Shashi Tharoor's forthcoming book, Why I Am A Hindu, is an attempt to wrest Hinduism back from the Hindutvavadis. He tells Shougat Dasgupta why there is a battle within Hinduism and why that battle is in part a battle for India's soul.

What motivated you to write this book now?

The way in which popular Hinduism has entered our public discourse makes it a topic impossible to ignore. We have now got ourselves a ruling party which has officially propounded Hindutva as its doctrine. What is more, the way in which that doctrine has been politically articulated has brought it, if you like, in your face. When a minister in the council of ministers says the country can be divided into "Ramzade and haramzade", you have a clear-cut view of what the ruling party believes is the place of the Hindu religion in the national discourse. Now I've grown up as a Hindu but I've also grown up in Nehruvian India. In an India where those values and assumptions seemed secure but are now being hotly contested. More than contested, one would argue that to some people those values and assumptions are being discarded. The reference, for example, to "pseudo-seculars" is a way of saying that there is nothing authentic about the ruling ethos of India in the past. And that, really, not only is this a Hindu country but that only a certain kind of Hindu can dominate.

A Hindu country that has no time for the multifarious, expansive Hinduism that you eulogise in this book?

I consider myself a believing Hindu. I don't recognise in my faith -- or in the faith that I grew up with, read about, practiced, and valued -- things like the demolition of the Babri masjid. I don't recognise in it the hateful diatribes of certain people associated with the Sangh parivar. That is simply not the Hinduism I was brought up to value and cherish. Here is a faith without a single holy book but many, without a single presiding doctrine but many, with many ways in which you can reach out to the divine. Hinduism grants that all of these ways are valid and even accepts the legitimacy of alternative paths altogether.

Is there a conflation in what you're talking about of Hinduism as civilisation, as culture and Hinduism as religion? For instance, can we read the Mahabharata and Ramayana as we do the Iliad and the Odyssey, or are they 'the Word', holy scripture?

I don't see the confusion. Arguably there is this notion that Hindu civilisation has a value in and of itself. It is by the way a civilisation that has been profoundly affected by the advent of non-Hindu civilisations and influences. No Hindu can truly pretend that the way in which Hindu society behaves today has not been impacted by the invasions of Islam from just over a thousand years of recorded history. The ideas of Christianity and colonial rule definitely sparked off some of the 19th century reform movements in Hinduism and not just the obvious ones like the Brahmo Samaj but even Dayanand Saraswati's Arya Samaj. He is considered a great Hindu swami but the Arya Samaj was very much reacting to the colonial contempt for what was seen as Hindu polytheism in anchoring the faith in the vedas and eschewing idol worship. For me an Arya Samaji is a Hindu and I hope for him I am a Hindu.

Hinduism makes room for it all -- Hinduism as culture, Hinduism as religion, Hinduism as philosophical inquiry, Hinduism as mode of worship. Most popular Hinduism is anchored around bhakti which goes back very much to Puranic Hinduism, to the worship of personalised gods and so on. But there is also Jnana yoga which focuses on knowledge; karma yoga, working with your hands as it were in the service of your fellow man; raja yoga which comes from the breath. The strength of Hinduism is that it's so capacious. There are no compulsory beliefs, no particular way of being that marks your out as a worthy Hindu. To my mind that is not Hinduism and it's being undermined by those who would semitise the faith.

Is creating a Semitic-style faith what Hindutva is doing?

I see them doing worse. They are trying to create a set of litmus tests that define who is a good Hindu. I have a problem with the way in which Hindutva is exclusionary of others who don't see Hinduism their way as well as those who worship and follow other faiths. This is far from the Vivekananda view that ours is a religion which teaches us not just tolerance but acceptance. Tolerance is from a position of superiority -- "I have the truth. You are wrong but I will indulge you in your right to be wrong." Whereas acceptance is -- "I believe I have the truth. You believe you have the truth. I will respect your truth, please respect my truth." Acceptance of difference has been to me the key to the survival and success of Hinduism as a religion, whether it is difference within the faith or differences with other faiths. What the Hindutva brigade wants is not to accept differences. The language of Hindutva has specific implications for the organisation of the Indian state today. The fundamental critique of the Constitution by Golwalkar and (Deen Dayal) Upadhyay is that it assumes that a nation is a territory and all the people on it. Whereas they say a nation is not a territory, it is a people and only the Hindu people constitute the Indian nation. Everybody else must either live here on sufferance as a guest or be branded as a thief would be. So when Mr. Modi says that the Constitution is my holy book, I wonder what he means because in the same breath he says Upadhyay is his great hero.

Given Hinduism's philosophical predilection for plurality, what explains Hindutva's appeal?

In some ways, the battle for India's soul is also a battle within Hinduism and that is one of the reasons I wrote this book. It's a battle for an understanding of Hinduism as a capacious, accepting faith versus Hinduism as a bigoted, exclusionary, somewhat narrow-minded faith with a political manifestation typified by the likes of Yogi Adityanath.

A Dalit might describe your praise of Hinduism as an accepting faith as smug...

Could be. Smugness is exactly the kind of thing somebody could accuse me of. But Hinduism encourages a healthy critical eye, to ask searching questions about caste, to abjure it as a basis for social organisation. Scepticism about and even a rejection of aspects of Hinduism is rife throughout the extraordinary texts of Hinduism, which I cheerfully admit to having read in English translation. But that's not the kind of critical Hinduism that the Hindutva brigade is after. To quote Amartya Sen, they see it as a faith of "delerious fanatics and unquestioning idolators".

You, of course. intended your title to be clickbait?

One of the things that has really got my goat is being repeatedly trolled and abused as an "anti-Hindu". Because so many have chosen to stereotype me as this secularist, anti-Hindu figure, I wanted to say "this is what I am, now read this and come back to me." Of course, I expect a lot of the attacks on me will come from people who haven't read a word I've written but if they do read this they will understand the kind of Hinduism I speak of and speak for.

So your opposition to Hindutva is not to redefine or reaffirm what it means to be secular but to reclaim what it means to be Hindu?

Yes, because making this debate between Hindus and secularists plays into the hands of the Hindutva brigade. I am not prepared to concede to the bigots that theirs is the only Hinduism one can speak of in this country.

But some might argue that the Congress has long been conceding to the bigots. The 'shilanyas' ceremony, that moment of schism in 1989 for instance...

There was a bigger moment of schism in 1947 and perhaps I haven't made enough of that in the book. A lot of the strength that the RSS gained in the popular imagination, particularly of the millions who came over from Pakistan, or what became Pakistan, was from their role in resisting attacks on Hindus during partition. I think the RSS up to '47 was one thing and the RSS because of '47 and partition became another. After Gandhiji's assassination and the political hold of the nationalist movement which had converted itself into a contemporary political party meant that the RSS was on the back foot for some time. But they continued setting up their shakhas throughout the country, they continued also articulating their ideas. They were poised with this alternative view of India's history and India's present and future which then got sparked off by the events of 1989 onwards -- the Advani rath yatra, the whole Ram Janmabhoomi movement and the aftermath. All of that has given us the situation where we now have a government that is dominated by a party that has a majority all by itself that has openly proclaimed Hindutva to be its prevailing ideology.

So to fight this ideology requires an argument about what it means to be a Hindu?

Certainly, religion is not the only place to fight them. But I believe we should not cede this area. During the Gujarat campaign, Rahul Gandhi going to temples was about neutralising Hindutva. That's why he's said he does not want a BJP-mukt Bharat because he believes Bharat has space for the BJP and its point of view and that's actually a very Hindu way of looking at the problem. This is a religion for those who believe in doubt and incertitude. If Hindutvavadis read enough Hindu scripture they would find their own approach to Hinduism completely falling away. We will never accept the proposition that they are the only lot who can speak for the Hindu population.

You think what is being said about Trump potentially having said "shithole" countries and then you think about what Modi has said and never walked back or reconsidered...

No question that some of these things must be brought up. When we are prepared to point out what foreign leaders are saying that's offensive and unacceptable, we should be looking at the mote in our own eye.

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