Manu Bhagavan & Historians' Amnesia

 Manu Bhagavan, a History Prof in America, wrote an article a dozen years ago for the EPW which casts a sharp light on the historical amnesia of the Left-Liberal Academic establishment which was in the ascendant under UPA. Essentially, these pedagogues had convinced themselves that the Indian Freedom Struggle was ab ovo Secular- Hindus within it had no truck with the Hindu Nationalism. Then some nasty Hindutva types infiltrated it. This caused Naughtiness to occur. 

The destruction in 1992 of the Babri masjid and the waves of violence that have followed it in India, coupled with the rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party to political prominence, have led in recent years to a flourishing of studies on “Hindutva” or “Hindu nationalism”. Yet for all these works, very few have examined the relationship between the Indian National Congress and the right wing religious politics of the Hindu nationalist movement. What work has examined this nexus has largely focused on its two varying poles. The first has dealt with the link between 19th century reform movements and the post-1920 emergence of militant Hindu religious organisations, most notably the Hindu Mahasabha and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.

The INC, when led by Parsis like Naoroji or Ferozeshah Mehta, was indeed 'Secular'. But it had not mass following precisely for that reason. Moreover, the mass of Parsis were sensible enough to see that the British Empire was a boon for minorities. Only a few Parsi industrialists- like the great Jamshetji Tata- thought that Parsis could have an even brighter future under a properly Listian (i.e. protectionist) Nation State. Nevertheless, it is notable that Parsi influence vanished entirely in Pakistan and declined greatly in India- where, going forward,  demographic collapse remains a possibility.

British officials noted that the cow-protection movement is what had turned the INC into an organization with mass appeal. They could see, in 1913, that some 70 percent of those in jail were Arya Samajis. The 'Garam Dal' within Congress as well as the growing number of Revolutionaries were directly linked to Religious leaders like Dayanand Saraswati and his successors within the Arya Samaj as well as Swami Vivekananda. Aurobindo, Lala Hardayal, but also Mahatma Gandhi after he hosted Bhai Parmanand in South Africa, embraced celibacy and adopted Hindu dress and tropes. 

There can be no doubt that Congress gained mass support only because of its association with Hindutva. Mahatma Gandhi was present at the founding of the Hindu Mahasabha. Indeed, his title of 'Mahatma' was acquired from the Arya Samaji leader who simultaneously promoted himself to the level of 'Swami'. Gandhi's sojourn in Champaran was a distraction from the anti-cow slaughter riots in Bihar which were largely successful. But, it was precisely because of Gandhi's close ties to the Hindutva element that Khilafat leaders were prepared to do a deal with him. If India had got what Ireland and Afghanistan and Egypt got in 1922- i.e. if Gandhi had not called off the Non Cooperation Movement- both the Hindutvadis and the Khilafatis would have got what they wanted- viz hegemony where they were numerically dominant with some mutual accommodation of minorities.  Instead, Gandhi's pusillanimity gave the Brits- when at their militarily weakest- got an indefinite extension of their power to dictate the pace and shape of reform. However, it wasn't till ten years later- at the Second Round Table Conference- that Gandhi scored his biggest own goal by managing to unite all the minorities- including the Sikhs!- against the INC. 

Chetan Bhatt(2001), for instance, has carefully fleshed out the roles played by such mainstream nationalists and Congress stalwarts as Lala Lajpat Rai in developing the foundational ideological rationale bridging earlier ideas with the more rigidly communal ones that followed.

Lal, Bal and Pal held the same views of Indian Nationalism. It must be either Hindu or it would be merely a cover for Pan-Islamism. In 1913, Bipin Chandra Pal wrote-

In India the Indian National Congress at first, and the more virile Swadeshi Movement later on, quickened a self consciousness in the country, and especially among the Hindu populations. The Swadeshi propaganda developed a particularly pronounced Hindu ideal, which was naturally interpreted by some at least of the Mahomedan leaders in the country as a distinct and real menace to their own political future. Had they thrown themselves heart and soul into this new Nationalist Movement in India, this excessive Hindu emphasis might have been very easily removed. For then the Swadeshi Movement would have developed into a purely economic and political propaganda fully representative of the composite Indian people. But they held aloof. Many of them even set themselves up openly against this movement. The result was that the Hindu influences became predominant and the Hindu note the most pronounced in this new upheaval.

It must, however, be admitted that the Hindu bhadralok opposed the Partition of Bengal because they hoped to continue to dominate it. Muslims were right to oppose 'Swadeshi'. Indeed, dirigiste, 'Listian', economic programs should be opposed by the vast majority because, unless entrepreneurs really are innovative (as they were in Japan but weren't in India), all that happens is that rents are created and then contested in a manner destructive of democratic processes.  

Pal goes on to say-

It was, perhaps, well that this should have been so. For this Hindu Nationalism will gradually help the evolution of a real Federal Nationalism among us, which seems clearly to be the ideal-end and the ultimate aim of modern historic evolution in India.

This is true. India exists because Hindus want it to exist. Where non-Hindus are the majority there is secessionist sentiment. This is perfectly understandable. Even a very poor country can afford 'public goods' of a kind only valuable to the rulers. In a democracy this would be the majority community. It is foolish to want Britain to stop being so goddamned British or America to stop being majority White. The fact is, people emigrate to these countries to partake of that Britishness or Americanism.  

For the realisation of this Federal Ideal of Nationalism it is necessary that the different Indian communities, representing different world-cultures, must evolve in their own way, along their own line, preserving and developing to the full their respective personalities, be autonomous social units themselves, and then join the others, as members of a great Federation, which will present to the world a new and far more advanced and complex type of Nationality than what the world has so far known. I have always read this as the one eternal aim of historic evolution in India.

I do not, therefore, regret this Hindu emphasis of what in the nature of things was bound to be practically a Hindu Movement. I do not regret that our Mahomedan friends practically kept away from it. But what, I regret is their spirit of antagonism. What the situation really required of them was the initiation of a real Moslem National Movement, along parallel lines, moved by the same spirit, working for the same ultimate end, but organised in Islamic forms, with the symbols and sacraments, familiar to higher Islamic thought and culture.

This was not mere pious sentiment. It is noteworthy that Hindu and Sikh revolutionaries, like Amba Prasad Sufi and Ajith Singh, went as missionaries of anti-Imperialism to Persia and Mesopotamia so as to oppose British military intervention in those countries. Khilafat, as such, was welcomed by the Hindutvadis. The notion was that the Muslim minority would gain support from the Hindu community for the anti-imperialist struggle in the Muslim heartland. This is similar to the notion, when I was a kid, that Indian Muslims would be appeased by Indian opposition to Israel. Then the Israelis started exporting cool stuff which the Indian Army wanted to get its mitts on. So, India abandoned anti-Zionism. Still, 20 years ago, an Israeli PM couldn't get a photo-op at the Taj Mahal because of Muslim protests. Now, Israel is best buddies not just with India but also the Gulf and the Saudis and so forth.  

In the remainder of his article, Manu Bhagwan picks on K.M Munshi- not Rajendra Prasad or Sardar Patel- as the Hindutva 'trojan horse' who somehow subverted Indian Nationalism post-Independence. This is very silly. Munshi left Congress, where he had little role, for the utterly useless Swatantra Party. He did help found the VHP but it is the RSS which has prevailed. Politically, the genealogy of the BJP is through Shyama Prasad Mukherjee and then through Atal and Advani to Modi and Amit. Following the Supreme Court verdict on the Ram Mandir, the Singhal/Togadia element has been rendered utterly impotent. This was not obvious even ten years ago. But it is obvious now. Sadly, the Academy has gone too far down its own rabbit-hole to acknowledge reality. The Amnesia of the Historians is the condition for their trade. Those who will not learn from History are condemned to teach it. 

Project Syndicate's censoring criticism of Shashi Tharoor.

 Why is Project Syndicate continually censoring my comments on Dr. Tharoor's highly tendentious article on some supposed 'Culture War' in India?

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   A Dispatch from India’s Culture War

   Dec 21, 2020

   In 2010, the Communist Chief Minister of Kerala said 'In 20 years India and Kerala will become a Muslim-dominated world. Youngsters are being givenn 2010, the Communist Chief Minister of Kerala said 'In 20 years India and Kerala will become a Muslim-dominated world. Youngsters are being given money and are being lured to convert to Islam - marry Muslim women and then give birth to Muslim children so that they can multiply,” said Achuthanandan last week in Delhi. He was speaking about the radical Islamic outfit Popular Front of India (PFI), activists of which are accused of chopping off the hand of a college lecturer.

2. 
   'Achuthanandan, a veteran CPI-M leader, alleged the PFI aims to convert Kerala into a Muslim majority state in the next 20 years. "For achieving that goal, the outfit is pumping money to attract youth and give them weapons. They also try to convert youth from other communities and persuade them to marry Muslim girls," Achuthanandan told reporters.'
   
   It is also a fact that Kerala Christian organizations have raised concerns about 'Love Jihad'. The Vigilance Council of the Kerala Catholic Bishops' Council (KCBC) raised an alert for the Catholic community against the practice.
   
   Dr. Tharoor, like Rahul Gandhi, is a Member of Parliament from Kerala. He knows that the most popular Communist leader in Kerala (who did not become CM again in 2016 because of his advanced age) is called 'Fidel Castro of India' by his Party. Why? He is unafraid of being accused of bigotry or lack of political correctness. Furthermore, the CPM is meritocratic, not dynastic. Look at how well Health Minister Shailaja has performed in the recent COVID crisis. She has won international plaudits. The secret of the Communist Party's success in Kerala is to concentrate on real issues not 'culture wars'.

Dec 14, 2020


Project Syndicate, judging by who finances it, and who it chooses to publish, may indeed believe there is a 'culture war'. Sadly, it is on the losing side. Culture requires intelligence, not bombast. It requires savoir faire and alethia, not paranoia or stupid lies.

For four years, Project Syndicate has been publishing Shashi Tharoor's articles ignoring the fact that he is out on bail on charges of cruelty and abetment to suicide of his own wife in connection with a corrupt deal which caused him to resign from a Ministerial role.

There is a wikipedia article which spells out the type of corruption that underlay this tragic outcome. Why does Project Syndicate ignore what is common knowledge? Is it because it is not concerned with the Truth or with Virtue in Public Life? No doubt, it thinks of itself as a doughty warrior in a 'culture war'. Yet, it is its own culture of moronic mendacity which the common folk have defeated- by ignoring.

It is sad that Project Syndicate endorses misogynism amounting to gynocide. Yet, is it not also entirely predictable?

The fact is, a female advocate from Tharoor's own backyard- the late Lily Thomas- got the Supreme Court of India to rule that a male fraudulently converting to Islam could not contract an Islamic marriage on that basis. Since women in India have much less power than men, it follows that the same rule should be applied to so called 'conversion' on their part since it means a substantial dilution of their rights and entitlements.

Project Syndicate suppresses comments which show it in a bad light. But this is not why it has failed in its mission. The truth is it relies heavily on 'prophets without honor'- i.e. failed politicians or ideologues. One can only speculate on the senile type of mutual back-scratching which holds this ludicrous enterprise together.Dec 11, 2020








Dec 10, 2020Dr. Tharoor has a problem. When he entered politics in service of the Dynasty, he expected- as did most people- that the Dynasty would continue to be perceived as Brahminical- i.e. ultra Hindu chauvinist. This did not mean that members of the Dynasty could not marry non Hindus- Nehru's younger sister married a Jain, a cousin married a Hungarian Jew, his daughter married a Parsi, and the two grandsons married an Italian and a Sikh respectively. However all had to submit to Hindu forms of marriage and thus the progeny, by highly chauvinist Indian law which accords the Hindu majority higher status, were classed as Hindu Brahmins. In other words, the Nehru gene was accorded super-Brahminical status such that, as Indira Gandhi successfully argued in Court, her sons by a Zorastrians remained Hindu Brahmins. Rahul Gandhi, whose mother is Italian Christian, has now taken to asserting 'janeodhari' Brahmin status- i.e. one ritually more pure than Tharoor's own Hindu identity. Sadly, this was a case of too little too late. The party's ideologues, in attacking the BJP, crossed the line between being anti-Hindutva (ie. opposing anti-casteist ecumenism within the Hindu fold) to being actively anti-Hindu. This would not have mattered. A Party can be atheistic and still win elections. The problem is that Congress has become anti-National. But this means the Dynasty has become anti-Nehru! Often, as in the case of this article, the thing is unconscious. It is a reflex action. The fact is, under Nehru, thousands of Hindu and Sikh women's marriages to Muslims were forcibly dissolved- whether they so wished or not. It was also under Nehru that Muslims who had fled violence were not permitted to return and gain citizenship whereas non-Muslim refugees were welcomed and resettled on property formerly owned by Muslims.
Why did Mahatma Gandhi intervene to prevent Vijaylaxmi Pandit- Nehru's sister- marrying Syed Mahmud? How come a Jain or Parsi was acceptable but not a Muslim?
The answer to this question has to do with Gandhi and Nehru- but also Indira and Rajiv's Hindu chauvinist view that, in the words of Paul Hacker, Hindu 'inclusivism' would atomize any separate religious identity.
Speaking of 'love-jihad', it is interesting that 'India Today' reports- 'Tharoor has to seek the court's permission to travel abroad as he is out on bail in the murder case of his wife, Sunanda Pushkar.
'Pushkar was found dead in a suite of a luxury hotel in the city on the night of January 17, 2014. Tharoor was later charged under various sections of Indian Penal Code (IPC) including for abetment to suicide and cruelty.'
I am sure we all wish Dr. Tharoor well in this particular legal matter.

According to India Today- a leading Indian Magazine- 'Dr. Tharoor has to seek the court's permission to travel abroad as he is out on bail in the murder case of his wife, Sunanda Pushkar.

Pushkar was found dead in a suite of a luxury hotel in the city on the night of January 17, 2014. Tharoor was later charged under various sections of Indian Penal Code (IPC) including for abetment to suicide and cruelty.

'The lawmaker was granted bail on a condition that he has to seek prior permission of the court before travelling abroad.'

Many familiar with the details of the charges against Dr. Tharoor would feel that Indian Law is unjustly assuming that women have a subordinate position within marriage. Yet, this is the same assumption behind the 'love jihad' laws as well as the 'anti dowry' laws.

Dr. Tharoor, as an opposition M.P, is, of course, welcome to attack the ruling party in any matter that he likes. However, he is doing so, in this instance, in a manner which damages his own credibility and that of the party he represents. Why? It was Congress which created the 'pro-woman' legislation under which Dr. Tharoor himself is being prosecuted. Either he must distance himself from his own Party or he must explain why it is okay for him to be held accountable in a case involving his Hindu wife whereas no such accountability would arise if he belonged to the Islamic Faith.

There is nothing in this comment which is ad hominem. It may be 'partisan', but not more so than the article itself.

Dec 10, 2020

Dr. Tharoor has a problem. When he entered politics in service of the Dynasty, he expected- as did most people- that the Dynasty would continue to be perceived as Brahminical- i.e. ultra Hindu chauvinist. This did not mean that members of the Dynasty could not marry non Hindus- Nehru's younger sister married a Jain, a cousin married a Hungarian Jew, his daughter married a Parsi, and the two grandsons married an Italian and a Sikh respectively. However all had to submit to Hindu forms of marriage and thus the progeny, by highly chauvinist Indian law which accords the Hindu majority higher status, were classed as Hindu Brahmins. In other words, the Nehru gene was accorded super-Brahminical status such that, as Indira Gandhi successfully argued in Court, her sons by a Zorastrians remained Hindu Brahmins. Rahul Gandhi, whose mother is Italian Christian, has now taken to asserting 'janeodhari' Brahmin status- i.e. one ritually more pure than Tharoor's own Hindu identity. Sadly, this was a case of too little too late. The party's ideologues, in attacking the BJP, crossed the line between being anti-Hindutva (ie. opposing anti-casteist ecumenism within the Hindu fold) to being actively anti-Hindu. This would not have mattered. A Party can be atheistic and still win elections. The problem is that Congress has become anti-National. But this means the Dynasty has become anti-Nehru! Often, as in the case of this article, the thing is unconscious. It is a reflex action. The fact is, under Nehru, thousandsThe fact is, under Nehru, thousands of Hindu and Sikh women's marriages to Muslims were forcibly dissolved- whether they so wished or not. It was also under Nehru that Muslims who had fled violence were not permitted to return and gain citizenship whereas non-Muslim refugees were welcomed and resettled on property formerly owned by Muslims.

Why did Mahatma Gandhi intervene to prevent Vijaylaxmi Pandit- Nehru's sister- marrying Syed Mahmud? How come a Jain or Parsi was acceptable but not a Muslim?

The answer to this question has to do with Gandhi and Nehru- but also Indira and Rajiv's Hindu chauvinist view that, in the words of Paul Hacker, Hindu 'inclusivism' would atomize any separate religious identity.

Speaking of 'love-jihad', it is interesting that 'India Today' reports- 'Tharoor has to seek the court's permission to travel abroad as he is out on bail in the murder case of his wife, Sunanda Pushkar.

'Pushkar was found dead in a suite of a luxury hotel in the city on the night of January 17, 2014. Tharoor was later charged under various sections of Indian Penal Code (IPC) including for abetment to suicide and cruelty.'

I am sure we all wish Dr. Tharoor well in this particular legal matter.non-Muslim refugees were welcomed and resettled on property formerly owned by Muslims.

Why did Mahatma Gandhi intervene to prevent Vijaylaxmi Pandit- Nehru's sister- marrying Syed Mahmud? How come a Jain or Parsi was acceptable but not a Muslim?

The answer to this question has to do with Gandhi and Nehru- but also Indira and Rajiv's Hindu chauvinist view that, in the words of Paul Hacker, Hindu 'inclusivism' would atomize any separate religious identity.

Speaking of 'love-jihad', it is interesting that 'India Today' reports- 'Tharoor has to seek the court's permission to travel abroad as he is out on bail in the murder case of his wife, Sunanda Pushkar.

'Pushkar was found dead in a suite of a luxury hotel in the city on the night of January 17, 2014. Tharoor was later charged under various sections of Indian Penal Code (IPC) including for abetment to suicide and cruelty.'

Shashi Tharoor's strange notion of Secularism

A secular state is an idea pertaining to secularity, whereby a state is or purports to be officially neutral in matters of religion, supporting neither religion nor irreligion. This means that no law can exist to which there is an exemption based on Religion.

India is not a Secular country because whereas polygamy has been made illegal for non-Muslims, this has not been done for Muslims. 

Shashi Tharoor belongs to the Party which ensured this outcome. It was dismissed as a 'High Caste Hindu outfit' even by secular leaders like Jinnah. This was the reason for the Partition of India. Muslims overwhelmingly voted against Congress. Hindus overwhelmingly voted for it. 

Secularism as principle and practice in India is in "danger", but "forces of hatred" cannot alter the country's secular character, senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor told PTI in an interview on his new book ''The Battle of Belonging''.

Secularism, as we have seen, does not exist in India. The State is afraid of meddling with Islam whereas it is comfortable enacting laws concerning Hindus which the majority of Hindus support. 

Tharoor & Co have a great hatred of the RSS and the BJP. But they cannot alter the fact that they are useless blathershites doomed to disappear from Indian politics.  

In the book, Tharoor makes a stinging critique of the Hindutva doctrine, asserting that it is a political doctrine, not a religious one.

No. The Hindutva doctrine arose out of the movement to reform Hinduism- in particular the desire to do away with disabilities attaching to caste and gender. It was felt that progress could only be made if self-rule was attained. Chief Justice Gajendragadkar gives an example of this. In a case concerning the legality of a svagotra marriage, his own opinion was overruled by his brother Judges who happened to be British and who thus were not aware that it is customary for the Priest, or maternal Uncle, to nominally adopt the bride at the time of marriage so- in practice- no svagotra marriages exist. India needed to become independent and to have its own Supreme Court where people like Gajendragadkar would decide such issues. Otherwise which Hindu could be secure in knowing some cousin might not try to disinherit him by claiming his parent's marriage was illegal in some respect? 

It is a different matter that Religions instruct their adherents to participate in politics so as to secure the interests of the Religion. 

Here are some excerpts from Tharoor's interview:


Q. In your book you have vehemently argued against the Hindutva idea of India.

Yet, it is that idea which has prevailed. Only Hindu majority areas are happy to remain part of the Indian nation. Where Hindus are not in the majority there are separatist movements.  

But with BJP''s meteoric rise and electoral success, would you concede that a majority of the country is not against Hindutva as many liberals make out to be. What are the reasons for Hindutva''s popularity?

To be fair, people don't support the BJP because it is Hindutva but because it is better at governance. This in turn is because it is meritocratic, not dynastic. Congress is fading because its dynast happens to be a cretin- only electable from Kerala though, of course, he may lose his seat next time around. 

A: I don''t agree, because the 37 per cent vote won by the BJP last year is not a majority!

So what? Only 67 % voted. It is not the case that any sizable anti-Hindutva vote- save among non Hindus- was discernable anywhere.  

Yes, Hindutva has successfully exploited fear of the ''Other'', just as most reactionary ideologies do.

Tharoor, by contrast, has unsuccessfully exploited fear of Hindutva, just as most anti-Hindu ideologues do. Rahul Gandhi was beaten on his home-turf by Smriti Irani. He could only get elected from Kerala because the local party there opposed female entry into the Sabarimala temple. Furthermore, Rahul presented himself as 'janeodhari' Saivite Brahmin who visits Temples and who has decided to remain celibate. 

The Hindutva ideologues in power have also had no qualms about appropriating or undermining the ostensibly independent branches of governance, from the autonomous bodies like the Election Commission or the RTI commissioners or the Reserve Bank to even media and the courts, in the service of their version of nationalism.

They have done nothing different than their predecessors.  

This creates a sort of self-reinforcing echo chamber, in which the government is able to constantly push Hindutva ideas.

Whereas Tharoor's 'echo chamber' is pushing his party towards annihilation.  

That is why I would caution against the idea of Hindutva being ''popular'', as you suggest.

Yet Congress adopted 'Hindutva lite' in the last election. 

How can we tell? Sure, the BJP holds a commanding parliamentary majority, but it has worked overtime to suppress dissenting voices.

Like Tharoor's? Why would Amit Shah do anything so stupid? When Tharoor shoots his mouth off, Hindus realize that Congress is doomed to become an anti-national rump of corrupt and sleazy blathershites. 

In that sense, it is difficult to get an accurate gauge of support for Hindutva among ordinary Indians.

Not for Modi or Amit Shah. That is why they are running the country. 

I do not think that a majority of the country supports the hateful rhetoric and exclusionary nature of Hindutva.

Tharoor does not think full stop. He just shits out books and talks like a gobshite. 

Q. With Hindutva now a reality in mainstream politics and often setting the agenda, do you think opposition parties including Congress have been forced to peddle in soft Hindutva or ''Hindutva Lite'' at some point in time or the other.

Tharoor's job is denying Reality.  

A: Judging by the number of times I have been asked this question, I do recognise that there''s a very real and tangible concern for some liberal Indians. But as I have often pointed out, we in the Congress Party are very clear that we cannot allow ourselves to become a BJP-Lite. I have long argued that any attempt to emulate ''Pepsi Lite'' by ''BJP Lite'' will end up with us becoming like ‘Coke Zero’ – that is, Congress Zero. Congress is not BJP in any shape or form, and we should not attempt to be a lighter version of something we are not. Nor are we trying to, in my view.'

God alone knows what Congress is trying to do. It seems determined to erase its own existence.  

The Congress party makes a distinction between Hinduism and Hindutva.

The former can be casteist- because casteism has entered Hinduism just as it has entered Christianity and Islam, in India. The latter can't be casteist- or dynastic- because the essence of Hinduism- the 'tattva' of the Religion- is soteriological and concerned with souls which are perfectly equal to each other. There is a possible world where all are equal in status and wealth. Hinduism in such a world would be purged of any type of casteism or misogyny. That is the ideal of 'Hindutva'.

The Hinduism we respect is inclusive and non-judgemental,

If it is non-judgemental why is it castigating Hindutva? The only answer possible is that it is casteist and dynastic. It believes in inherited privilege and holds that a 'neech' Ghanchi should not occupy the house reserved for the Gandhi dynasty.  

whereas Hindutva is a political doctrine based on exclusion.

No. It is a political doctrine based on the inclusion of Backward, Dalit and Tribal communities such that the one who works hardest and performs best gets the top job.  

So we are not offering a watered-down version of the BJP’s political messaging:

you are offering a cretinous Prime Ministerial candidate who got into a huff and resigned from the Presidency of his own party.  

Rahul Gandhi has made it explicitly clear that, for all his avowing his personal Hinduism by going to temples, he does not support any form of Hindutva, neither soft nor hard.

He only avowed his Hinduism recently. What he does not support is Indian nationalism. 

As a Congressman, I understand that whereas Hinduism is a religion, which is the personal concern of every individual, Hindutva is a political doctrine that departs fundamentally from the principal tenets of my Hindu faith.

Tharoor is a Nair. Ask the untouchables of Kerala about the principal tenets of Tharoor's ancestral faith. It certainly had no truck with Hindutva.  

While Hinduism is inclusive of all ways of worship, Hindutva is indifferent to devotion and cares principally about identity.

Because the essence of Hinduism- i.e. the properties that adhere to it in all possible worlds- is soteriological not devotional though the latter may, under certain conditions, fulfil a goal of the former type. Hindu soteriology is concerned principally with Identity. It affirms that this adheres to the soul which survives death.  

Hinduism is open to reform and progress, which is why it has flourished for 4,000 years;

It is not flourishing in Pakistan or Bangladesh or even the Valley of Kashmir. What is the reason for that? Indeed, had the British not defeated Tipu Sultan, would Hinduism still flourish in Kerala?  

Hindutva is reactionary and regressive,

Congress is so reactionary and regressive that it is sticking with an utter cretin as its leader even though the fellow resigned in a huff 

with its roots in the ‘racial pride’ ethos that spawned Fascism in the 1920s,

Fascism was not spawned by 'racial pride'- which all Italians, quite rightly, possess. It was spawned by the need to beat the fuck out of the Commies. The TMC in Bengal has done a very good job of beating the fuck out of Commies. But then Congress wasn't always a limp wristed affair. Its hooligans were worse than any other Party's hooligans- as Tharoor should remember from his days at Delhi University.  

which is why it is unlikely to outlast its current peak this century.

Because 'racial pride' will disappear from India the way it has done in China. Is this man utterly mad?  

Q. Do you think as an antidote to the Hindutva agenda, Congress needs to talk about secularism more often than it has been doing of late. Has secularism become a sort of bad word not used even by the opposition much.

A: I disagree with the assertion that Congress has not talked about secularism enough. We have at every opportunity stressed our unshakeable commitment to secularism – not as distancing from religion but encouraging all to flourish -- and the party’s glorious heritage of advocating freedom of religion has sustained and strengthened over time. Politically and personally, we embrace the acceptance of difference. I think that the spirit of Indian secularism is alive and well, both in the Congress party and in the country at large, and we are striving every day to ensure that it is safeguarded from those who seek to erode it.

The problem is that Owaisi is going to get the Muslim vote. So, Congress's Secularism- which is a dog-whistle to Muslims saying 'we'll protect you from ethnic cleansing, though we have never done so in the past'- will find no takers. 

Q. You have also talked about the abrogation of Article 370 and violation of rights in Kashmir at length in your book. P Chidambaram recently called for the restoration of Article 370 and was attacked by the BJP. What are your views on the issue?

Had Article 370 been abrogated by Indira, Sunanda Pushkar's family would not have been ethnically cleansed from their ancestral home. But then, marrying Tharoor didn't keep her safe either. It seems Congress is now actively dangerous to Hindu lives.  

A: I have already articulated my stand clearly within the walls of Parliament and it is a matter of public record. It''s not just an issue of abrogating 370 – even Nehruji had said the provision was a temporary one. But the Constitution specifies how it is to be done.

Only the Supreme Court has the power to say what the Constitution specifies or does not specify. As a matter of fact, in another case, the Bench said in 2016 that J&K has no vestige of autonomy. Thus, the moment the place was under President's Rule, the Executive could do what it liked. The odd thing is that the Home Ministry seems to have done things in proper legal form. Generally speaking those bureaucrats bungle things like nobody's business.  

So though it shouldn''t matter what side of the debate on Article 370 you stand on -- after all, differing voices are the lifeline of any democracy -- the manner in which it was implemented, the way our own fellow citizens were overnight clamped down upon by their own government, consciously and willfully disregarding the democratically enshrined rights guaranteed to all Indians, does not bode well for the future of our country.

Congress has been crying wolf about the BJP for decades. But no wolf has materialized. The fact is, Kashmir had a terrorist problem which the police could not handle because they were under elected officials who were playing a double game. The BJP has sorted out the problem in a perfectly legal and constitutional manner. Yet, Tharoor continues to cry wolf.  

No political objective can justify the huge-scale abuse of the rights of Indian citizens in this manner.

If Tharoor has evidence of 'abuse of rights', why does he not approach the Bench with that evidence?  If he suspects there is such evidence, but does not possess it, why not employ smart people to uncover it? 

Q. You have also talked about the ''Hindu Pakistan'' controversy at length. You have argued that the BJP intends to create a mirror image of Pakistan. Have we become more intolerant as a society already as the recent Tanishq ad controversy showed?

It was a sweet ad showing a Muslim mom welcoming a Hindu bride. The problem is that, currently, that Muslim mom could also welcome three more brides for the same son. Of course, in a proper Muslim country, the Hindu bride would be obliged to convert or else be regarded as a concubine simply. 

There is another factor which should be mentioned. Daughters now have equal rights to ancestral property. If they marry within the 'jati' then though there may be a dispute it can't turn into a 'communal' matter. But if they marry out of jati- that too into a polygamous religion which has a tradition of bride-price, not dowry- then there is much scope for mischief.  

A: The Tanishq controversy offered yet another illustration of how reactionary and bigoted certain right-wing fringe elements have become, even as the ruling dispensation was quick to distance itself from the episode (you must have seen the surprising but welcome condemnation by the Home Minister, no less). But let us not forget that this is a Frankenstein''s monster that they have created, sustained through organised and vicious social media trolls, and it’s just one more reminder of the appalling power of the full-throated communal hatred that is so often unleashed in today’s India.

But Congress & Tharoor himself unleash such 'full-throated' political hatred all the time.  

As I have said, if such people are so infuriated by Hindu-Muslim ''ekatvam'', why not boycott the world''s longest-surviving symbol of Hindu-Muslim unity: India itself?

Most people would- if they could get a green card. But how is India- from which Muslim majority areas split off- a symbol of Hindu-Muslim unity? How come one of Nehru's sisters was allowed to marry a Jain, and his daughter was allowed to marry a Parsi, but Vijay Laxmi Pandit was not allowed to marry a patriotic Muslim?  

Petty prejudice can exist in any society, but what troubles me about the present is that our national leaders, who should be models for the country to follow, don’t appear to be in control of the hatred they themselves have created and enabled – and in letting this loose, they are allowing the haters, the trolls, the cynical and opportunistic TV anchors, the vigilantes on the streets, all of them to take us to a very dark place indeed.

The Congress Party's RSS, or Hindutva, phobia has taken it to a very dark place indeed if it has to rely on blathershites like Tharoor for illumination.  

Q. Maharashtra Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari took a dig at Uddhav Thackrey over secularism.

Congress is propping up the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra. So the next time, those goons attack Hindi speakers, Congress will be complicit in a type of hooliganism which will completely eradicate it in the Hindi belt.  Koshyari had asked if Uddhav had turned secular- because he was reopening bars but not shrines- and Uddhav snapped back that he was a true believer in Hindutva. He was right. His people had beaten plenty of Muslims while Koshyari had been busy setting up schools and colleges.

Do you think the word secularism in our Constitution is in imminent danger?

A: Yes, I suggested he should be given a different letterhead to express such ideas, rather than the official Raj Bhavan notepaper!

Thankfully, no one listens to Tharoor's suggestions. 

The word (secularism) is only a word;

Much may turn on it. The Bench may decide to ban polygamy for Muslims on the basis that a Secular State can't grant a faith based immunity to any of its laws.  

but even if the government takes the word ''secularism'' out of the Constitution, it is still a secular Constitution.

No. It is only a secular Constitution if belonging to a particular Religion does not give you an immunity from a particular law. 

After all, freedom of worship, freedom to profess and propagate your religion, freedom of expression, minority rights, and equality of all citizens, are all part of the basic structure of the Constitution.

Then how come a woman can contract a polygamous marriage only if the groom is Muslim? Clearly, the 'basic structure of the Constitution' is inconsistent with current Indian law.  

They can''t disappear by deleting a word.

Yes they can if the Bench so decides. Indeed, currently, there is no constraint whatsoever on how the Bench chooses to read the Constitution. If it wishes- as has happened- it can open internment centers for illegal immigrants identified by the Nationality Register it, suo moto, mandated and supervised.  

The ruling dispensation may well try to do that: there is certainly a concerted effort to erode secularism and replace it with a sectarian way of being that offers no place to religious minorities in Indian society.

Indeed. That concerted effort has succeeded in Pakistan. It was succeeding in the Kashmir Valley. It may yet succeed in Tharoor's Kerala or parts of West Bengal.        

Secularism as principle and practice is in danger,

in Punjab, which is under a Congress C.M.  

but I do not see it falling anytime soon: India embodies tolerance and pluralism in its very essence,

but Tharoor doesn't. He is singularly intolerant of the BJP. 

and I do not believe that forces of hatred can permanently overcome our fundamental secularism.

except in areas which are or which  become non-Hindu majority.

But we must not let our guard down;

We should continually cry 'Wolf!' till everybody decides maybe wolves are less of a nuisance than pueile shitheads like Tharoor  

we must continue to oppose such regressive ideas wherever they arise.

while clinging to a dynasty no matter how stupid the heir to the throne might be 

My book is a contribution to that effort

which has already failed 

– and to reclaiming nationalism and patriotism for those, like me, who would extend the embrace of these terms to all Indians.

except the BJP 

Q. With the focus on jobs in the Bihar polls, Do you think the result of the Bihar Assembly election could be an indicator of economic issues taking precedence over more emotive issues like those of nationalism for the common man?

Economic issues do take precedence. That's why Manmohan got a second term. Modi got a second term because the alternative was utterly shit.

A: It remains to be seen! State issues involve verdicts on state governments'' performance. But with Mr Modi campaigning for the BJP and his party raising Pakistan and nationalism as issues too, one cannot escape those topics either. We will have to learn from the results whether the voter was swayed.

It is understandable for Dr. Tharoor, who is from Kerala, to have no interest in or knowledge of Bihar. But then, neither does Rahul Gandhi. 

India certainly has a place for a fringe, anti-National, party. It makes sense for peripheral regions to support such a party. It may even pay to write books praising an anti-Hindutva- i.e. casteist- version of Hinduism. But what is good for Tharoor is bad for the Congress Party. The more he gains in prominence, the more distant the day of its revival as a National Party able to appeal to the majority community. 

Agnes Callard wrong on Arguing

 Agnes Callard writes

How does arguing work? 

Arguing is a type of behavior we observe. It is 'multiply realizable'- i.e. different initial conditions may give rise to it and it may have several purposes. Some arguments are protocol bound or juristic in such a manner that there is a dominant strategy. In this case we can specify rules according to which some arguments 'work' while others don't. 

Argumentation of any kind resembles fighting

No. Fighting involves the infliction of harm till the other desists. Arguments do not inflict harm. Nor do insults. 'Sticks and stones may break my bones &c'

—a zero sum game of dominance and submission.

This is nonsense. A decision process may involve listening to the arguments put forward by different parties and conceding something to each on that basis. In other words, this may be a positive- but also a negative- sum game. It is frequently the case that we get into an argument with someone else and the upshot is we both look stupid and are henceforth disregarded by everyone else.

 And yet disagreement, done right, is essential to intellectual life.

No. A thing is only essential if it must exist in all possible worlds. Intellectual life of various types may flourish in the absence of disagreement. Consider a case where 'Aumann agreement' obtains. It is not the case that 'intellectual life' will be absent. 

 You can set out to fill gaps in your knowledge, but being proven wrong is the only way to locate those gaps covered over by illusions of knowledge.

Nonsense! I set out to fill gaps in my knowledge about Nicaraguan politics by reading the Wikipedia article on it. I quickly find 'gaps in my knowledge'- e.g. my previous ignorance of who currently rules that country- but those gaps were not previously 'covered over by illusions of knowledge'. 

 When other people refute you, they teach you what you couldn’t have known you needed to learn.

No. When other people refute you they show you have poor reasoning power. I am refuting every sentence Callard writes. But, even if she read this, she wouldn't say 'I needed to learn x'. She must already know about things like Aumann agreement. All she would learn by reading me is that she writes like shit because she does not think before she writes. She is simply careless or stupid. Does she 'need to learn this'? No. It is better for her to remain ignorant of her own ignorance and stupidity so as to earn money by writing shite and getting paid for it. 

Arguments are only productive if

they concern 'open questions' the answers to which have utile applications. It does not matter what 'rules of engagement' are followed. Provided experiments or other types of research go forward- motivated by the passions generated by that argumentation- the thing may be productive or destructive. But this depends on who is doing the arguing. If I get into an argument with a kid as to whether Spiderman can beat up Dracula, the thing is destructive coz the kid ends up belaboring me with her fists and then her Mummy sends her to bed without her supper. For both of us it is a case of 'tears before bedtime'. We agree not to get into such arguments and just concentrate on making vroom vroom noises while playing with my matchbox cars. On the other hand if Joss Whedon gets into an argument with the same kid about whether Spiderman can beat up Dracula, the result may be a new addition to the Avengers franchise which grosses tens of billions of dollars world wide. 

 people follow certain basic rules of engagement, such as:
--Winning the argument is less important than finding the truth.

No. This is a case where Society requires individual rationality to diverge from collective rationality. We want the Defense attorney to do his damnedest to throw doubt on the Prosecution's case. At the same time, we want the Prosecution to go all out to convict the defendant of the crime which carries the highest tariff. Why? Both lawyers are 'agents' not 'principals'. Those paying them need to know that their incentives are properly adversarial. Otherwise, they could collude for an easy life.

 If Agnes is right, then the adversarial set up of our Courts is sub-optimal. But the alternative is a cozy arrangement between prosecutors and defense attorneys where neither exercises much vigilance and both excuse their laziness by saying 'well, we are not concerned with punishment so much as we are concerned with uncovering the Truth'. The reductio ad absurdum would be a 'Truth and Reconciliation' Commission to which anyone accused of anything simply pleads guilty to anything with which one might conceivably be charged because no punishment is entailed.

--Don’t use rhetorical tricks to achieve persuasion.

Rhetoric is about exposing the absurdity or mischievous consequences of the other's line of reasoning. It is perfectly proper to wax eloquent on the catastrophic consequences which would follow if everybody accepted the 'ratio' of the other's argument. 

Furthermore, persuasion involves presenting yourself in a good light and speaking in a winning fashion. One rhetorical trick is to appear modest. But to appear modest- rather than a faker of that virtue- it is advisable to actually cultivate humility and other good qualities in your private life. 

--It’s good to acknowledge what you don’t know.

No. It may be beneficial to do this, it may not. Speaking generally, I am ignorant of the color of the underpants worn by my interlocutor but if I open my remarks by acknowledging this ignorance of mine, people would think I am a pervert of some sort.

More generally, since most decisions must be made under conditions of epistemic scarcity and cognitive costliness, it is foolish to acknowledge what you don't know because this would tend to paralyze decision making in contexts where what matters more is that a decision is made quickly rather than that the decision is 'true' or 'optimal'. 

--You shouldn’t straw-man your opponent.

Why not? His argument may be sophisticated and hedged around with all sorts of caveats. Indeed it may be meaningless precisely for that reason. Straw-man the fuck out of him, if that serves your purpose. You can always hedge this straw-manning with caveats such that you can claim, if called on your straw-manning, that you are yourself being straw-manned.

--Acknowledge that your refuter does you a favor.

This is one claim of Callard's that I agree with. In a debate, it is always a good idea to begin by acknowledging that your refuter did you a favor by going down on his knees and sucking you off earlier in the day. 

Maxims of this kind are so familiar, so clichéd, that we are inclined to ignore the fact that they have a history.

A history of going doing on their knees and sucking off all and sundry.

 But they do.

In the same sense that they have a geography and a cosmology and a criminal record for lewd conduct.

 They did not appear out of nowhere, nor have they always been with us. Rather, they were explicitly introduced by one individual: Socrates. 

This is not just Eurocentric drivel, it is ignorant drivel. The fact is, all Civilizations- at least Iron Age civilizations with 'Tribal Republics'- developed the same logical, categorical, approach to evaluating arguments. Indeed the word kategoros initially meant an accusation (which is why in the Bible, the word is used in the sense of 'devil' because the devil accuses and punishes the sinner) which could not be of the form 'That dude is evil. I bet he killed and raped lots of kids. Let us put him to death.' Rather it had to take account of geographical, temporal, and other categories and be of the form 'The accused was in such and such place at such and such time. Moreover he had such and such motive to kill and rape  the deceased. This was the stick he used to bash in her brains. It was given to him by his Daddy on his birthday as many of us can testify. Furthermore, so and so, who happened to be relieving herself behind a bush was a witness to the foul deed'.

That, at any rate, is the story we find in Plato, in whose dialogues the character Socrates appears as stating, explaining and defending these norms.

Plato's Socrates admits that there were other similar thinkers before him- some of whom lived very long ago in Egypt or other places. 

 He introduces the practice of arguing for the sake of the truth, as opposed to for the sake of victory, or popularity, or audience-gratification. 

A disciple of his, states that the 'Truth Seeking Persians' were the first to formulate a system of Government based on reason. But this happened before Socrates was born.

Does Socrates really deserve this much credit? 

No. That is why no such credit is accorded to him save by the ignorant or those trying to shill some worthless book

Plato tries to make the case that he does, in a series of dialogues in which he considers and rebuts any claim that poets, or sophists, or political leaders, or orators, or ordinary citizens have on that title.

Either Socrates has a 'genius'- a tutelary spirit- which, being of divine origin, makes him superior to other men, or he is a 'gad-fly', gifted but not god like. 

The book the Guggenheim Award is being used to support, The World Socrates Made, 

Is a bunch of stupid lies. Callard is talking up some dead white male so as to boost the sales of a shite book.

will analyze contemporary intellectual culture—within philosophy; within academia more broadly; and extra academically, on social media—in the light of its Socratic origins. 

Coz White Males invented everything- right? Africans and Middle Eastern people and Indians and the Chinese and the indigenous people of the Americas were all utterly useless- little more than beasts. 

Our cultures of debate have a peculiarly Socratic structure—that of an adversarial division of epistemic labor—that we have come to take for granted.

But, we know, Indians had the same thing at an earlier period. 

 Both the idealistic heights we expect from argumentative engagement, as well as the depths (defensiveness, ad hominem argumentation, and mutual suspicion) to which it often, in reality, sinks bear the Socratic signature. Learning to read it is critical to creating the culture of refutation that we want and need.

To refute Callard is child's play. Logic and Category theory have moved on a great deal even over the last twenty years. Meanwhile Callard is helping to turn Philosophy into a sort of finger-painting therapy for mentally retarded victims of epistemic and other self-abuse. 

My first book, Aspiration: the Agency of Becoming (OUP, 2018)was about how we come to value new things. 

It was shit.

I argued that such fundamental personal transformations as becoming a parent, acquiring a passion for classical music, or becoming a patriot of one’s adopted homeland can be understood as governed by a rational process of self-creation.

but only because becoming a cat or a cloud or a canary could be understood in the same way. Indeed, by her own account, we could claim that Agnes Callard has turned into a duck named Magnus Mallard. Ex falso quodlibet. From what is false anything at all can be deduced. 

Dumah as Saqi

My ever-young Sorrow bespeaks so archaic a tongue

Its Targum by but Dumah, as Saqi, is sung

For Meaning, thus tortured, is Melody

& Tartarean torments- Memory

Envoi-

Prince! Ware Darkness' all diseasing heeltaps of Light

Watchman! Wasted... What of the Night?

Tharoor's vacuous, vilely Casteist, Hinduism

Dr. Tharoor writes- 

Hinduism, with its openness, its respect for variety, its acceptance of all other faiths, is one religion which has always been able to assert itself without threatening others.

Yet, the only reason Tharoor's ancestors are Hindus, not Muslims or Christians, is because his own people were initially very good at fighting though, no doubt, it took the Brits to defeat Tipoo Sultan and put an end to forcible conversion. After the Moplah atrocities, the Arya Samaj enabled some who had been forced to convert to return to the Hindu fold. But it was the Brits who did the heavy lifting in suppressing the Muslims. 

Sadly, there was another aspect to Tharoor's ancestral Hinduism. It used violence against lower castes so as to ensure its dominance. 

It should also be remembered that the Nair Service Society (Tharoor is a Nair by caste) helped Indira Gandhi bring down the first Communist regime in Kerala. The martial qualities of this caste explains why Hinduism remained dominant there whereas, in Goa, it was reduced to subject status. This is not to say that Nairs are indifferent to the call of Hindutva and that many, I believe most, are no doughty fighters in the battle against caste prejudice and anti-national sentiments

Hinduism, like other religions which have survived, is not open to anything save what is in its own interest. It either more credibly threatens that which is a threat to it, or that which may profitably yield to it, or else it fails to burgeon. Indeed, Hinduism has been uprooted from its ancestral home in Pakistan. Tharoor's late wife's family had to flee the Kashmir Valley in the Nineties. Congress betrayed them. Now Tharoor is on bail for 'abetment to suicide' of that Kashmiri lady.

Tharoor thinks the content of a Religion determines its trajectory. This is foolish. Religions are like each other. None have magical properties. History shows that a Religion expands when Nations or Empires professing that religion expand. Missionaries can play a role but only by converting Kings or acting as advance agents for a Colonizing power. By contrast, a cult may spread where it is tolerated. But a cult is not a Religion. 

But this is not the Hindutva that destroyed the Babri Masjid,

Hindutva did not destroy the Babri Masjid. Hindus did- specifically hereditary devotees of the presiding deity of the shrine. They were angry because some of their number had been killed in a police firing some months previously. The question was, would the Administration shed the blood of hundreds of devotees to protect a piece of property?  The answer was no. It would have been political suicide. In any case, it is a disproportionate use of force to protect mere property. Remember the structure was not a Mosque because though it had been used for Hindu worship, no Islamic worship there had occurred since 1949. 

Tharoor belongs to the same Congress Party that threw open the structure to Hindu worship. But it is run by the Catholic widow of the Hindu man who presided over that action. Another thing that Hindu man presided over was the massacre of Sikhs after the killing of his Mother. At that time, the Congress Party couldn't just threaten, it could kill those who threatened it. That's why it was a ruling party. 

nor that spewed in hate-filled diatribes by communal politicians

Tharoor spews hate-filled diatribes at the ruling party. But hate is not enough. You have to offer better governance to survive in politics. This is where Tharoor's Party falls down. One reason it does so may be because it believes hating Hindutva makes one virtuous and being virtuous means getting elected and getting elected means one should fuck over the country by pursuing stupid economic policies. 

Still, it must be admitted, Tharoor is right to say that his sort of Hinduism- which is based on Caste- is utterly antithetical to Hindutva. But, it is also true that the traditional Aristocracy of Christian or Islamic countries were wary off, and sometimes actively persecuted, egalitarian interpretations of those Religions which taught working people how to read the Scripture. They preferred that the masses remain illiterate so that they would not be able to think for themselves. There have been 'Reformations' in Christianity and Islam- just as there have been in Hinduism- as well as ecumenical attempts to find common ground for a 'broad tent' for that Faith community.  

The ecumenical aspect of Reformed Hinduism is Hindutva- the 'essence of Hinduism'. It is anti-Caste- particularly untouchability and the notion that 'backward' people should not hold high office- because that is what reduced the Nation to poverty, servitude and ignorance.

 Tharoor is a sycophant of a Dynasty which is furious that a 'lowly' tea-seller has usurped the throne. It is no wonder he expresses great hatred of 'Hindutva'. But, this does not explain why his books on Hinduism are so crap. The truth is it is not hatred which has warped Tharoor's mind. He is simply a stupid, ignorant, blathershite who studied worthless rubbish at University and then worked for the UN as a professional blathershite of the brown nosing bureaucratic variety. His push for the top job failed and so he returned to India to join perhaps the most corrupt administration in Indian history. Now his prospects sink as the dynasty dies nasty. So he shits out books while on bail on charges of pushing his wife to suicide. Who knows? If he goes to jail, he may grow out his beard and become either a Marxist or a Maharishi or both. 

Why did Tharoor, who had a good pension, join Congress? He knew it was a bunch of hooligans. He had seen them roaming around beating the crap out of anybody they didn't like- or handing them over to be tortured by the Police- in the year he graduated from St. Stephens. He knew very well what its thugs had done to the Sikhs ten years later. Why did he join hands with a bunch of corrupt, incompetent, thugs? 

The answer may have to do with 'sweat equity'. Or maybe the guy likes hanging around with gangstas. 

He writes- "How dare a bunch of goondas shrink the soaring majesty of the Vedas and the Upanishads to the petty bigotry of their brand of identity politics?"

A bunch of goondas dares do anything which another bunch of tougher goondas doesn't beat the fuck out of them for doing. There was a time when saying anything nasty about Sanjay Gandhi would have got your head kicked in. Now, even former Congress Ministers can't find anything good to say about Rahul. 

Tharoor does not say that the Vedas and Upanishads are only part of 'twice born' Hinduism. There is no obligation on the majority of Hindus to keep up the knowledge and practice of the Vedic Sciences. This does not mean that a Kayastha or a Shudra or a Dalit can't 'shrink their majesty' into any soteriologically utile form. Building a Temple is one such form. This will go ahead by order of the Supreme Court. If Congress didn't want the Temple built why did it open the place to Hindu worship and permit the placing of a foundation stone? 

Tharoor asks- 'Why should any Hindu allow them to diminish Hinduism to the raucous self-glorification of the football hooligan, or take a religion of awe-inspiring tolerance and reduce it to a chauvinist rampage?" 

The answer is that a Hindu should allow things which is in his or her interest.  Congress hooliganism was better  and TMC hooliganism is better than Communist hooliganism. Hindutva hooliganism is better than purely Casteist hooliganism. Chelsea hooliganism is good for me if it keeps Millwall hooligans away from my boozer. No doubt, effective policing is better than hooliganism. But that means having to pay taxes to a Government which isn't utterly corrupt and incompetent. Hindutva- of Modi's variety- is not hooliganism. It is better governance than the dynastic or casteist parties could provide. But that may change. It is in everybody's interest that fuckwits like Tharoor are disintermediated or jailed so capable people can come to the fore. Fuck Shashi, we want people like K.K Shailaja who has won international plaudits for her handling of COVID. 

Tharoor believes- "The common enemy lies in the forces of sectarian division that would, if unchecked, tear the country apart -

This is not the case for Hindu majority portions of India. The non-Hindu majority areas will be separatist in any case. 

 or transform it into something that most self-respecting Hindus would refuse to recognise

This again is simply not true. No 'self-respecting Hindu' would refuse to recognize that a Hindu Kingdom, or Republic, ruled strictly in accordance with Hindu laws and with no non-Hindus whatsoever, was in fact a place where Hinduism prevailed. This would be true even if that Kingdom or Republic was established over the entirety of what is now India. 

Of course, such a Hindu might decide she didn't want to be Hindu. At the least, she didn't want to be in a place where Hindus were not being attacked or vilified. But such a Hindu would be 'self-respecting' only in the in the sense that a Masochist who likes being whipped and then shat upon is 'self-respecting'. 

It is foolish to say that Hinduism requires toleration of other Religions because there is no evidence there were any other Religions- certainly no Abrahamic ones- at the time when Hinduism became the dominant religion of the sub-continent. 

It may be argued that tolerance is itself a virtue but again there can be no Hindu precept in that connection simply because there was no alterity to tolerate. Finally, there is the view that taking a masochistic delight in humiliation is good in itself. But why should it be so? India provides evidence that the descendants of those who were humiliated led progressively more shitty lives. There is no Hindu scriptural injunction to turn the other cheek though to refrain from injuring animals etc is considered meritorious. Some Hindus, influenced by the Sermon on the Mount, conflated the Biblical injunction to 'resist not (antistenai) evil' with the traditional doctrine of Ahimsa. But this involved getting one's reward in one's next life on some paradisal planet. 

Perhaps for this reason, Mahatma Gandhi thought belief in reincarnation is an essential requirement for being a Hindu. Since Hindus were fucked in this world, it made sense to adopt a wholly foolish and ontologically dysphoric political credo. 

But Gandhi was wrong. An essence is something true in all possible worlds. There is a possible world where Gandhi himself received a proper religious education. Then he would have said that reincarnation is 'maya'- an illusion. It may be an exoteric belief but Hinduism's esoteric core is much more nuanced. That nuance, however, is not 'Straussian', rather it is part of the warp and woof of the Hindu Soteriology in both its Desi (Regional) and Margi paths- at least that is my experience when it comes to the shared Advaitic creed shared by me and Dr. Tharoor.

Strangely, he says something entirely different in his book 'The Hindu Way'. The following is excerpted in Scrol.in

Early in my United Nations career, my first boss, a lay preacher in his native Denmark, asked me a pointed question: “Why should a Hindu be good?”

Since being good means enjoying better outcomes or being more fit for purpose than being bad, the answer to the question 'Why should an X be good' is that it is better for X to be good than to be bad. True, there are exceptions- e.g the UN bureaucracy were being utterly site is considered grounds for promotion. Had this stupid Dane been good he'd have been a lay preacher or laying preachers back home. Nobody can say them Lutheran Ministers aren't crying out for a good ass pounding. 

Not, I replied, in order to go to heaven or avoid hell; most Hindus do not believe in the existence of either.

Nonsense! They firmly believe that those they don't like will burn in Hell- albeit not for eternity but a very very long time before being reborn as a particularly reviled amoeba.  

If heaven is a place where a soul should sprout white wings and sing the praises of god, it must be rather a boring place, hardly worth aspiring to, and god must be a rather insecure being.

Whereas being a Congress MP perpetually singing the praises of a hugely psychologically insecure and bird brained Dynasty is not boring at all. 

And as for hell, the very notion of hell is incompatible with Hindu cosmology,

No it isn't. Naraka is Hell and is a big feature of Hindu and Jain and Buddhist cosmology.  

since it suggests there is a place where god is not, and that, to the Hindu, is impossible to conceive, for god is everywhere or he would not be god.

Nonsense! Indian Logic can't have an Anselm type ontological proof of God because Existence simply can't be a predicate in any Logical or otherwise symbolic Universe. Hindus, just like everybody else, can conceive of a being who is everywhere- including your toilet bowl- but who longs to attain the station of not having to be present in shitholes. Why deny God the right not to watch Tharoor poop? 

If Hinduism is, indeed, a manava dharma, an ethical code applicable to the whole of humanity,

Fuck off! No 'ethical code' is equally applicable to babies as much as bishops- though both are human-all-too-human. There can't be a 'total ordering' of deontological preferences for any given person at any given moment let alone one for the whole of Humanity. No doubt, an omniscient being could have such a thing but only under pure Occassionalism- i.e. God is the only efficient cause- in which case there is no point having it. 

then it is legitimate for a non-Hindu to ask why indeed should a Hindu be good.

In the UN it may be legitimate to ask a question which is as stupid as shit. But the UN aint Hindu.  

First of all, because he is bound by the moral obligation to fulfil his dharma, the right action his religion enjoins upon him always to undertake.

But Krishna says this is all but unknowable. Still, even in an Occassionalist Universe, free will supervenes in at least one respect- viz the Yogis relationship with Yogishvara. Since 1965, the Catholic Faith holds  similar view. The only mysteries are the mysteries of Faith precisely because nothing else binds (re-ligio) the like-hearted to a common Credo.

The Hindu is taught that there are six principal obstacles to the performance of dharma:

No. There is only one obstacle- Nesciecne which however may be instantaneously and gratuitously dissolved.  

two are Purusharthas gone wrong, kama as lust rather than desire,

Lust is the name we give to the overpowering of prudence and foresight by a sexual imperative. It is a Nescience arising out of instinctual drives which, however, are necessary to life 

and lobha as greed and avarice for material possessions (beyond artha which is the legitimate acquisition of wealth and worldly goods for a worthy life).

No. Greed is the overpowering of prudence, foresight, 'economia', by an overmastering impulse to appropriate something. It may be perfectly 'legitimate' but it is not prudent.  

Four other vices are personal failings that are within an individual’s capacity to prevent: krodha (hatred), mada (vanity), matsarya (envy) and moha (delusion arising from ignorance or infatuation).

These are not 'failings'. They are 'affects'. It may be prudent to curb them. It certainly shows foresight to train yourself to do so.  

These six obstacles are prevented and overcome through

God's grace which dispels Nescience or else some Soteriological praxis of askesis which also yields supernatural powers  

the practice of seven essential virtues laid down from the time of Adi Shankara: ahimsa (non-violence), satyam (truth), shivam (piety), sundaram (the cultivation of beauty), vairagyam (detachment), pavitram (purity) and swabhavam (self- control). The rejection of these vices and the practice of these virtues are essential for a Hindu to lead a good life.

Nonsense! God's grace knows no such limitations. Moreover, we can see for ourselves that all sorts and conditions of people live a good life without bothering with 'rejecting soi disant vices' or 'practicing virtues'. On the other hand, plenty of holier than thou fuckwits lead shitty lives and are avoided by everybody because they are boring, stupid, and vexatious to the spirit. 

My boss was a worldly-wise man;

He worked for the UN. He was a useless tosser.  

he wanted a more pragmatic reason for why a Hindu should be good.

Look, the stupid fuckwit was just trying to 'win your soul for Christ'. Some of your other bosses- if you had a cute bum- would have wanted you to possess a pragmatic reason for Hindus with cute bums to spread their butt cheeks on demand and not importunately plead for a reach-around. 

If it was not the promise of a better life in the next world, or a desire to avoid eternal damnation in Hell, what was a Hindu’s incentive? I explained that whereas in Christianity the body has a soul, in Hinduism the soul has a body.

This is nonsense. The Catholics quote Jeremiah 1.5 ' Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you. God is the efficient cause of the fusing of the soul into the body at the moment of conception- which is why them dudes are so against abortion. But then, so are we. 'Garbha hatya' is a sin equivalent to killing a Brahmin- probably because most Brahmins have the same I.Q as a fetus. Mine is lower. I'm a very very special little boy.

In other words, we are emanations of a universal soul, the atman, which does not die;

That is a Gnostic doctrine. It can be found in strains of Judaism, Christianity, Islam and even Zoroastrianism. But it isn't Hindu. Either the soul is univocal with the Godhead (Advaita) or it is an 'amsha' (limb) or else a gratuitous endowment such that Grace may have something to work on.  But whatever the soul might be, good governance and the improvement of life-chances for all in a Society is good for it.

It is not the case that the existence of the soul is a providential argument for a shithead like Tharoor to justify his claim that combatting Hindutva is the Hindu's highest duty. 

it discards its temporal form, the body, from time to time.

This is not the Hindu doctrine. A single soul may simultaneously be in multiple bodies or none at all. The soul is not limited by name, form, time or place. 

Since the purpose of the soul is ultimately to reach moksha,

Nonsense! The purpose is to participate in 'Lila'- the Divine Sport or Play 

to attain union with Brahman and stop the endless cycle of birth and rebirth in various bodies, the incentive for a Hindu to be good lay in the desire to progress towards this goal.

Yet Vaishnavs explicitly say they don't want moksha or kevalya, the want to be reborn so as to serve the Lord eternally.  Saivites and others have plenty of 'Jivan Muktas' as well as other very spiritually advanced personalities who serve the Lord any way. 

An amoral Hindu, one who lived in adharma, would be in disharmony with the world and be set back in his soul’s striving for moksha.

Not if God wills otherwise or they do smart things.

I am not sure he was satisfied with my answer, and I am not sure you, the reader, will be. There was, however, a catch in what I was propounding.

If the soul is permanent and the body is not, it makes sense that the soul sheds bodies and keeps returning to earth until it has attained moksha; from this flows the doctrine of punarjanmam (reincarnation), the idea that one will be reborn until one has attained that level of self-realisation.

But this idea coexisted with the notion of 'Chiranjeevis'- immortals- and Avadhoots and Parmahsansas and so on.  Fuck is so great about Self-Realisation? Get over yourself. Do something useful. 

The idea of reincarnation, emerging from the endless cycle of birth and rebirth, is basic to Hinduism.

No it isn't. Every Religion has it somewhere in its background. But it isn't basic to anything. Why? The Eschaton does not matter. Religion is solely an expression of the Katechon- i.e. what keeps things together till the Day of Wrath. 

If in other faiths the individual is a body which has its own soul,

There is no such faith. God may either create the soul before Time itself exists or do so when He pleases. But God alone fuses the soul to a body. Golems have no soul. Nor do Canadians.  In the Indic traditions, the Gandharvas play the vital role in 'antarabhava'. But this aint so different from the Islamic barzakh. Judaism has a notion of 'ibbur' and Islam one of 'ri'jat' or 'tansukh' 

in Hinduism the individual is a soul which happens to be in temporary possession of a certain body;

No. Bodies don't matter. A soul does not have to be embodied or can have multiple embodiment.  

the immortal soul occupies a mortal corpus,

not necessarily. Hinduism has Chiranjivis. Tharoor is speaking of a particular strain of Gnosticism which was thoroughly exorcized, if it existed at all, in Hinduism. It is not the case that a Demiurge created embodied souls for some silly dialectical reason. A Hindu may be Gnostic, Agnostic or whatever but Hinduism can't possibly be either. Why? Because, self-evidently, it has endowed survival value on an uncertain fitness landscape 

which it discards at the end of its physical life, only to re-emerge in another form, until it accomplishes true self-realisation and moksha, and merges with Brahman.

This is not what Hinduism says. Some stupid cunts have said it but they are cunts and they are stupid and Tharoor has been reading them. The truth is neither Saivites nor Vaisnavites nor Saktas speak of merger with Brahman.  To merge with a thing you must be separated from it. But that 'chorismos' is Nescience. 

This cycle of birth, death and rebirth is known as Samsara, and it is a belief that addresses one of the central challenges facing every believer in god – if god is all-knowing, all-seeing, all-compassionate and merciful, why does he permit so much suffering, pain, inequality and inequity to bedevil his creations?

But, as Shakespear has said nothing is good or bad save thinking makes it so.  

The Hindu answer is that such suffering is the result of man’s own actions in a previous life; our present circumstances are caused or enabled by our past deeds and misdeeds, action and inaction.

The problem here, as Draupati says in the Mahabharata is that since God is the Mayin- i.e. efficient cause- and sets up the whole thing- only He is stained by both the crime and the punishment. Thus no Theodicy can wholly escape the taint of predestination. But by regarding this as merely a mystery of Faith- not the World- Theodicy ceases to matter save as a conventional truth for a particular Faith group. Tharoor is not giving us that convention for the Indic Religions which ultimately says things like 'Samsara is Nirvana', 'I am Brahma', or, (in Jainism), that all beings attain Kevalya which they enjoy for a nondenumerable infinity of time.  

The soul continues from life-cycle to life-cycle, hopping from body to body as a caterpillar climbs onto a blade of grass and jumps to a new one (the metaphor is Upanishadic, not my own.)

In English, caterpillars turn into butterflies, they don't jump into the bodies of other caterpillars. Tharoor should have chosen a different metaphor- e.g. gold being reformed into a more beautiful ornament by a goldsmith. Still regarding yourself as God, is just as pointless as identifying yourself with the Universe, or the Spirit of Enquiry, or any other such abstraction. However, for a collective soteriological purpose, the thing may be useful. This is where Tharoor falls down. He thinks Hinduism is a Theosophy. It isn't. It is a living religion which has to compete with other religions and ideologies on an uncertain fitness landscape. 

I always considered this deeply unfair: why should a human being, conscious only of himself in his present life, have to suffer for wrongs he does not recollect and misdeeds he has no memory of having committed in previous lives of which he is unaware?

Yup. Theodicy is fucked no matter how you slice it.  

Still, I had to accept it was a more coherent explanation than the contradictory ones offered by other faiths, which struggled to reconcile the world’s injustices with their theological belief in a merciful god.

But those countries which were doing better than others flattered themselves that Divine Providence was on their side. Theology doesn't matter very much. Religion flourishes when the community is flourishing relative to others. 

If you thought of god as, for instance, an old man in a white beard looking down benevolently at you from the heavens, listening to your prayers and interceding when he saw fit, then it was difficult to accept that his benevolence stopped short of your well-being despite your prayers, or that he was indifferent to the cruelty and suffering assailing his creatures.

Why? The guy was storing up treasures for you in Heaven. Suffering was a good investment because the pay-off was eternal felicity.  

If you stopped thinking of god that way, however, but saw god in everyone and everything, in the bad and the good, in the unfair as well as the just, as an impersonal cosmic force that just is – then you can come to terms with the world’s tragedies as well as its joys.

But you'd be either be a blathershite or a hebephrenic retard.

The idea of reincarnation is related to that of karma, or action – the accumulated actions of your life. So the very circumstances of your birth – the home, the place, the nation and the opportunities into which you are born – are determined by your soul’s actions in its previous incarnation. The time and circumstances of your death, too, are beyond human agency; when you have finished enjoying the benefits earned from (and paying for the misdeeds committed in) your previous life, your time on earth ends and your soul discards your body, to enter another. This is known as prarabdha karma.

Annie Beasant spent a lot of time thinking about how prarabhdha karma could be changed, like an arrow in flight struck by a swifter arrow. Ultimately she settled on a notion of transferable karma. This is certainly permitted in Hinduism. But so is the acknowledgement that the the entire notion is illusory or sublatable. 

The fact is politics based on the essence of Religion, not its Aristocratic interpretation, has completely changed the type of life a person born in the oppressed class or gender can enjoy. Nelson Mandela was born as a third class citizen of South Africa. By his own efforts and that of many others, he became the President of that country. The type of Christianity in South Africa which denied that Blacks could be equal to Whites- let alone rule over them- chose, in 1986 to alter its doctrine. We might say 'the essence of Christianity' eventually prevailed in South Africa, just as 'Hindutva' has ultimately prevailed in India over Tharoor's self-serving version of that Religion. 

Then there are your characteristics, tendencies and aptitudes, themselves emerging from the accumulated learnings of your previous lives; this is called sanchita karma and can be changed by your efforts, education and conduct in your present life.

One can do little by oneself. One needs to work with others on projects of mutual benefit. A career of sycophancy and opportunism which is rewarded by great wealth and social prominence is not an 'outward and visible' sign of theosis- as Tharoor, it appears, imagines. It is hypocrisy, mendacity and self-delusion- nothing more.

Finally there is agami karma, those of our actions which will pave the way for our future (reborn) life. Our evil words or deeds in the present life will mar our soul’s prospects in the next, whereas good deeds, right actions and the fulfilment of our dharma without regard to reward, will ensure our rebirth at a higher stage of the progress towards moksha.

But this belief is itself karmic because it is part of maya. In other words, it is sublatable. But 'endoxa' or conventions that solve coordination problems needn't be sublated in utile contexts. The meaning- i.e. 'artha'- of a precept- is in its use. This is a matter of economia, not akreibia.  

To some this suggests another, somewhat simplistic, answer to the question “Why should a Hindu be good?”

Be good so that you are reborn in a better situation in your next life than in the present one; if you are good, you may reappear as a king or a sage, whereas if you are bad, you might come back as an invalid or a mosquito. (Or as Amartya Sen, the Nobel laureate, put it: “As a Hindu, if you are a good economist in this life, you come back in the next as a physicist. If you are a bad economist in this life, you come back in the next as a sociologist.”) Jokes apart, your prarabdha karma is established by what your soul has experienced in its previous foray in a human body: your incentive to be good is to improve its chances of a better time in its next innings.

Tharoor ignores the important aspect of this theory of karma. Essentially, it permits the notion that everybody in a particular lineage gets reborn in close connection with each other. Thus, as  Obeyesekere points out, it binds 'small scale societies' together. This is why small communities like the Druze or Alawis have a similar doctrine. 

Hindutva is about reforming Society so being born any type of Hindu won't involve having a miserable life voting for a corrupt and incompetent Dynasty and the worthless blathershites it keeps around for brown nosing purposes. 

Tharoor says he is uncomfortable with this notion of karma but in the end settles for a theosophized version of it. This shows his argument is not with Hindutva so much as a Hindu India where people lower down the caste ladder than him can tell him to stick his ego up the same arse he pulls his books and articles out of. 

I was never comfortable with this idea, since it seemed to me to have been devised somewhat self-servingly by the upper castes to ensure social peace. Do not rebel if you are born poor or “untouchable”, the doctrine seemed to imply, since it’s merely your soul paying for the sins of your past life; and do not blame us for leading a much better life than you, since we are merely reaping the benefits of our past good deeds.

Behave, conform, accept your lot and serve your betters, the doctrine seemed to suggest, and you will enjoy the rewards next time around. As a philosophy to reconcile people with their lot, and that would help maintain social peace, such a belief-system was of inestimable value. (It also justified human suffering in terms that no other religion’s theology could match.)

But I found it ethically dubious – and so, no doubt unfairly, looked askance at the idea of reincarnation itself. I was wrong to do so, since the socio-political rationale was irrelevant to the Hindu sages who had advanced the theory of punarjanmam. They were less concerned about issues of socio-political conformism than I was; the rishis’ interest lay in the soul’s unsteady and imperfect progress towards self-realisation and merger with the cosmos. Their doctrine was about the divine soul, not the social circumstances of the body it happened to occupy.

This is Gnosticism. It is not Hinduism. Essentially, Tharoor is saying 'I didn't like this bit of Hinduism. But, I don't want to help fight those elements in Indian Society which render the Caste system noxious. Instead, I'm going to pretend that the only problem in India is Hindutva because those hooligans have kicked out the Dynasty I serve. As for the Soul, that is God's business. Society is just fine as it is- provided those Hindutva hooligans are beaten up by some tough Pinjra Tod type lezzas. 

Tharoor, to his credit, does not claim any great knowledge of Hinduism or even any high hereditary status within it. With disarming modesty he writes (in an excerpt published by Print.in)

I am a believer, despite a brief period of schoolboy atheism (of the kind that comes with the discovery of rationality and goes with an acknowledgement of its limitations). And I am happy to describe myself as a believing Hindu: not just because it is the faith into which I was born, but for a string of other reasons, though faith requires no reason.

Tharoor may believe all sorts of things. But 'The Hindu Way' must have some beliefs which differentiate it from 'The Christian Way' or 'The Muslim Way' or Clint Eastwood & an orangutan in 'Every which way but loose'. Tharoor thinks he has found one such difference but, because he does not understand the Hindu doctrine of reincarnation, he is wrong. 

One reason is cultural: as a Hindu I belong to a faith that expresses the ancient genius of my own people.

So, Tharoor makes an invidious distinction between Hinduism and 'foreign' Religions. The fact is the 'ancient genius' of the Indians led to them being conquered or colonized by those of alien faiths. It would be a good idea to change the ancestral Religion so its adherents don't remain wretchedly poor and unable to defend themselves.

One may with great plausibility argue that the 'ancient genius' of advanced countries involves adopting the best, not the indigenous, Religion on offer.  

I am proud of the history of my faith in my own land: of the travels of Adi Shankara, who journeyed from the southernmost tip of the country to Kashmir in the north, Gujarat in the west and Odisha in the east, debating spiritual scholars everywhere, preaching his beliefs, establishing his mutths.

So, a guy from Tharoor's Province walked around a lot. Wow! Isn't that cool!  

I am reaffirmed in this atavistic allegiance by

some Swamy or Acharya? Nope. It was 

the Harvard scholar Diana Eck writing of the ‘sacred geography’ of India, ‘knit together by countless tracks of pilgrimage’.

unless they lie across the border of an Islamic Republic or Chinese occupied Tibet. 

The great philosopher-president of India, Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, wrote of Hindus as ‘a distinct cultural unit, with a common history, a common literature, and a common civilization’.

Perhaps he meant Indian Hindus. Those in Bali have a different history. 

In reiterating my allegiance to Hinduism, I am

playing politics 

consciously laying claim to this geography and history, its literature and civilization, identifying myself as an heir (one among a billion heirs) to a venerable tradition that stretches back into time immemorial.

Does Tharoor think Indian Muslims or Christians can't 'consciously lay claim' to precisely the same thing? If so, the Law disagrees with Dr. Tharoor. From the Hindu point of view, a person who continues to perform ancestral rites in the traditional manner is a Hindu even if their 'Ishta Deva' is Lord Jesus Christ or Shirdi's Sai Baba or any other 'Avatar'.  

I fully accept that many of my friends, compatriots and fellow-Hindus feel no similar need, and that there are Hindus who are not (or are no longer) Indian, but I am comfortable with this ‘cultural’ and ‘geographical’ Hinduism that anchors me to my ancestral past.

But it doesn't really. Either Tharoor is performing the prescribed rituals or he isn't. If he is, then 'karma kanda' anchors him. Not some vacuous shite he pulled out of his arse.  

But another ‘reason’ for my belief in Hinduism is, for lack of a better phrase, its intellectual ‘fit’.

Tharoor is a cretin. Thus his Hinduism is cretinous. Nothing wrong in that- provided he is performing his karma kanda obligations or else is receiving instruction from a Spiritual preceptor or else follows a Devotional path.  

I am more comfortable with the tenets of Hinduism than I would be with those of the other faiths of which I know.

Probably because you know shit about Hinduism. I personally was comfortable with the tenets of Christianity- Santa Claus bringing you prezzies- till I found out you weren't allowed to masturbate in Catechism class. Heaven isn't worth it.  

I have long thought of myself as liberal, not merely in the political sense of the term, or even in relation to principles of economics, but as an attitude to life.

Blathershites tend to be liberal with vacuous bombast.  

To accept people as one finds them, to allow them to be and become what they choose, and to encourage them to do whatever they like (so long as it does not harm others) is my natural instinct.

Cool. If you meet Tharoor you are welcome to call him a blathershite till you are blue in the face.  

Rigid and censorious beliefs have never appealed to my temperament.

Because rigid beliefs aren't vacuous. However, Tharoor does have 'censorious beliefs' with respect to the BJP. The problem is those beliefs are vacuous.  

In matters of religion, too, I found my liberal instincts reinforced by the faith in which I was brought up.

Which suggests that the arrow of causality pointed in the opposite direction.  

Hinduism is, in many ways, predicated on the idea that the eternal wisdom of the ages and of divinity cannot be confined to a single sacred book;

Nonsense! It is predicated on the idea of karma- either ritual or other soteriological actions which alter your prospects in your next life. Wisdom, by itself, has no soteriological force whatsoever. A demon or Brahmarakshasa may be very wise. As for Divinity- the Gods themselves are subject to karma. The good news is that karma is itself maya- illusory. Sadly, this belief too is maya so you are back to square one. 

we have many, and we can delve into each to find our own truth (or truths).

which, sadly, are maya of a particularly stupid type 

As a Hindu I can claim adherence to a religion without an established church

So can a Christian or Muslim or Jew who has left the sect of his ancestors. By contrast, Tharoor's Dad adhered to a Religion which was patronized by the Ruler and which had 'Acharyas'- who correspond to Cardinals- with one particular Acharya being the 'Pope' of his particular sect. There was no choice as to which 'rituals and customs' had to be followed. There were degrees of orthopraxy- but this is true of any Religion.  

or priestly papacy, a religion whose rituals and customs I am free to reject, a religion that does not oblige me to demonstrate my faith by any visible sign, by subsuming my identity in any collectivity, not even by a specific day or time or frequency of worship. (There is no Hindu Pope, no Hindu Vatican, no Hindu catechism, not even a Hindu Sunday.)

There is no Christian Pope. There is a Catholic Pope, though there may also be an Anti-Pope. But Catholicism isn't coextensive with Christianity. A non-denominational Christian is no different from a non-denominational Hindu or a nominal Muslim who prefers the Tavern to the Mosque.  

As a Hindu I follow a faith that offers a veritable smorgasbord of options to the worshipper of divinities to adore and to pray to, of rituals to observe (or not), of customs and practices to honour (or not), of fasts to keep(or not).

There are plenty of nominal Christian who worship Buddha and Ganesha and some Japanese guy who teaches you how to get a BMW by chanting.  

As a Hindu I subscribe to a creed that is free of the restrictive dogmas of holy writ, one that refuses to be shackled to the limitations of a single volume of holy revelation.

Yet, other Hindus who most people would describe as more typical or better exemplars of the Religion subscribe to a creed which has a Holy Scripture and highly restrictive dogmas.  

A Hindu can be astika or nastika:

just as a nominal Christian or Muslim or Jew may be a religiously unobservant atheist or agnostic but may yet claim, for a political purpose, to belong to that religion. 

the terms are said to relate more to orthopraxy (action) rather than orthodoxy(belief), but action proceeds from a set of convictions.

The actions of principled people may indeed proceed from their convictions. But selfish, self-regarding, actions may lead to criminal convictions. Tharoor is currently on bail, charged with abetment to suicide.  

As an astika he can accept the sacredness of the Vedas, the existence of atman (the soul) and belief in God, or he can reject one or more of these credos and still be Hindu, an adherent of the nastika variant of Hindu philosophy.

In the same way that a person who refuses to watch cricket because it is boring and stupid could be said to be a non-observant cricket fan. 

As an astika Hindu he can subscribe to any of the six major schools of philosophy, the Shad Darshanas (which I describe later);

Just as an observant cricket fan can watch one day matches instead of the yet more boring Test matches which just go on and on and on. 

as a nastika Hindu he can declare allegiance to one of five schools, including Buddhism and Jainism, which after arising as reform movements against the ritualistic Hinduism of their day, were practically re-absorbed into the parent faith (though their adherents may not see it that way).

Or a nastika could sacrifice babies to Moloch.  

Or the nastika can attach himself to the materialist Charvaka School, whose followers denounced most religious practices and devoted themselves to wealth and profit. The palette of options available is as colourful as the most inventive artist’s.

Sure. Because being a nastika means you can believe God is a dinosaur who lives in a flying saucer. 

At the same time, as a Hindu, I appreciate the fact that Hinduism professes no false certitudes. Its capacity to express wonder at Creation and simultaneously scepticism about the omniscience of the Creator are unique to Hinduism.

Only in the same sense that a non-observant cricket fan could be said to be sucking God's dinosaur cock in a flying saucer currently hovering above the Oval. By ex falso quodlibet, anything at all can be predicated of something so oxymoronic as be incompossible with any logical Universe.  

There is a marvellous story in the Upanishads about a sage who is asked to define the nature of God; the wise man, normally loquacious, falls silent.

He'd have done the same thing if asked to define the nature of nature.  

He is pressed by his disciples for an answer, and he replies that that was his answer, for the Absolute is silence; the mystery of the divine reality cannot be reduced to words or speech.

Neither can the mystery of anything else. If it can, it isn't a mystery. If there is no mystery there is no Religion. There may be a purely transactional Priestcraft which would be similar to the service Astrologers provide. But there will be nothing to bind together a Faith Community. There is no 'costly signal' establishing a 'separating equilibrium'. But, from the economic and political view, such equilibria can more than pay for themselves. That is why they endow survival value. 

Vacuous, 'cheap talk' of Tharoor's sort helps nobody. It isn't the case that Tharoor's worthless books are persuading Hindus to stop voting for Modi.  

Neither thought nor words can suffice: ‘It is not understood by those who understand it,’ says the Kena Upanishad, ‘it is understood by those who do not understand it.’

Nonsense! The Kena Upanishad is an esoteric text for people who earned their living by means of a particular type of priest-craft. It was highly meaningful for them and, in any case, served as a 'costly signal' establishing their professional standing. To understand this Upanishad one must already be doing a lot by way of 'Tapas' and 'Damah' and 'karma-kanda'. Otherwise, it will make as much sense to you as a handbook on Organic Chemistry would mean to me. I might garner one or two ideas but I can scarcely be said to have grasped it. 

The Upanishads say those who become immortal- i.e. know their past and future lives and transcend that condition- understand the ancient doctrine. There are plenty of people who claim to have done so. They also have lots of other cool super-powers. That's why you should give them money. On the other hand, you could say 'I love God only. I want to serve Him for all eternity. So I won't give you money even if you can get me reborn as Beyonce.'  

The final words of the Upanishads are ‘neti, neti’—‘not this, not this’—signifying the unspeakability of the Absolute.

Everything is unspeakable. That's how come, saying 'Beyonce! Appear before me' in ancient Sumerian won't actually cause Beyonce to appear before you. I should know. Some email scammer got me to fork out £9.99 for the formula.

For many sages, their consciousness of the Divine is untranslatable to others,

all consciousness of anything at all is untranslatable. This is because consciousness is pre-verbal.  On the other hand what one says is translatable- though it may be vacuous shite of Tharoor's stripe. 

for those who have not attained the same realization cannot grasp it through word or sign: it is ‘that of which nothing can be said’.

which is still something said. 

And while I am, paradoxically, listing my ‘reasons’ for a faith beyond understanding, let me cite the clincher: above all, as a Hindu, I belong to the only major religion in the world that does not claim to be the only true religion.

Hinduism says all other Religions are only efficacious because the God of Hinduism is a nice guy. Still, the good non-Hindu has to be reborn as a Hindu to attain moksha. Buddhism and Jainism have the same dogma.  

I find it immensely congenial to be able to face my fellow human beings of other faiths without being burdened by the conviction that I am embarked upon a ‘true path’ that they have missed.

Is Tharoor equally happy facing BJP politicians who, in his view, have a different view of Hinduism? Does he accept that the BJP, not Congress, has a more truly advantageous path for India's development? 

This dogma lies at the core of the ‘Semitic faiths’, Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. ‘I am the Way, the Truth and the Life; no man cometh unto the Father [God], but by me’ (John 14:6), says the Bible;

but the risen Christ may have decreed that coming to Him through Krishna was perfectly kosher.  

‘There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is His Prophet’, declares the Quran, denying unbelievers all possibility of redemption, let alone of salvation or paradise.

Not wishing to be fatwa'd, I'll keep quiet about this. Still, there is wriggle room arising out of the notion of 'barzakh' in Ibn Arabi 

Hinduism asserts that all ways of belief are equally valid,

No it doesn't. It would be stupid to say that a 'way of belief' which consists of scratching your arse is just as good as a 'way of belief' which makes you a great asset to the community.  

and Hindus readily venerate the saints, and the sacred objects, of other faiths.

Credulous people- regardless of Religion- may do so. But then, they may also give blowjobs to homeless people who claim to be the Archangel Michael 

I am proud that I can honour the sanctity of other faiths without feeling I am betraying my own

Fair enough. If this cretin said he was proud of his books or his career in Indian politics, he'd be inviting a good kicking.  

After all, as the philosopher Raimon Panikkar

a Jesuit whose daddy was Malyallee and thus who had inherited Tharoor's blathershite gene. 

put it so brilliantly in his The Vedic Experience, ‘It is precisely faith that makes thinking possible,

Which is nonsense. Biology makes thinking possible. Faith only appeared relatively recently in our evolutionary tree.  

for faith offers the unthought ground out of which thinking can emerge.

Shite thinking, sure. But laziness does an even better job.  

It is faith that makes moral and other decisions possible,

No. Faith only has salience in Newcombe type problems. Otherwise, Faith may make moral and other decisions impossible coz it turns out Gravity is a real thing and angels won't actually carry you gently to the ground if you jump off a cliff. 

opening to us the horizon against which our actions become meaningful.’

Fuck does that mean? Nothing at all. Our actions are meaningful to us because they enable us to survive. The fitness landscape is the only relevant horizon for decision theory.  

As a Hindu I seek meaning in my actions within the context of my religious beliefs.

No you don't. You are lying. The only reason you are gassing on about Hinduism is because you thought your Party would benefit by presenting itself as 'Hindutva-lite'. But you failed. Why? Your vacuous shite was more vacuous and more shite than the other side's vacuous shite. In the competition between the douche-bag and the turd, the douche-bag wins.  Why? It is more useful. Tharoor & Co have concentrated on being utterly useless. That is why the Dynasty is dying nasty.