Hindutva

How India, a land of diverse ethnicities, religions, and languages, has managed to maintain its social cohesion and harmony for thousands of years? How has it managed the forces of social stratification, social exclusion, social stagnation, and social emancipation? Are the institutions of caste and untouchability, jathi and varna peculiar to India? Or is there some other deeper coda to Indian society that sustains it through millennia?

This book explores these questions by tracing the origin and evolution of India’s social systems from the ancient Harappan civilization to the present day. It reveals the underlying principles, values, and worldviews that shaped India’s social dynamics and enabled it to adapt and thrive in changing times. It also highlights the role of Indian spiritual values, especially the concepts of yajna and bhakti, in fostering social inclusion and emancipation. Drawing on historical data from various Hindu traditions and biographical data of civilizational-spiritual seers, the book challenges the common perception of these seers as mere rebels or social reformers. Instead, it shows how they were agents of self-realisation who also energised the society to achieve social transformation.

This book is not only a comprehensive and insightful account of India’s social history but also a valuable source of inspiration and guidance for anyone who seeks to create a more peaceful, harmonious, and prosperous world.

A Primer on Indian Social Structures Caste is being used as a major weapon to shame Hindus. This crisp and easy primer presents a powerful counter to Western Universalism’s harsh attacks on caste. It is a long over-due toolkit to help all open-minded people gain an understanding of the subtleties of Hinduism’s complex social order. This social structure has, after all, produced a civilization with unparalleled diversity. The Vedic world view along with the historical journey of Varna and Jati demolishes the prevailing myths about caste.

Being Hindu adopts a longue durée view of history and attempts to contextualize the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its progenitor, the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS), as political phenomena by examining certain medieval state structures and instances of advocacy and popular mobilization in the colonial period. Further, it studies the politics of Narendra Modi and the policy initiatives undertaken by him as the prime minister of India to highlight their apparent cultural and moral underpinnings. Its eventual objective is to make a case for the historical authenticity of the Hindu mode of politics that emerged in post-Independence India. The attempt, in other words, is to demonstrate that it is a thing in its own right and not a cynical invention of hostility towards religious minorities, an irrational or ‘fascist’ mindset, or sundry anxieties, but has precedents in frameworks and practices going rather far back in history. The BJS and the BJP are thus shown to be locatable in a long tradition of Hindus organizing their political practice or politics through cultural resources and a cultural imagination distinctive to them. Narendra Modi, similarly, brings an inclusive Hindu catholicity and sangathanist outlook to his politics and developmental agenda. Being Hindu, in this way, relates a brief history of the political expressions of being Hindu over slightly more than eleven centuries—from the ascension of Aditya I, the first of the imperial Cholas, in 870 CE until our own time and age.

My Freedom of Expression is a collection of 22 articles published in recent years mostly by the Statesman newspaper. The anthology—varied in its themes ranging from Indic civilization to democracy, scientific temper to religious bigotry and identity to governance—is an exploration of what holds India back to become a global leader. The author picked some of contemporary’s most contentious topics, such as global warming, scientific marvels, the mysteries of life and the universe, cultural and religious superstitions, illusions and prejudices in the practise of science, and the importance of religion in society, and dissected them one by one with a rationalist knife. So what his writings essentially do is show a mirror to society. By being both accessible and arresting at once, the book deserves a place in everyone’s library.

Kashi: The Valiant History of a Sacred Geography tells the story of the most sacred of all Hindu holy cities through the prism of sacred geography as is extensively documented in the Sthala Purana. The book features a summary of the Kashi Khanda from the Skanda Purana, an ancient text on the divine origin and leela surrounding the kshetra of Kashi. The history of this kshetra is enriched by the accounts of warrior sadhus, sages, kings, queens, devotees and ordinary citizens who dedicated their lives to preserving and reviving this sacred geography by doggedly building and rebuilding temples, taking up arms against invaders, meticulously documenting Kashi’s history and lore, and tenaciously sustaining pilgrimage routes and practices covering the holy sites of this pivotal city.

In particular, the lesser-known story of the warrior sadhus who defended the Kashi Vishwanath temple from marauding invaders is explored through the lens of sacred geography. Studied in this light, Kashi is both a spatial and metaphysical contestation. The current controversy and litigation over the Gyanvapi site cannot therefore be satisfactorily resolved without taking recourse to the idea of sacred geography, which has since time immemorial informed Hindus and indigenous societies worldwide about their identity and the relevance of space and place, culture and metaphysics, civilization and the development of nationhood.