A group of politicians, writers and bureaucrats will debate on the motion “Secularism is a sham” at Calcutta Club on Friday in the backdrop of protests and processions against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act and the proposed National Register of Citizens.

Speaking for the motion at the International Debate presented by Calcutta Debating Circle, in association with The Telegraph, will be BJP leader Shazia Ilmi, RSS spokesperson Desh Ratan Nigam, BJP spokesperson Vivek Reddy, MP Swapan Dasgupta, Malayalam actress and right-wing activist Deepa Easwar.

Retired bureaucrat and social commentator Jawhar Sircar, MP Pavan Varma, Congress spokesperson Sanjay Jha, author and spokesperson for minority affairs Farah Naqvi and debater and neurosurgeon Sandip Chatterjee will speak against the motion.

“I think in this debate we will once again raise the concern that several decades after Independence polarisation on religious lines has come back to haunt us. We had thought that we have bottled this problem once and for all but looks like it is coming out of the bottle once again,” said cardiac surgeon Kunal Sarkar, the chairperson of the debate and trustee, Calcutta Debating Circle.

“Without any ambiguity there is a kind of right-left divide on the panel. It’s for all of us to see… the current polarisation is not only in politics but also in public opinion in the country…. The idea is not just to have verbal acrobatics but hopefully to clarify certain issues. Let us hear out both sides,” Sarkar said.

The debate will not end with each side presenting its views. A group of 20-odd high school and college students will then quiz the speakers.

“Students are at present the soul of India. So, we expect to have students in the interjection panel. India seems to be surviving on the last drop of conscience of students. I think when we discuss an issue like this, they cannot go un-represented,” Sarkar said.

The students will be debaters from Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge, IIM Calcutta, IIT Kharagpur, St Xavier’s College and Presidency University.

Former world-debating champions Jordon Anderson from the US and Heather Williams from the UK will share their “perspective” on what they hear.

Calcutta’s Festival of the Spoken Word 2020, in association with The Telegraph, is being held from January 7 to 13 across several schools and colleges.