Why I am a Hindu

by Shashi Tharoor

Vivekananda had said years earlier that Hindus reject the idea of fear and the idea of sin:

‘The cure for error is not the stake or the cudgel, not force or persecution, but the quiet diffusion of light.’

‘sarva dharma sambhava’—

he retained the right to choose what tenets he believed in, to interpret what they taught him, and to reject anything in them that he could not agree with.

BJP politicians like Rajnath Singh and Yogi Adityanath have argued that Indian governments cannot observe dharma-nirpekshata but should follow the precept of panth-nirpekshata (not favouring any particular sect or faith). In this they are not far removed from my argument—which I have made for several years before my entry into Indian politics—that ‘secularism’ is a misnomer in the Indian context of profuse religiosity, and what we should be talking about is ‘pluralism’.