Why I am a Hindu

by Shashi Tharoor

Dr Karan Singh, the former maharaja of Kashmir and Indian politician who is also a superbly readable scholar of Hindu philosophy, identifies five major principles in Hinduism that lend relevance and validity to the faith in today’s world. At the risk of inadequate paraphrase, these are, according to him: the recognition of the unity of all mankind, epitomized in the Rig Vedic phrase ‘vasudhaiva kutumbakam’, the world is one family; the harmony of all religions, epitomized in that Rig Vedic statement that was Swami Vivekananda’s favourite, ‘ekam sat, vipra bahuda vadanti’; the divinity inherent in each individual, transcending the social stratifications and hierarchies that have all too often distorted this principle in Hindu society; the creative synthesis of practical action and contemplative knowledge, science and religion, meditation and social service, in the faith; and finally, the cosmic vision of Hindu philosophy, incorporating the infinite galaxies of which the Earth is just a tiny speck. In Dr Singh’s own words: ‘such is the grandeur and mystery of the Atman that it can move towards a comprehension of the unutterable mystery of existence. We, who are children of the past and the future, of earth and heaven, of light and darkness, of the human and the divine, at once evanescent and eternal, of the world and beyond it, within time and in eternity, yet have the capacity to comprehend our condition, to rise above our terrestrial limitations, and finally, to transcend ...