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EDITOR-IN-CHIEF : Aroon Purie
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Volume XLIII Number 5 ; For the week January 23-29 , 2018 , published on every Friday
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FROM THE
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
I am not a very religious person , tho ugh I was born a Hindu . I do celebrate the festivals and follow most of the rituals . My father was a follower of the Arya Samaj and we had havans on all auspicious occasions , a tradition I continue to this day . I was born in Pakistan and growing up in newly ind ependent India , differences of religion , caste or ethnicity were not something I was aware of . We were taught to respect everyone , regardless of their roots . Some may call me deracinated , and I have to confess I still do not know my gotra , but I believe the greatest quality of Hinduism is its liberalism and its plurality . It is those qualities that are under threat today , as who we pray to and how we pray becomes politicised .
Where there is religion , can politics be far behind ? This unholy alliance is ruining the world . Our democracy has been weakened by vote bank politics . The most obvious manifestation of this is the culture of app easement of minorities practised by the Congress party in the 49 years it ruled the country since independence . The aggressive assertion of Hinduism , otherwise termed as Hindutva , that we are witnessing today is a backlash to this . As the BJP ’ s Vinay Sah asrabuddhe writing in this issue says , “ it has spurred a mindless competition to get the tag of minorities ”. This is not the way forward if we are to build an equitable society . The disadvantaged should be helped regardless of caste , creed or religion . It will happen only if we stop mixing politics with religion and prevent extremists from radicalising faith .
Congress MP Shashi Tharoor ’ s new book , Why I am a Hindu , puts upfront a critical issue of our time — the difference between Hinduism and Hindutva . While Hinduism has a distinct cultural ethos with a common history , common literature and common civilisation , Hindutva believes Indian nationalism is the same as Hindu nationalism , and that non-Hindus must acknowledge their Hindu parentage or convert to Hinduism to return to their true cultural roots . Hindutva maintains that Hindus need to preserve and protect their religion and culture against the onslaught of a hostile , alien world . It is insecurity that drives this sentiment rather than strength , which is what
India Today cover , Feb 4 , 2002
Swami Vivekananda , who can only be described as the first rock star of Hinduism , believed in . I believe Hinduism teaches us to live amidst a variety of other identities , and to do anything differently would be , as Tharoor notes , a partition of the soul , after the partition of the soil .
In the best traditions of the religion , we have invited reputed scholars , ideologues and politicians to debate the issue . There is former BJP general secretary , K . N . Govindacharya , who believes Hindutva means Hinduness and not Hindu nationalism in the Western sense ; former West Bengal governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi says the freedom of a Hindu to self-define his or her dharma is the greatest asset of Hinduism ; novelist Kiran Nagarkar calls out the Sangh parivar for obliterating the inherent inclusive values of Hinduism ; while the bestselling author Devdutt Pattanaik exposes the myth of the wounded Hindu , tormented by a thousand years of slavery at the hands of the invaders .
There is much more . Some of it is despondent , such as author and translator Arshia Sattar ’ s argument that the distinction between Hinduism as plural and Hindutva as singular is being lost at the hands of the newly empowered local gatekeepers of Hinduism and active proponents of a Hindu rashtra . For a multi-cultural country like India to be divided on the basis of religion is a recipe for disaster . But I remain hopeful . After all , which other religion in the world can say that it does not claim to be the only true one ?
( Aroon Purie )
JANUARY 29 , 2018 INDIA TODAY 1