded three girls.

In India, the killers saw a Muslim man, not a father or a poor labourer. In the village, they saw a Hindu, not a mother nursing a child. In Paso, they saw Christians, not three teenagers in uniform walking to school. This singular identity defined by religion and ethnicity has stoked hatred and horrendous killings throughout human history, most recent in 1994 between the Tutsis and Hutus in Rwanda.

In his book ‘Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny’ (2006), Amartya Sen explains that when the many facets of human identities are “singularised” into exclusive ethnicity or religion, when “multi-dimensional human beings” are reduced into “one-dimensional creatures”, it diminishes us all.