My recent Twitter spat with Anupam Kher has, somewhat to my own surprise, been blown up out of all proportion, with thousands of retweets and several articles in the newspapers over an essentially innocuous exchange.
For those who nonetheless missed it, a quick summary: a media house ran the actor's recent remark that he is scared to say openly he is a Hindu. I responded: "Come on, Anupam. I say it all the time. I am a proud Hindu. Just not the Sangh's kind of Hindu."
Anupam - who, for the record, is a friend who has been to my home in Delhi more than once - didn't take it well. "Come on Shashi. Never thought you will misinterpret my statement like trolls do. And behave like a Congi Chamcha," he shot back. Smarting from the insult - I am an MP, after all, not a hanger-on -- I returned the compliment by saying: "Abuse,@AnupamPkher, is what you use when you run out of arguments. I am a proud MP of @INCIndia &I don't resort to insults. #CongiChamcha." Kher's riposte: "Sadly, you forgot that you brought in your kind of Hindu & Sanghi Hindu first."
So I had. But I wasn't talking about Anupam Kher when I did, and was genuinely mystified that he had taken it personally. So I called a truce, did not continue to retaliate, and thought the matter had ended there. The next day's newspapers, sadly, disabused me of that notion.
I don't wish to fuel it further, but the larger issue continues to trouble me. When Hindu friends, in a country where we account for 80% of the population and 14 out of 15 Prime Ministers, sincerely claim that they feel beleaguered, what are they saying? That secularism, or as some prefer to call it, minority appeasement, has gone so far that a member of the majority community feels afraid to avow his faith?
To my mind, this is absurd. India is a plural society and a secular republic, but its overwhelming majority professes the Hindu religion and Hindu culture is all-pervasive. Muslim Bollywood stars may no longer feel obliged to take on Hindu screen names (as Dilip Kumar, Sanjay and many others once did), but our cultural iconography is largely Hindu, and even Christians are increasingly sporting Hindu names because (as one explained) "they sound more Indian". It seems to me that if anyone needs to feel defensive about avowing their faith, it's the non-Hindus, who after all would be openly admitting their difference from the majority, rather than being able simply to blend in with the 80%.
So statements such as this trouble me, because they fly in the face of the lived reality for many of our minority fellow citizens, who feel they have to strive that much harder to achieve the acceptance that Hindus take for granted. Try renting an apartment, for instance, while using a Muslim name: there are many parts of many towns where you will be turned away with one specious excuse or another. And yet Muslims are expected to grin and bear it, and move on. Replace "Anupam Kher" with "Aamir Khan" and "Hindu" with "Muslim", and you can imagine the outrage the same tweet would have provoked.
So when I said, truthfully, that I openly, and without self-consciousness, say I am Hindu, I am acknowledging that it's far easier for me to do so than it is for an Indian Muslim or Christian to wear his faith on his sleeve without being typecast for doing so. And when I added that I am not the Sangh's kind of Hindu, I meant that I am not belligerent about my Hinduism, and I don't use it as a football hooligan uses his team loyalty, as a club to beat non-adherents over the head with.
Instead, I am proud of my Hinduism, not merely because I was born into it, but because of its intellectual "fit": I am more comfortable with the belief structures of Hinduism than I would be with those of the other faiths of which I know. Hinduism is, in many ways, predicated on the idea that the eternal wisdom of the ages about divinity cannot be confined to a single catechism. As a Hindu, I can claim adherence to a religion without an established church 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.) As a Hindu, I subscribe to a creed that is free of the restrictive dogmas of holy writ -- that refuses to be shackled to the limitations of a single holy book.
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. 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. Hinduism asserts that all ways of belief are equally valid, and Hindus readily venerate the saints and the sacred objects of other faiths. I am proud that I can honour the sanctity of other religions without feeling I am betraying my own.
In other words, what I am proud of about Hinduism is precisely what the Sanghis are most ashamed of, and wish to change. If one day anyone becomes afraid to say he is a Hindu, it can only be Hindus like me, intimidated by belligerent Sanghis denouncing me as a heretic. The irony is that my Hinduism does not have any notion of heresy in it, because there is no standard set of dogmas from which deviation connotes apostasy.
In saying all this, I hope the recent unedifying spectacle on Twitter will have served one useful purpose - to initiate a dialogue among Hindus about what it is that we can proudly avow about our faith. The next time you're in Delhi, Anupam, please feel free to come over for a drink - and a chat.
(Dr Shashi Tharoor is a two-time MP from Thiruvananthapuram, the Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs, the former Union Minister of State for External Affairs and Human Resource Development and the former UN Under-Secretary-General. He has written 15 books, including, most recently, India Shastra: Reflections On the Nation in Our Time.)Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within this article are the personal opinions of the author. The facts and opinions appearing in the article do not reflect the views of NDTV and NDTV does not assume any responsibility or liability for the same.