Secularism is the principle of separation between government institutions and the persons mandated to represent the State from religious institutions and religious dignitaries. In one sense, secularism may assert the right to be free from religious rule and teachings, and the right to freedom from governmental imposition of religion upon the people within a state that is neutral on matters of belief. (See also separation of church and state and Laïcité.) In another sense, it refers to the view that human activities and decisions, especially political ones, should be unbiased by religious influence. (See also public reason.) Some scholars are now arguing that the very idea of secularism will change.

Secularism draws its intellectual roots from Greek and Roman philosophers such as Marcus Aurelius and Epicurus; medieval Muslim polymaths such as Ibn Rushd; Enlightenment thinkers such as Denis Diderot, Voltaire, Baruch Spinoza, John Locke, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and Thomas Paine; and more recent freethinkers, agnostics, and atheists such as Robert Ingersoll and Bertrand Russell.

Atal Bihari Vajpayee (Hindi: अटलबिहारी वाजपेयी, Birth: 25 December 1924 in Gwalior) is a veteran Indian statesman who served as a non congress Prime Minister of India three times, viz. 13 days in 1996, 13 months from 1998 to 1999, and lastly a five year's term from 19 March 1998 until 19 May 2004. A parliamentarian for over four decades, Vajpayee was elected to the Lok Sabha a record nine times, and twice to the Rajya Sabha. He also served as the Member of Parliament for Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, until 2009, when he retired from active politics due to health concerns. Vajpayee was one amongst the founder members of erstwhile Jana Sangh and had been its president also. He was also the Minister of External Affairs in the cabinet of Morarji Desai. When Janata government collapsed Vajpayee merged his entire party into a fresh party and named it as Bharatiya Janata Party in the interest of nation. A poet-politician Vajpayee has been the liberal face of BJP.

Atal Bihari Vajpayee was born to Krishna Devi and Krishna Bihari Vajpayee on 25th December, 1924 in a respected middle class Brahmin family. His birthplace was Shinde Ki Chhavani, a small town in Gwalior district of Madhya Pradesh (then known as Central Province). His grandfather, Pandit Shyam Lal Vajpayee, had migrated to Gwalior from his ancestral village of Bateshwar, Uttar Pradesh and his father, Krishna Bihari Vajpayee, was a poet and a schoolmaster in his hometown. Vajpayee attended Gwalior's Victoria College (now Laxmi Bai College), and graduated with distinctions in Hindi, English and Sanskrit. He completed his Post Graduation with a (M.A.) degree in Political Science from DAV College, Kanpur, securing first-class. Later he became a full time worker of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and served the Rashtradharma, Veer Arjun and Panchjanya newspapers as a journalist. Like other full time workers of the Sangh, Vajpayee never married and decided to dedicate his entire life for the service of the nation.

Andrew Copson FRSA MCMI MCIPR is (since January 2010) Chief Executive of the British Humanist Association. He is a regular contributor to New Humanist Magazine, and has also written for The Guardian and New Statesman. Before becoming Chief Executive, he was responsible for education and public affairs at the BHA. He campaigns for an open society without faith schools, religious privilege or discrimination.

He is a Member of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations, an Associate of the Centre for Law and Religion at Cardiff University and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He has a first class degree in Ancient and Modern History from Oxford University where he attended Balliol College.

Anne Atkins (born 1956) is an English broadcaster, journalist and novelist. A regular contributor to the Today programme's "Thought for the Day" feature, she is the author of three novels, The Lost Child, On Our Own, and A Fine and Private Place.

Anne Atkins was born in 1956 at Bryanston, Dorset, and moved to Cambridge at the age of three when her father became headmaster of King's College School. She went to Byron House School, the Cambridgeshire High School for Girls and the Perse School for Girls. After school, she went to the Decroux School of Mime in Paris and studied harp under Solonge Renie. She studied English Language and Literature at Brasenose College, Oxford, and then trained at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art in London.

She started her acting career at St George’s Shakespeare Theatre in Tufnell Park. Her career moved increasingly into writing until her last theatre appearance at the National Theatre in 1991.

The Lost Child is based on a true story, in which a family makes a decision one summer which haunts five-year-old Sandy into adulthood. Interwoven with the history of Cassandra, sooth-saying daughter of Priam King of Troy, The Lost Child was described by The Sunday Times as “ambitious and very readable”, and in The Telegraph, “the perceptions of childhood are excellent.”

Daniel Turp (born April 30, 1955 in Verdun, Quebec) is a politician in Quebec, Canada. He has served as a Bloc Québécois Member of Parliament (1997–2000) and as a Parti Québécois member of the Quebec National Assembly (2003–2008).

Born in Montreal he was raised as a Roman Catholic, although converted to Presbyterianism. He is a member of the Church of St. Andrew and St. Paul in Montreal.

Turp studied law at the Université de Montréal and the University of Ottawa, and received his legal licence in Sherbrooke in 1977. He gained a Master's degree at the Université de Montréal in 1978. He has worked for the Canadian International Development Agency, and was called as an expert for the Bélanger-Campeau Commission on Quebec's constitutional future.

Turp also started teaching at the Université de Montréal since 1982. Since then, he has taught several law courses at the University of Paris X (1986–1996), The International Institute of Human Rights in Strasbourg (1988) and Harvard University (1996). He has also been a director of studies at the International law academy in The Hague (1995).