A blog post in Economic Times  by TV Mohandas Pai, chairman of Manipal Global and a former board member at Infosys caught my attention. I thought his voice one for the saner ones that has emerged from a vociferous right-wing led by a bunch of loonies and their high decibel campaigns to convert Christians and Muslims back to the Hindu fold--or ghar wapsi as now they call it.

While for most part loony elements across all faiths are best left alone, these are the kind of times that call for introspection. To that extent, Pai is right in criticising evangelical Christian groups that have been on overdrive for a long time in their proselytizing efforts--to convert the pagans if you will.  For a long time, I've watched with mild amusement at times, and indignation at others as preachers from both Christianity and Islam attempted to wean non-believers to their faith.  And these are very sophisticated operations. As Pai writes in his post. 

"There is a very sophisticated operation in place by the evangelical groups, with a clear target for souls, marketing campaigns, mass prayer and fraudulent healing meetings. Evidence is available in plenty on videos on YouTube, social media, press reports, and on the ground. Pastors have been openly tweeting about souls converted, and saving people from idol worshippers. Some pastors have tweeted with glee about converts reaching 60 million, declaring a target of 100 million, and have also requested for financial support for this openly. Violence in some areas due to this has vitiated the atmosphere. The traditional institutions of both denominations are losing out to the new age evangelicals with their sophisticated marketing, money and legion of supporters from the West. One can almost classify these groups as hyper-growth startups – with a cost per acquisition, a roadmap for acquiring followers, a fund-raising machine, and a gamified approach (with rewards and incentives) to “conquering” new markets."

But that said, the rise of "Hindutva" is an uncomfortable one as well.  This is because I think of Hindutva as defined by current political rhetoric abhorrent, its perpetrators despicable, and an idea that ought to be rejected outright by practitioners of Hinduism.

Allow me put that into perspective. While I am no authority on the scriptures, like anybody who has cursorily been through the Rig Veda, the oldest of the Vedas, I find the Nasadiya Sukta or “Hymn of Creation”, in the 10th chapter or Mandala both intriguing and inspiring:

 “But after all, who knows, and who can say

whence it all came and how creation happened?

the gods themselves are later than creation,

so who knows truly whence it has arisen?

Whence all creation had its origin,

he, whether he fashioned it or whether he did not,

he, who surveys it all from highest heaven,

he knows—or maybe even he doesn’t know

Implicit to these verses is an acknowledgement that it is entirely possible god does not exist. And even if god exists, does this creature completely appreciate and understand all there is to about creation? To my mind, what these verses do is urge the reader to probe deeper, develop a scientific temperament and engage in an intense philosophical inquiry into the nature of our existence.

Then there are parts of Hindu scriptures that come across as retrograde and demand reason be set aside, much like monotheistic religions with claims to divine origins demand. But these are dealt with by the likes of Gandhi, an avowed believer in Hinduism as a religion. “My belief in the Hindu scriptures does not require me to accept every word and every verse as divinely inspired. I decline to be bound by any interpretation, however learned it may be, if it is repugnant to reason or moral sense,” he wrote in the Aspects of Hinduism.

But when placed in contemporary settings, Hinduism, which places a premium on liberty above all else, is under threat. Current political discourses and societal conversations terrify me. Hinduism has been hijacked and Hindutva has taken over.

While the meaning of Hindutva can be debated ad nauseam, it now comes across as an ideology that seeks to establish the hegemony of Hindus and the Hindu way of life. And hegemonies by their very nature insist violence has its way. 

If more recent evidence is needed the word Hindutva has indeed been bastardized, consider this. While the word has been around for a while, an nGram search on Google Books reveal when “Hindutva” first gained traction in the mid forties, it culminated in Gandhi’s assassination, stayed in public domain for a while, and then conceded ground to Hinduism. When the word started to raise its head again beginning the mid eighties and overtook Hinduism in the early nineties, it led to the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992 and communal riots ensued. The graph has, since then, been on the upswing and India lives under a constant specter of violence.

Ahimsa (non violence) and himsa (violence) have for long co-existed uneasily in Hinduism. Those, who subscribe to deploying violence, like advocates of Hindutva often times do, seek refuge in the Bhagavad Gita and Krishna’s exhortations to a devastated Arjuna that he take up arms in a dharma yuddha—a war fought to defend justice for the security and well being of a community.

A closer examination of Krishna’s discourse though on dharma yuddha reveals it does not sanction violence to seize the assets of another community, or to gain power through conquest and control of others. Battles fought on these turfs, Krishna tells Arjuna, are the primary sources of greed and evil. Equally important, in a dharma yuddha, the opponent is not demonized and there is complete absence of rhetoric that accompanies hatred and contempt.

But Hindutva is very different from the kind of Hinduism Krishna preaches, and the one I, like many Indians have been weaned on and live by.

As personal beliefs go, I am an atheist. But that said, I refuse to listen to extreme voices from either the Left or the Right. Instead, I think more saner voices ought to emerge from both camps, like Mohandas Pai, whom I haven't met, but comes across in his writings as part of the liberal Right as so many of my friends are.