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indiaabroad.com
Shashi Tharoor says Hinduism is ‘distorted’ for political reasons
Bhargavi Kulkarni
June 28, 2018 |
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 Indian Member of Parliament and author Shashi Tharoor poses for a photo with his latest book, "Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India" at a book launching event in New York City, June 26, 2018. (Jay Mandal/On Assignment) |
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NEW YORK — There is a need to reclaim Hinduism as a faith and social practice from its current misleading state, said author-politician Shashi Tharoor. “While Hinduism is a national identity, Hindutva is extremely political.”
Tharoor was speaking at the Delhi Art Gallery in Manhattan, June 26, at the launch of his two books “Inglorious Empire: What British did to India” and “Why I am a Hindu.” The event was hosted by the Indo-American Arts Council and the Delhi Art Gallery. In a lively discussion with Tunku Vardarajan, a fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, Tharoor talked about what Hinduism was and is -- and what it wasn’t meant to be.
In “Inglorious Empire,” Tharoor aims to tell the “real story of the British in India – from the arrival of the East India Company to the end of the Raj – revealing how Britain’s rise was built upon its plunder of India,” according to the book’s synopsis on the Hurst Publishers website. British imperialism justified itself as enlightened despotism for the benefit of the governed, but Tharoor “takes on and demolishes this position, demonstrating how every supposed imperial ‘gift’ – from the railways to the rule of law – was designed in Britain’s interests alone,” the website says.
On the other hand, “Why I Am a Hindu” is Tharoor’s attempt to differentiate between Hinduism and Hindutva. The book offers a brief history of Hinduism, then moves on to politics.The right term in the Indian context is not secularism, but pluralism, he says in the book, “for India is and has long been a land of many religions.”
Most of the evening’s discussion revolved around “Why I Am a Hindu,” which is to be released in the U.S. this fall. The author-politician acknowledged that while his book addresses issues that he has been thinking about since childhood and has written about before, “increasingly as political Hinduism in the form of Hindutva came front and centre of our public discourse, it has became more and more necessary to challenge the uncontested assumption that the only Hinduism is the RSS branch of Hinduism, which it is not.” A vast majority of Hindus don’t share the politics of Hindutva or even some of the not-so-benign assumptions of Hindutva, whereas they are proud of their Hinduism and practice the faith, he said.
Hinduism is a very tolerant religion, Tharoor said. “Acceptance of difference goes to the heart of Hinduism,” he said. Giving examples of his growing-up years, which are included in the book, Tharoor said that being raised a Hindu, his early memories of Hinduism are what he saw practiced at home by his own father.
“A devout man, he would go straight from his bath to the prayer room but never obliged anyone else at home to join him,” Tharoor said of his father. He described this as an early lesson in the Hindu idea that prayer or worship was between you and your idea of your maker, it was very personal. “And if I wanted to pray or worship I had to find my truth,” he said.
With the rise of the Hindutva brigade and the “distortion” of Hinduism, the Congress MP from Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala said the Opposition has its work cut out for itself. The role of the Congress he said “is to neutralize the argument that BJP is the only party working for the benefit of the Hindus. They are not the only Hindus,” he said. While the Opposition is speaking for majority of Indians, he acknowledged that the part is facing real challenges. “The Opposition needs to make its voice heard,” he said, adding, “we are up against a well-oiled machine.
There are serious risks to the nation if BJP comes into power again, he said. India needs to focus on both the hardware and software development like infrastructure, education and healthcare, he said. If Modi had fulfilled his promises of economic growth job creations – “the dreams that were sold to the nation” – “acche din” – it could’ve been a different story, Tharoor said. But the party got sidetracked and focused only on their cultural agenda, he said. “The future of India lies in the hands of Indians,” he said, “We have to make the right decisions.”
But at the same time, Tharoor said India’s history makes him optimistic that the Narendra Modi-led government will not be able to do permanent damage to India’s reputation as a raucous liberal democracy. “The classic elements of fascism don’t exist in today’s India, and can’t be brought in here because the society is not amenable to that sort of treatment,” he said. “We are multi-ethnic, we are multi-religious, we have a free media, and we have multiple institutions such as the Supreme Court, the press, the parliament.”
Tharoor had been at the United Nations for 29 years and served as undersecretary-general. He is the author of 14 other books. Tharoor has won a number of literary awards and was named a Global Leader of Tomorrow by the World Economic Forum in Davos in 1998.
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