This volume draws on a travelling venture called The Secular Project, which travelled across India as well as within the UK, France, Germany, Belgium, Vatican City, Italy and Greece, and deliberately chose to address the secular through the moving body.

The question of the secular has so far been studied in philosophy, theology and law departments. Rarely has the secular been imagined, configured and negotiated through the moving body. The Secular Project's catalyst was the recent wave of Hindu nationalism engulfing India's socio-political landscape and set out to explore the experience of creating and performing various iterations of the secular in different global contexts through dance, movement and performance with over 200 collaborators across the world.

Drawing from this far-reaching project, the book offers a range of performative reflections on the subject. In addition to the editor's overview of the scope of The Secular Project, throughout the book are short, curated dialogues with a diverse selection of cultural practitioners, including dancers, choreographers, directors, film-makers and more, who engaged with the project in various capacities.

The form of these dialogues captured here range from WhatsApp messages, email exchanges, photo essays, transcribed conversations, short essays, Q & As and dialogues via multi-modal AI to notes and even doodles.

These reflections offer insights into and experiences of the following questions and many more besides:

What if the secular wasn't just a political idea, but an everyday ritual practised by people? Could it have had a better chance of survival?

If it could be experienced as a feeling, emotion, sensation through our moving bodies, could the secular transform from being a defensive conceptual position to becoming a way of living with difference?
Could such experience enable us to become more empathetic beings?

Does the experience of working with another body bring forth relational dilemmas that tell us something particular about the secular?

What if the secular were a muscle? Does movement allow us to keep this muscle in working condition?

What does the embodiment of the secular have to do with thinking, moving, performing, action, transformation, discipline, repetition, training and habit?

The complexity that the volume brings to the articulation of the secular is reflected in the diversity of its contributors, who include:

Shuddhabrata Sengupta, an artist, writer and curator
Sri Vamsi Matta, a Bangalore-based theatre actor, writer and director
Sheema Kermani, a Pakistani classical dancer and social activist
Ameera Nimjee, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Music, Yale University
Saba Dewan, a documentary filmmaker based in New Delhi
Avni Sethi, an Ahmedabad-based interdisciplinary practitioner
Farah Saleh, a Palestinian dancer, choreographer and scholar based in Scotland
Nisha Abdulla, a playwright and director based out of Bangalore, India
Ulduz Ahmadzadeh, Tehran-born dancer and choreographer
Wagner Schwartz, a Brazilian choreographer, dancer and writer
Navtej Singh Johar, a Bharatanatyam dancer-choreographer, yoga practitioner, scholar and social activist
Asad Ali Zulfiqar, a Karachi-based media artist
Sage Ni'Ja Whitson, a US-based queer non-binary, trans, multidisciplinary artist and futurist
J. Bouey, a US-based performer, choreographer, educator and writer

Overall, the book demonstrates the transformative potential of moving bodies and their ability to galvanise collective action globally and across generations.