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The enemy lies within
MY avowal of my own Hinduism in my last column has elicited a surprising — and in many cases surprised — response from readers. Why should it have? Must every believing Hindu automatically be assumed to believe in the Hindutva project? It is hardly paradoxical to suggest that Hinduism, India's ancient home-grown faith, can help strengthen Indianness in ways that the proponents of Hindutva have not understood. In one sense Hinduism is almost the ideal faith for the 21st Century: a faith without apostasy, where there are no heretics to cast out because there has never been any such thing as a Hindu heresy, a faith that is eclectic and non-doctrinaire, responds ideally to the incertitudes of a post-modern world. Hinduism, with its openness, its respect for variety, its acceptance of all other faiths, is one religion which should be able to assert itself without threatening others. But this cannot be the Hinduism that destroyed a mosque, nor the Hindutva spewed in hate-filled speeches by communal politicians. It has to be the Hinduism of Swami Vivekananda, who more than a century ago, at Chicago's World Parliament of Religions in 1893, articulated best the liberal humanism that lies at the heart of his (and my) creed: I am proud to belong to a religion which has taught the world both tolerance and universal acceptance. We believe not only in universal toleration, but we accept all religions as true. I am proud to belong to a country which has sheltered the persecuted and the refugees of all religions and all countries of the earth. I am proud to tell you that we have gathered in our bosom the purest remnant of the Israelites, who came to southern India and took refuge with us in the very year in which their holy temple was shattered to pieces by Roman tyranny. I am proud to belong to the religion which has sheltered and is still fostering the remnant of the grand Zoroastrian nation. I remember having repeated a hymn from my earliest boyhood, which is every day repeated by millions of human beings: "As the different streams having their sources in different places all mingle their water in the sea, so, O Lord, the different paths which men take through different tendencies, various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to Thee." .... [T]he wonderful doctrine preached in the Gita [says]: "Whosoever comes to Me, through whatsoever form, I reach him; all men are struggling through paths which in the end lead to me." Vivekananda went on to denounce the fact that "sectarianism, bigotry, and its horrible descendant, fanaticism, have long possessed this beautiful earth". His confident belief that their death-knell had sounded was sadly not to be borne out. But his vision — summarised in the Sanskrit credo "Sarva Dharma Sambhava, all religions are equally worthy of respect" — is, in fact, the kind of Hinduism practised by the vast majority of India's Hindus, whose instinctive acceptance of other faiths and forms of worship has long been the vital hallmark of Indianness. Vivekananda made no distinction between the actions of Hindus as a people (the grant of asylum, for instance) and their actions as a religious community (tolerance of other faiths): for him, the distinction was irrelevant because Hinduism was as much a civilisation as a set of religious beliefs. In a different speech to the same Chicago convention, Swami Vivekananda set out his philosophy in simple terms: Unity in variety is the plan of nature, and the Hindu has recognised it. Every other religion lays down certain fixed dogmas and tries to force society to adopt them. It places before society only one coat which must fit Jack and John and Henry, all alike. If it does not fit John or Henry, he must go without a coat to cover his body. The Hindus have discovered that the absolute can only be realised, or thought of, or stated through the relative, and the images, crosses, and crescents are simply so many symbols — so many pegs to hang spiritual ideas on. It is not that this help is necessary for everyone, but those that do not need it have no right to say that it is wrong. Nor is it compulsory in Hinduism .... The Hindus have their faults, but mark this, they are always for punishing their own bodies, and never for cutting the throats of their neighbours. If the Hindu fanatic burns himself on the pyre, he never lights the fire of Inquisition.
It is sad that this assertion of Vivekananda's is being contradicted in the streets by those who claim to be reviving his faith in his name. Of course it is true that, while Hinduism as a faith might privilege tolerance, this does not necessarily mean that all Hindus behave tolerantly. Nor should we assume that, even when religion is used as a mobilising identity, all those so mobilised act in accordance with the tenets of their religion. Nonetheless it is ironic that even the Maratha warrior-king Shivaji, after whom the bigoted Shiv Sena is named, exemplified the tolerance of Hinduism. In the account of a critic, the Mughal historian Khafi Khan, Shivaji made it a rule that his followers should do no harm to mosques, the Koran or to women. "Whenever a copy of the sacred Koran came into his hands," Khafi Khan wrote, Shivaji "treated it with respect, and gave it to some of his Mussalman followers".
Indians today have to find real answers to the dilemmas of running a plural nation. "A nation," wrote the Zionist visionary Theodor Herzl, "is a historical group of men of recognisable cohesion, held together by a common enemy". The common enemy of Indians is an internal one, but not the one identified by Mr. Togadia and his ilk. The common enemy lies in the forces of sectarian division that would, if unchecked, tear the country apart — or transform it into something that all self-respecting Hindus would refuse to recognise.
(To be continued)
Shashi Tharoor is the author of India: from Midnight to the Millennium and the recent novel Riot. Visit him at www.shashitharoor.com
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