The Hindus: An Alternative History

"This is a fairly controversial book. Penguin, for the first time in history, actually agreed to withdraw and destroyed the copies of the book in India. There is a deep political pushback against this book. I picked it because when we talk about Hindu traditions, what a lot of people do not recognise is that the transmission histories with regards to texts, in a two-thousand-plus years of written history starting from 200 BCE, was written by men, consumed by men, and it becomes a very male-dominated, patriarchal-dominated religion. In the Indian subcontinent, in documented early history, we find women present in the landscape of religion, as ritual specialists or religious leaders. But by the time we come to a text called Manusmṛti, or The Laws of Manu , we find that women have gone from the forefront to behind the screen. They are not chanting the Vedas; they are not being taught the Vedas. In fact, T he Laws of Manu says that if a woman accidentally hears the Vedic chanting, hot molten glass should be poured into her ears. So we have moved significantly from women having a place in the religion to women now being really behind the walls. Wendy Doniger talks about what this history of Hinduism looks like if you were to look at it through the lens of women . Is it the same story? The other thing that she talks about is the caste system. How does Hindu tradition look from the eyes and the experience of lower castes? That’s the reason why I bring it up, because we tend not to include them in this complex history, which should be understood as histories. We tend to lean towards telling a story that is male-dominated and high caste leaning. Hindutva comes down to Hindu-essence. When we talk about Hindu-essence, we very quickly arrive at Hindu identity. If I were to put it very simply, it’s Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. The role of Hindutva, or the Hindu fundamental movement, is best understood by mapping the history of the nation of India. India became a nation in 1947. From 1947 to the 1970s, we are looking at basic existence. There are wars between India and Pakistan (in this period, Bangladesh comes into existence), there’s abject poverty, and the education divide is very stark. People are struggling. Next, we enter the 1980s, where the prime minister back then, Narasimha Rao, opened the economy to private funding. With years of private sector and a greater degree of political stability, by the time we arrive at the mid-1990s, we now have a middle class. There are private sector jobs and better social mobility. As society develops, as the economy gets stronger, we now come to a period where there is a very large population who are no longer seeing themselves as less than someone else, say in the modern West. Their needs are met. And when that happens, people ask about identity. Today, for very complex reasons — political, social, economic, cultural — Hindu identity is getting conflated with Indian identity, and that is very problematic and challenging. Exactly, how does that work? Or Hindus in Ghana? What is happening is that with an approximate eighty percent plus Hindu population in India out of 1.4 billion, clubbed with social media and global boundary blurring, you can be a Hindu in Ghana, or you are a Hindu in Indonesia, or a Hindu in Nepal; we are not realising that Hindu identity is being defined, possibly, by fundamental Hindu groups. That is extremely alarming, because we are forcing an identity onto a religion that never had a founder and had diverse ways of thinking and being. For example, will we now say that most Hindus should become vegetarians? Should we be dressing a certain way? Should we be wearing something similar to a cross so that we can be recognised as Hindus? Who gets to decide this? That’s the challenge. I hope we can keep the diversity."