At a gathering a couple of years ago in the Maharashtra hill station of Panchgani organised by Professor Rajmohan Gandhi, I was challenged ...
At a gathering a couple of years ago in the Maharashtra hill station of Panchgani organised by Professor Rajmohan Gandhi, I was challenged by an angry young man: “Keep your Hinduism in your house. Why do you need to bring it into the streets?”
The young man could have been a conservative Hindu offended by my articulation of a progresive Hindu identity that opposes both caste and Hindutva. Or he could have been a secular Indian who felt that my identifying publicly as Hindu was an assertion of caste and majoritarian privilege. I and my colleagues have experienced both types of pushback simply for identifying as Hindu.
My response was: I am a practicing Hindu. I love Sita and Rama. But “Jai Shri Ram” has become a murder chant. I would much rather keep my faith in my house, in my heart. But because others have brought an aberration of my faith to the streets, I have no choice but to meet them in the streets. The only alternative would be to renounce my Hindu identity. And then the murderers will have won.
At an interfaith gathering in Madurai, this time organised by late Swami Agnivesh, the participants were arguing whether Hinduism really exists, and whether...
