Whose Hinduism is it? In his attempt to wrest the religion from what he calls Hindutvavadis, Shashi Tharoor , in his new book Why I Am a Hindu , gilds the religion as “that most plural, inclusive, eclectic and expansive of faiths” and absolves it of its darkest crime: the caste system. In the great whitewash of Hinduism that has been happening recently, Tharoor’s has to be the most insidious.While others claim a mythical golden past as the reality, Tharoor obfuscates a grotesque reality, the greatest abomination of the religion.“Hindu society may have maintained a distasteful practice but no one can credibly argue that it is intrinsic to the religion,” Tharoor writes about the caste system, eagerly exonerating Hinduism of it.If Hinduism, as privileged liberals like to pronounce, is a way of life — although they conveniently don’t specify whose way of life, the Dalit’s, the Brahmin’s or the backward caste’s — then how can you separate the belief from the believer? If Hinduism is not defined by a text or a prophet — as the elite Hindu boasts to claim superiority over “rigid” Abrahamic faiths — and if Hinduism is a religion in praxis, then its most defining, denigrating acts have been the ones associated with caste.Caste marks a Hindu’s life — even that of Tharoor, who tries to cast the religion in his own image of a liberal Indian. Tharoor speaks indulgently of his father — who used up most of his savings for the rebuilding of the Guruvayur temple after it was engulfed by a fire and who carried an amulet of the Virgin Mary — as I used to of my grandfather, who fasted during Ramzan and Lent.That capaciousness to hold other religions, at least for my grandfather, was not because of Hinduism but in spite of Hinduism. It was prompted by a belief in something far bigger and nobler, a faith that was then young and new: secularism. Tharoor’s family’s devotion to the Guruvayur temple itself is a privilege.Because it was just 25 years before Tharoor was born that people had agitated to have the gates of the shrine opened for oppressed castes — in vain. My forefathers would have been driven away from the temple. Most inclusive of all faiths? Tharoor is gravely mistaken.Tharoor asks, in his effort to distance caste from religion: “Is a religion responsible for the worst behaviour of its followers?” And answers: “Perhaps not.”And who are these followers who have committed the worst behaviour? Let us go to a place that Tharoor and I are both familiar with: Travancore, the former princely state in southern Kerala. I was born there. Tharoor represents the constituency Thiruvananthapuram, which was its old capital. The Hindu royalty there ruled in the name of Lord Padmanabha (of the temple now famous for the riches in its caverns).In April 1895, when a young boy from the backward Ezhava caste sent a petition to allow him to study in an English-medium school in Attingal, he was told that he could not as people would rise against it. In 1891, of the 3,87,176 Ezhavas in Travancore, there was not even one person with a monthly salary of Rs 5 or above in government service. Social reformer P Palppu said lower castes had a far better deal in Britishruled Malabar.That was how deep and dark caste ran in a Hindu kingdom and one of the greatest temples. Like in Guruvayur, the temple at Vaikom was closed to lower castes; they were denied access to even the roads leading to it.Untouchability and unapproachability scarred the land. Palppu wrote to Mahatma Gandhi in 1925 that the right to “walk through the public road is one that even dogs and pigs enjoy without resorting to Satyagraha”. When Gandhi met a few upper caste men who were staunchly opposed to allowing lower castes anywhere near the temple, he first put forward the same argument that Tharoor does. Gandhi told them that he could not find warrant for this prohibition in any of the scriptures.They then fished out a copy of the Sankara Smriti which, they believed, was written by Adi Sankara, and pointed to the 64 anacharams that he had specified. Couplet No. 5: Brahmins have to purify themselves with a bath if they touch or come near a lower caste. Gandhi finally had to say that religions have to stand the test of universal reason. Expansive of all faiths? No.Tharoor puts Hinduism on a higher pedestal than Christianity with its proselytising missionaries. But it was because of missionary schools that a vast majority of backward castes and Dalits could study when Hindu kings and dewans resolutely shut down schools apart from government offices and temples and public spaces to them. In Christianity and Islam, oppressed castes found a new life and faith.In the early 20th century, among the Ezhavas of Travancore there was a great debate on conversion and on whether Christianity or Islam or Buddhism would be the best way out. Gandhi asked social reformer Sree Narayana Guru: “What do you think of religious conversion?” Narayana said: “Those who have converted have experienced freedom. Therefore they can’t be faulted for saying conversion is good.”Tharoor, born on Shivaratri and therefore named Shashi and whose ishtadevata is Ganapathy, says, “There can be no Hindu Inquisition.” There was. It happened right here in this land, it happened as Hinduism incarcerated its own, for generations, for centuries.The vestiges of that are still seen in matrimonial columns and marriages, in the number of Dalits in our offices, in whispers that seek to find the caste of your neighbour, your driver, your domestic help, your boss, your colleague, your Facebook friend, in ways in which we weigh people and the gradations by which we choose to include and exclude them, in the pure Brahmin sambar that we cherish, in the lynching of a tribal in Kerala last month, in the caste wall that came up around Vadayambadi near Kochi, in the Mandal fires then and the disdain towards reservation now, and in backward castes who try to Sanskritise themselves and rush to Gita classes where they study about Krishna saying: “Chatur varnyam maya srishtam.”Caste is the original sin that stains the religion and stamps its followers. Tharoor says, “Despite the flaws in some of its practices, my admiration for and pride in Hinduism outweighs my critical concerns, and make no apology for this.”Only the privileged can do that, thump their chests and give a proud exposition of Why I Am a Hindu. One can marvel at Hindu mythology, hew to any of the ancient philosophies, but to profess pride in the religion amounts to a negation of the great cruelties it has inflicted on its people. The excesses of Hindutva can’t be confronted by harking back to the “truest essence” of Hinduism, a supposed eclecticism that it definitely didn’t pass on to millions of its followers. These can only be challenged by modern Indianism with its roots in the Constitution.