For an example of how India often struggles with its secular ideals, especially in election years, look no further than Andhra Pradesh. The chief minister Y.S. Reddy has decided the large southern Indian state will subsidise pilgrimages for Christians who want to travel to Israel.

This kind of subsidy is not new. The central government has for years offered subsidies to Muslims wanting to join the annual haj pilgrimage to Mecca. New Delhi even has a special haj air terminal for Muslims, who account for about 13 percent of India’s 1.1 billion population. Tens of thousands travel every year from India.

But the latest announcement has sparked debate in India over whether it further eats into the country’s secular ideals.

“The government has undermined Indian secularism once again,” said one India’s leading newspapers, the Times of India. The Indian constitution says there should be no discrimination on religious grounds. It is broadly intepreted to mean that none of India’s religious groups, whether majority Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Buddhists and Sikhs, should ever dominate. That secular identity was the pride of many of the country’s founders 60 years ago after independence.

The debate is now focused on what kind of secularism should exist. Should there be the kind of separation of church and state as in France, where the idea that religion should be kept out of public life is strong? Or should India make compromises by appeasing minority faiths to ensure religious harmony?

The original argument for subsidies for Muslims, who are among the poorest members of Indian society, was that it helped them go on the haj many could not otherwise afford. It’s still controversial, though, and even one of India’s school text books has a chapter titled “Should a secular state provide subsidies for the Haj pilgrimage?”

But critics say the latest move over Christians was a cheap populist trick ahead of state elections this year. While Christians account for only 2 percent of Andhra Pradesh’s population, that’s still 1.2 million people.

Subsidies like this have long been criticised by India’s main Hindu nationalist opposition, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The party has asked why Hindus, who account for about 80 percent of the population, don’t get subsidies to visit Hindu temples. For the BJP, the current secularism in India is another word for “appeasement of minorities”.

Defenders of the move argue that India’s secularism is much more loosely fitting, as highlighted by the controversy last month when the French government awarded an exiled Muslim woman writer in India with the Simone de Beauvoir Prize. That prize met with silent disapproval from the Indian government, worried the award could incite Muslim groups. It showed how the Indian government is reluctant to speak publicly of lofty secular ideals — ideas the French loudly defend — if it means upsetting a religious group.

The debate this time round has also come down to politics and electoral votes. As the Times of India’s Ronojoy Sen pointed out, those opposing the subsidies to Christians should also oppose the haj subsidy. But no political party, even the BJP, has ended that.

With 13 percent of India’s population, that’s a lot of Muslim votes to lose. Especially in an election year.

So what exactly were more than two million Muslim pilgrims doing on the plain of Arafat outside Mecca on the afternoon of December 18, also known as the 9th of Dhul Hijja? I was there too, among them, so I should know, shouldn’t I? I must have seen many thousands of them close up on the haj this year, looked into their faces and tried to guess what they were thinking.

The conventional wisdom is that they were praying, at least the ones who were staying still and not engaged in the more mundane tasks of life, such as setting up tents, fetching water for their families, or waiting to get a free breakfast from the charity container truck. Activities of that kind accounted for quite a proportion of the total, especially people walking, walking by the tens of thousands, walking to explore, walking to find better places to sit, walking to find lost friends and relatives or just walking because it was a change from sitting, where they might be buffeted by the feet and bags of passing pedestrians, or asphyxiated by the exhaust of giant buses, or troubled by the accumulating piles of rubbish as people threw down orange peel, biscuit wrappers, milk cartons and discarded flipflops. Of those who were sitting, quite a number were chatting with their friends and neighbours and, judging by the snippets of conversation I overheard, much of the talk was of the basic logistics of surviving the day. How far is it to Mohamed’s tent? Which lavatories do you think are the best? How much are the bananas?

Now there were some people praying, or at least going through the motions of praying. Maybe their eyes were closed or their hands were cupped in that distinctive manner, or their lips were moving silently, or they were rocking rhythmically from side to side. If you found someone with the time to talk, they would invariably tell you that they had prayed and that this was one of their reasons for being there. I might add that they were talking about personal prayers, to Muslims something quite distinct from the formal prayers which they say five times a day at set times. In the formal prayers you can’t slip in one for your sick grandmother. That’s a separate operation, with distinct rules. Most of the pilgrims spent at least five hours on the plain, about the minimum to qualify as a certified haji. But interestingly, prayer on the plain is not obligatory. The best explanation I heard came from a Sudanese carpenter who had performed the pilgrimage many times. He said that prayer on the plain on that particular day was especially effective, so it was wise to take advantage of the opportunity. That seems to be a view close to the traditional consensus.

I bring all this up because it illustrates the problems facing a journalist trying to say what is going on in the minds of others, especially in the minds of millions of people. There’s a natural tendency to go for the easy option – ‘millions of people spent the afternoon in prayer’. That gives a very misleading impression of people on their knees, silent, for hours on end. There’s also a tendency for someone brought up in Europe, as I was, to impose the norms of their culture onto others.

But the haj is unlike anything I am aware of that would be familiar to Europeans or Americans. It is essentially an elaborate performance, a series of acts and spoken words spread over many days which, taken together, fulfill a religious obligation. If the pilgrim omits one of the acts, his pilgrimage is incomplete and God might not accept it as valid. Enthusiasm in the evangelical sense is not part of the package. I did see some people who were highly emotional – the men who wept when they touched the Kaaba, for example. But there were many others – frustratingly many, from the point of view of a journalist seeking colourful language – who seemed to have a rather humdrum dutiful approach to their hajj. The most common answer to the question ‘Why are you making the pilgrimage?’ was ‘Because it is a religious duty’. Few said anything emotional, mystical or inspirational. Asked what the highlight or the ‘best part’ had been, many mentioned logistical aspects, such as the new crowd control measures, which made it easier to move around.

I came to the conclusion that people performed the pilgrimage for a whole variety of reasons, including of course belief in its obligatory nature and because they are want to worship God ‘from close up’. But there are clearly other reasons too – peer pressure and to acquire social prestige are two of the most obvious. A surprisingly large number were already multiple hajis, many coming for their fourth, fifth, even 20th time, although they know that once in a lifetime is enough. What is that was so compelling that they felt the need to come back time and again? I don’t know the answers to any of these questions, but I come back from the haj convinced more than ever that journalists must think twice before they jump to conclusions about what people are thinking, and even before they take at face value what people say they are thinking.

If you’re going on the haj pilgrimage, be fit and bring a sturdy pair of sandals. As with any pilgrimage, walking long distances is hard to avoid. The alternative is to sit in endless traffic jams inhaling diesel fumes. I didn’t walk as much as the real pilgrims did on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, but when I fell asleep at 7 a.m. in a resthouse, I had been walking since 1.30 a.m.

The journey began at sunset on Tuesday, the peak of the pilgrimage. Pilgrims have to spend the afternoon in a confined area on the Plain of Arafat. ‘Being there’ is what counts. Clerics say private prayers said during this period are particularly effective . Some people slept in tents or just walked around, in as much as that was possible amid more than two million people, the heat and the rapidly accumulating rubbish.

As the sun went down, pilgrims dressed in loose white cloth pressed against the western limits of the confined area. Once it disappeared behind the rocky hills, they surged forward towards Mecca, like a liquid boiling over. We journalists took cars this time. As we approached Muzdalifa, the first station on the way back to Mecca, I could see that people had trekked into the rocky hills and were settling down to sleep a few hours in the rough. Our car took us to another guesthouse, where we had dinner, the usual boiled sheep and rice that Saudis seem to live on. Apart from breakfast, it’s the only dish we’ve eaten since our journey began on Monday.

In Muzdalifa we had to collect pebbles to throw at the stone pillars further towards Mecca the next day. Opinion was divided on how many we needed. One person said just seven, but the Ministry of Haj web site clearly said 70. “Seventy was just a typo for seven,” one of my companions said. I took his advice and picked seven, but by the time we left, opinion in the group had shifted to 49 plus some spares. So I made it 70 after all.

After midnight, I hitched a ride with Saudis from a religious television station called Tafaani, roughly translatable as ‘total dedication (to God)’. They left me at another resthouse where I found my windowless dormitory room. By this stage, stains from spilt tea and smudges from squeezing between buses at Arafat had soiled large sections of my once white clothes. I hadn’t shaved for days because I wasn’t sure it was permitted. But I had to complete certain procedures before I could change clothes and shave. The first was to walk 280 steps down the hill to throw my seven stones at the Big Jamara, one of three ‘pillars’ — now walls — in a ceremony symbolising defiance of the devil. It was like a giant underground car park, with vast pillars and walkways of bare grey concrete devised to channel millions of people a day through without them crushing each other to death. The stoning took at most 20 seconds.

Around the corner, some people had started cutting their hair or shaving their heads. Serious men have the shave, but I was not about to let some stranger with a rusty razor start cutting into my scalp. Hacking away with my own nail scissors in semi-darkness without a mirror, I took off at least half of it all round. Several people came up and asked me to cut their hair, and I gladly agreed. One old man had so little hair anyway that it was a challenge finding any to cut.

Back up the 280 steps, I looked in the mirror and made some adjustments to the parts which were noticeable longer. Then I consulted the nearest Saudi on what to do next. Return to the Kaaba in Mecca, reperform the rites there and buy a sacrifice voucher, he said. I set off into the night, walking for half an hour until a broad pedestrian walkway appeared to the right. I joined the pilgrims taking it, confident we were all headed in the right direction.

Another half hour and we entered a vast concrete tunnel, ventilated by powerful and noisy fans set in the ceiling. The tunnel, one mile long and sloping steeply downwards, ends in the underground precincts of the Mecca sanctuary. Coming up the stairs, there was the overpowering marble mosque, brightly lit at 3 a.m. and full of people. The inner courtyard at ground level was too crowded for me to tackle so I went up to the first floor. Since circling the Kaaba there is much longer, I went for bare minimum option, three circumbulations instead of the preferred seven. The walk was hazardous. Crazed young Saudis zipped people in wheelchairs round the circuit, coming up behind me and hissing for me to move out of the way. After the three circuits, I had to go say two prayers facing the Station of Abraham. Then off for the sa’y ritual, again three times instead of seven.

By this time it was about 5 a.m. and I was ready to go home. Mistakenly taking the road to the right of a mysterious fortress-like complex towering above the Grand Mosque sanctuary, I trudged along for some time before seeing it veered off into the hills. On my way back down to the sanctuary, I saw the complex belonged to the Royal Guard and could probably hold a garrison of thousands, ready for deployment in case of trouble.

Hiking the four or five miles back to Mina, I thought about the traditional sheep sacrifice at the end of the rituals. For ethical and environmental reasons, I don’t approve of bringing live sheep in ships from New Zealand, slaughtering them in Mecca and then sending the frozen meat to people in Bangladesh. Using land to raise sheep is not the way to help feed the poor, carrying them on ships is unnecessary cruelty and people around these parts eat far too much red meat anyway. In the time of the Prophet Mohammad, sacrificing a sheep was a special occasion, not a daily occurrence, and the sheep were locally reared in a way that was ecologically sustainable. I’ll take my chances on God accepting a modern substitute, a donation the equivalent of 390 Saudi riyals ($104) — the price of a sheep — to a charity that really helps the poor. And that is a solemn vow.

“Now’s the moment to say special prayers, for your family or anyone else you want to pray for,” said my Lebanese companion Ahmed. As he spoke, we caught a first glimpse of the black cloth cover of the Kaaba through the arches of the King Abdul Aziz Gate into the Grand Mosque in Mecca. I tried to remember all the people who had asked for prayers and mentally checked off their names, just in case. We picked our way through the crowds, some in the plain white cloth worn by pilgrims, others in ordinary street wear, according to their status under the complicated rules of the haj pilgrimage.

The overwhelming impression was of dazzling white marble and of arches with white plaster crenellations receding into the distance. The Saudi government has spared no expense in making this mosque, built around the focal point of daily worship for hundreds of millions of Muslims, into a monument inspiring awe and wonder among the millions who visit every year — especially those here for the first time. But the austere simplicity of the Kaaba itself, a plain stone cubic building covered in black cloth and wrapped in Arabic writing in golden silk, makes an even greater impression on visitors. Many raise their arms as it looms into sight from the edge of the inner courtyard, as if to protect themselves from some mysterious power, or perhaps to absorb some of the blessings they think it radiates.

We skipped down the marble steps into the courtyard and made our way towards the Kaaba, joining a crowd of several thousand performing the tawaf ritual – the counter-clockwise circumambulation of the Kaaba, the first part of the umra ceremony which pilgrims usually perform on arrival in Mecca. The tawaf ritual predates Islam, possibly by many hundreds of years, and its origins may be lost in the mists of time. Muslims associate the Kaaba with the prophet Ibrahim, the biblical Abraham, seen as the founder of a pure monotheism which slowly declined until revived in the 7th century by the prophet of Islam.

We shuffled barefoot around the four walls, pressed on all sides by men and women of many colours and languages. Men and women take part together, the men loosely cloaked in a white cloth thrown only over the left shoulder. The women cover their hair but leave their faces bare. Many pilgrims carried prayer books, some picking out the Arabic words with difficulty as they circled. Other read from texts in Urdu and languages in Latin and Cyrillic scripts.

Some came in groups with a leader. The leader would prompt them on each word, which the others shouted out in unison, one word at a time. Many were praying for forgiveness, others simple words of praise for God. Wives and husbands came together, often the man standing behind the woman, holding her shoulders and trying to shield her from the crush. Pilgrims walk around seven times, joining the circle whenever they please and leaving when they are done. The circle has not been broken for years, day in, day out, all night as well, even during Friday prayers. The last interruption may have been in 1979, when rebels took over the mosque, leading to a long and bloody siege.

The first circuit seemed to take an age — actually, about 10 minutes — and I wondered how I would last another six amid the heat and the sweat and the crush. But it became rhythmic, even mildly hypnotic, and the time passed fast. Ahmed and I moved closer to the Kaaba, cutting into the narrow passage between the stone wall and the Station of Abraham, a cylindrical glass and copper case containing a block of stone with the imprint of a foot. A sea of hands reached up to touch the cover of the monument, seeking blessings. Ahmed was not inclined to go closer to the Kaaba, where the crowd was heaviest. Clerics say that in the tawaf it makes no difference how far pilgrims are from the Kaaba, as long as they are within the confines of the sanctuary.

Our tawaf done, we headed for the area behind the Station of Ibrahim for two quick prayers. The area was packed with people clambering over those praying as they moved about the courtyard. In the crush, someone trod on the small bag Ahmed was carrying, breaking his glasses. My mobile phone skidded away across the polished marble, through a forest of bare feet. For a moment I thought it was gone for good, but seconds later I caught a glimpse of it and retrieved it. As at many crowded religious gatherings, pickpockets are active at the haj, taking advantage of people’s preoccupation with their religious duties. The lower part of my white clothes had a small pocket, big enough for a passport and money but not for notebook, telephone and shoes.

We stopped for a cup or two of water from the well of Zamzam, to which many pilgrims attribute miraculous healing powers. The water flows from taps all over the mosque complex and servers ensure steady supplies of disposable plastic cups. The taste was distinctly alkaline. Many pilgrims came with large plastic containers, even of a gallon or more, and filled them to take home as gifts for their friends. A Nigerian pilgrim told me that a recent scientific study proved its miraculous powers

The next major procedure in the umra is the sa’y, a brisk walk between two small hillocks, originally in the open air but now under cover, with powerful fans to cool off the pilgrims. We thought we had started at the wrong end and would have to do eight lengths instead of the prescribed seven. But when we reached the hillock at the other end of the walkway, more than 400 metres away, Ahmed realised that the crowd had confused him. At the end of each length, as they mounted the hillock, pilgrims again raised their hands towards the Kaaba, hardly visible between the pillars of the intervening halls. I noticed with physical pleasure the small marble tiles on the sloped parts, designed for bare toes to grip on as they climb.

Compared to the tawaf, the sa’y was relaxed, but its significance was less obvious. Few pilgrims I met said the sa’y was especially inspiring. The orthodox explanation is that it reenacts a frantic run back and forth by Abraham’s wife Hagar as she sought water for her infant son, and then the miraculous appearance of the Zamzam well to meet their need. Anthropologists have other explanations, rejected by the faithful.

Our sa’y completed, we slipped around the corner where youngsters with small scissors were waiting to clip our hair. They cut about half an inch from five or six spots around our heads, enough to meet the minimal requirement. Later in the week, someone will shave our heads completely. The boys clearly expected a tip for their 20-second task but Ahmed said it wasn’t necessary. Extracting money from your ihram clothing is quite an ordeal.

Ahmed and I parted. He had come to complete the rites, but now I wanted to talk to some of the pilgrims and hear their experiences of what for many of them will be one of the most memorable events in their life. I wandered through the marble halls where families had encamped, spreading rugs and cloths of every colour and design, resting and breathing in the atmosphere of the sanctuary. Old men from India, fakir-like, wiry, bronzed and bearded, lay in their white cloths, half their upper bodies exposed. Egyptian matrons, past the 55-year threshold below which women pilgrims need the company of a male relative, sat cross-legged in groups , reading from the identical Korans which the mosque supplies to anyone who wants to borrow one.

They all looked too preoccupied for conversation so I headed back towards the Kaaba, thinking that perhaps I should take a closer look at the Black Stone, the mysterious possibly meteoric rock, now fragmented, set in the eastern corner of the building. Though the religious authorities disapprove of superstitious or idolatrous activities, they have not been able to persuade some pilgrims, especially simple villagers, that the stone is just a stone, as the Caliph Omar reputedly said.

I slid back into the circling crowd, easing my way slowly towards the wall of the Kaaba as we circled. After close to two circuits, I found myself in reach of the southeastern face of the cube, alongside men pressing themselves again the stone. A space opened and I stepped in, laying the palms of my hands against the wall for just a few seconds. I glanced to the side and saw the faces of my neighbours. One was shedding ecstatic tears, one was kissing the stone, one had taken off his embroidered cap and was rubbing it up and down along the surface of the wall. Down the line, another man had his prayer rug crumpled in his hand like a giant rag and was polishing the Kaaba with it as he chanted.

I moved along the wall towards the stone, half a side away, squeezed in the sea of heaving bodies. As we started to wheel around the corner, just three determined bodies stood between the stone and me. I tried to squeeze in for a closer look but my neighbours were stronger than me and the force of the crowd was more than I could hold back. We all swung around and the stone was gone.