Hyderabad, Nov. 11 -- Ibn Khaldun Bharati's column in ThePrint on October 17 treats Sharjeel Imam's long interview with The Quint as a charge sheet. Imam's views, he writes, are anti-liberal, anti-secular, anti-democracy, anti-Constitution and, finally, "anti-national." The labels carry the argument. The interview itself, with its sustained case about representation, centralisation and the place of Muslims in a first-past-the-post democracy, gets far less attention.

One need not agree with Imam to see that he has been misread. His ideas can be contested on their own terms. They should not be filed away as a security problem.

What Imam actually wrote

Bharati says Imam calls the Constitution fascist. The interview does not say so. Imam c...