-Ajay Bhardwaj –
It is explicitly clear at the very outset in Shashi Tharoor’s ‘Why I Am A Hindu’ that the book is his political attempt to articulate an alternative narrative of Hindutva with Hinduism on the mind. The compulsion seems to have come from Tharoor’s home state, Kerala, as much as from the Congress’s urgency to tread soft Hinduism, demonstrated clearly when Rahul Gandhi made calculated visits to temples during the Gujarat election campaign. And the fact that Tharoor is associated with the Congress Party with the set ideological formulation, the proposition hardly leaves any space for the scholarship.
Tharoor’s home state, Kerala, has been culturally caught in a fierce conflict. The gory political violence nurtured by Communists on the one hand and the growth of radical Islam on the other, is far too alarming. The BJP making in-roads in the state that has been a bastion of the Left or alternately of the Congress has ruffled some feathers, undoubtedly. RSS Sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat unfurling the national flag on the Republic Day in the state for two consecutive years must have been disturbing to the author.
Nobody questioned the Hindu credentials of Tharoor that might have had warranted the book. But the changed narrative of the Congress necessitated it for him. And the call is clear. The Congress is no less equipped to articulate the Hindu idiom. That the book is an assertion of the author, who happens to be an MP from Thiruvananthapuram, and caught in the characteristic Congress dilemma on soft Hinduism, is more than clear in the entire narrative. As if to assert that I am Hindu no less.
Moreover, Shashi Tharoor is no Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, who would philosophically expound the Hindu ethos with an insight. Wouldn’t “Why am I Hindu?” with a pronounced question mark have been more exploratory? But Shashi chooses to assert indignantly, “Why I am a Hindu” making the title of the book itself say a lot.
In the author’s note, Shashi says “mine is a layman’s view of Hinduism”. Not a Congress leader’s view, supposedly. But he very quickly admits in the same note that “my claims about being Hindu are undoubtedly mediated by political contestations”.
Pompous Juxtaposition
Suddenly there is a pompous juxtaposition of expressions saying “Some might suggest that the book is an exercise in attempting to fit something unwieldy and unclassifiable into terms an English-speaking 21st-century reader can understand”. In fact, more than the English-speaking it is the training in the western thought that has been blurring the vision and it is amply reflected in the book when Tharoor tends to draw a line between Hinduism and Hindutva and equate the Hindu ethos with a religion, forgetting the fact that what he calls ‘Hinduism’ includes many religions and what he differentiates as ‘Hindutva’ (Hinduness) are the common characteristics of those religions. The Western concepts of Hinduism, secularism and territorial nation ring a familiar tone of discordance to build an argument which is not rooted in the Bharatiya culture and ethos.
The book has three sections—My Hinduism, Political Hinduism, Taking Back Hinduism. All three sections strike a jarring note which is absolutely far away from the basic flavour of Hindu philosophy. The political agenda is loud and clear.
What does one want to read beyond when the author says “My Hinduism”? My Hinduism is the most un-Hindu expression one can have staying and living within the folds of Hindutva. One, because Hindutva has no “ism”, like the way one would have Islamism, Christianism or Judaism, and two, it’s never mine or your Hinduism or Hindutva. Do you say “my Sikhism” or “my Islamism”? Obviously, Tharoor is trivialising the entire narrative on a matter which has thousands of years of penance and thought behind it.
“My Hinduism was a lived faith”, says the author is the first few lines, trying to suggest as if it was a thing of past forgetting quite wilfully that the Hindu ethos is alive and throbbing even today in most parts of Bharat. Yes, it is disrupted violently, at times, when incidents like the one at Kasganj happened on the Republic Day. That a Hindu youth is killed for chanting Vande Mataram on the streets.
Anyway, Tharoor’s exercise to debunk the Hindu ethos starts unabashedly in the chapter, Questioning Hindu Customs, when Shashi starts casting an eye on the Hindu temples in the South where treasures were found to be deposited, and then so precariously and viciously harping on the Purush Sukta from the Vedas to question the genesis of the “varna” system.
Oh Guru!
And you have a chapter on Gurus and Guru Market which largely harps on Ram Rahim Singh, who is in jail and is being hauled up on various grounds. The chapter makes no mention of Guru Dronacharya, Guru Vashishta, Guru Dattatreya and hordes of other luminaries who have been torch-bearer of the civilisation in Bharat.
Next, the section talks about “Hindu Fatalism”. Significantly again, it would not compliment Bharat for its contribution to astronomy. That the Vedas, the Upanishads, Mahabharata and Ramayana have been loudly quiet about fatalism finds no mention in the book. It is the present day’s aberration which raises the crescendo, obviously to make a political statement.
The section on “Political Hinduism” clearly adumbrates the political agenda that Shashi is trying to push forward. He takes off with Vir Savarkar and his thesis of Hindutva which, he avers, “was an animating principle of a Hindu Rashtra”.
In a very brazen manner, Tharoor turns a blind eye to the socio-political turmoil obtaining during the times, the venomous Hindu-Muslim conflict that had started shaping up in the wake of the Khilafat Movement.
It was the time when the process of the resurgence of Hindu ethos had started in a pulsating manner. Swami Vivekananda, Sri Aurobindo, Bal Gangadhar Tilak being the torch-bearers of the times. It is interesting to see how Shashi Tharoor once again turns a blind eye to the designs the Muslim League had started weaving to cause a violent divide in the society.
But Tharoor’s engagement with the assertive articulation of Hindu mindset in the face of Muslim aggression reflects his predilections more clearly.
Without touching on Dr Hedgewar or Subhash Chander Bose, Tharoor jumps on to MS Golwalkar drawing largely from the book, Bunch of Thoughts, which is an anthology of his writings and speeches, and targets him for “not conforming to territorial nationalism.” It is so well known that Golwalkar had no word of hatred for the Muslims. His only thesis was that the Muslims should adopt India as their own nation, instead of looking out, the way Parsis and the Jews in India have adopted the nation. His attempt was to indigenise the Muslims, almost the same manner as they have been done in countries like England and the US. But Tharoor twists the entire narrative to project Golwalkar as a villain. It is a widely accepted fact that the RSS has never propounded aggressive assertion of Hindu ethos, has never talked about violence against Christians or Muslims.
Not content with his distortions, Tharoor takes Golwalkar into the fold of Nietzsche by misappropriating a quote which says “This absolutely Aryan testimony, a priestly codex of morality based on the Vedas, of a presentation of caste and of ancient provenance not pessimistic even though priestly”. Absurd, one may say. Well, that is how Tharoor weaves his argument.
Hindutva versus Hinduism, secularism versus nationalism
immediately become a focus for the RSS bashing. Halfway through the book one start feeling if it is a political commentary or a personal expression of a not-so-acolyte Hindu.
Disintegrated Narrative
Suddenly the narrative of the book shifts from Golwalkar to Deen Dayal Upadhyaya. No surprise in it. Just because the birth centenary of Deen Dayal ji was being celebrated in 2016-17, so the man catches the attention of the author and his philosophy of integral humanism, which essentially says that all human beings, regardless of their caste and creed, are integrated or are in unison, becomes a point of debate.
Yet, Tharoor dedicates almost 23 pages of his book on it with an underlining observation, “Pt Deen Dayal Upadhyaya is enjoying something of a renaissance these days”. Is Integral Humanism painful to the Muslims or the Christians? But Tharoor has a thesis. “Like Savarkar and Golwalkar, Upadhyaya too deplored the concept of territorial nationalism, which saw the Indian nation as being formed of all the peoples who reside in this land”, he says, forgetting the fact that ‘Cultural Nationalism’ reconnects the national resurgence with civilisational ethos.
Enunciating Upadhyaya’s philosophy Tharoor observes, “The philosophy of Integral Humanism advocated the simultaneous and integrated functioning of the body, mind, intellect and soul of each human being. The philosophy of Integral Humanism was a synthesis of the material and the spiritual, the individual and the collective.” Is there anything against the Muslims or the Christians in it? Socialism, secularism, nationalism are all alien to the classical ancient Bharatiya thought because they wear a Western dress. The Bharatiya concept of “Rashtra” is borne out of common thought obtaining on a piece of land, a common philosophy, as has been enunciated adequately in the Yajur Veda. When Pt Deen Dayal Upadhyaya was commenting on the Constitution, many Gandhians, members of Swaraj Party etc also criticised the basic framework adopted from the British laws, dos that make them anti-Constitution.
Some Discomfiture
The Communists with whom Tharoor and his party does not have any problems in hobnobbing neither participated in the Constitution making process nor accepted it with an open heart. On the other hand, once adopted, the Constitution of Bharat was always taken as the most revered document by the RSS and its followers. This was in tune with the true Hindu tradition.
Hindu ethos is not some kind of an “ism”. It is what one breathes and lives by. In his discomfiture Tharoor, however, does not shy away from making an elaborate mention to the Supreme Court observation in 1995 led by chief justice JS Verma saying “Ordinarily, Hindutva is understood as a way of life or a state of mind and is not to be equated with or understood as religious fundamentalism… it is a fallacy and an error”. Quite uncomfortable for Tharoor.
And he jumps on to ask the reader “what does this Islamicized Hinduism” of the Sangh Parivar consist of, and his answer is that” it rests on the atavistic belief that India has been the land of Hindus since ancient times and their identity and its identity are intertwined”.
The section of the book, “Beyond Holy Cows”, is a crass and an appalling example of his over-enthusiasm to equate fringe elements with the serious thought propounded by the Hindu organisations. While underlining the cultural and religious respect accorded to cow both, the RSS and the BJP, have, of course, condemned the violence in the name of cow. Tharoor does not realise the finesse with which Muslim acolytes get away with brutal violence. His problem seemingly is that why should the Hindus take arms to defend themselves and their faith.
Tharoor tends to wind up his thesis with the chapter “Taking Back Hinduism” with an opening sentence, “If Hindutva is resisted by the vast majority of liberal Hindus, it is hardly paradoxical to suggest that Hinduism, India’s ancient homegrown faith, can help strengthen Indianness.”
Tharoor becomes a self-proclaimed advocate of “liberals”, whom he sees in a majority and at that makes no bones about borrowing an overseas contention with a quote from Barack Obama’s address in 2015. “Obama’s message on both occasions was pointed; if India did not resolve the problems of bigotry that were dividing the country, Mr Modi’s proclaimed ambitious development plans would be thwarted”.
But Tharoor forgets the fact that in the US all communities merge their identities to respect the national flag and the national anthem.
Discordant Note
In India how often we hear voices which have no respect for the national flag or the national anthem and feel proud to proclaim from the roof-top that “Bharat tere tukde honge” (Bharat will be broken into pieces). Is it not natural that in the face of such a blatantly display of divisive forces, the sentiments in favour of Bharat as a nation would coalesce?
Harping on quotations like “sarva dharma sambhava”, “vasudhaiva kutumbakam” or “ekam sat, vipra bahuda vadanti” it is fine to condemn Hindu militants, but a similar credo needs to be followed by the Islamic hardliners, the Jihadis who have joined hands with “ultra-Left” to spell disruptive violence that calls for disintegration.
Tharoor is conspicuously silent on that and hence making his book nothing but a political statement which reads like an election manifesto of the Congress masqueraded as a book! *
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