Book name- DO YOU KNOW YOUR HINDUISM? NOTES FOR MODERN-DAY HINDUS
Author- Rajmohan Gandhi
Published by- Aleph
Price- Rs 499
Rajmohan Gandhi offers an understanding of Hinduism as a cultural ethos, shaped as much by ritual and custom as by the philosophy conveyed by the old Sanskrit phrase, Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam. He insists that his intended readership (“modern-day Hindus”) might summon from it the knowledge, if not the inclusive value-system of a religion that they identify with, before thinking in terms of race, community, or nation.
The book begins with an uncomfortable question: do Hindus within India truly regard “their land’s inhabitants, all of them, as their relatives?” The difficulty, Rajmohan Gandhi insists, lies not in answering; but in answering honestly. He offers a “nine-point summary” of Hinduism’s primary religious tenets with the important caveat: “Hinduism does not ask for a credal statement from adherents.” Searching for the general principles underlying Hinduism, he highlights the spiritual self-searching stressed by reformers, from Rammohun Roy to Swami Vivekananda, and, most tellingly, Ramakrishna Paramhansa for whom the word, Allah, did not fracture the idea of the divine, and for whom inhabiting the Christian faith, even imaginatively, did not feel like betrayal of his religion. He also outlines the inclusive ethical dimensions of Mahatma Gandhi’s Hinduism, shaped as much by his reading of the Bhagvad Gita as by Tolstoy’s The Kingdom of God is Within You. And he translates the verses of the popular devotional song, “Om Jai Jagadish Hare”, set to music by the Punjabi poet, Shardha Ram Phillauri, in the nineteenth century, noting that this song is “a plea by anyone to everyone’s God”. There is a certain gentleness here, reminding that respect for other’s religious beliefs was once integral to the Hindu faith.
From where, then, does the “revenge drive” emerge? Rajmohan Gandhi traces it to the distorted narrativising of an unspecified mythic past: partly inherited from colonial-era historiography, and partly shaped by digital propagandists and custodians of the televised divine. “If belief in a Mythic Past is central to the revenge drive,” he explains, “another component is our fascination with being ‘number one’. ‘What is your/her/his rank?’ is a perennial curiosity in Indian life.” This inherited fixation on hierarchy, he suggests, feeds a modern obsession with recognition: “...the laughable Vishwaguru notion is only one proof of our obsession with rank.” He dwells on the Mahatma’s hostility to untouchability, but chooses not to with the caste foundations of this obsession, or with the critique of B.R. Ambedkar.
The exploration deepens into a more disquieting question, directed at those who continually reach back to an indistinct past of glory and grievance to demonise contemporary Muslims: “...[W]hy are so many Hindus with no personal experience of injury or unhappiness at Muslim hands comfortable with the notion of revenge against Muslims?”. The answer turns, pointedly, to textual traces from the past. In the sixteenth century, under the reign of Akbar, Tulsidas composed the Ramcharitmanas where one epithet praising Rama as benefactor of the poor is Gharib-Nawaz — a beautiful Persian-Arabic expression. If the poet’s gesture feels almost radical now in these strange times, Rajmohan Gandhi’s counter-question follows with quiet force: “Can anyone possibly argue that tyranny or horror is a truer, longer-lasting child of the Mughal era than Ramcharitmanas?”
Yet here, one also senses a limit to the method. Appeals to tradition and authority — textual or otherwise — carry dignity, but their efficacy depends on an audience already inclined toward reason. Where the mind seeks confirmation rather than clarity or knowledge, no textual evidence, however moving, can persuade.
Other tensions emerge. Rajmohan Gandhi is careful to separate ‘Hindu’ from ‘Indian’, yet the framing occasionally narrows what it seeks to expand. The repeated invocation of a collective voice (“...we, today’s Hindus”) echoes, perhaps unintentionally, a similar gesture in Why I Am a Hindu by Shashi Tharoor: both attempting to reclaim a plural, ethical inheritance from its more strident claimants. To declare oneself in this way — albeit calmly, reasonably, and with erudition — is also to accept, however reluctantly, that identity must be declared before it can be explained. The very need to speak in this register, even when it ends with powerful appeals to insaniyat, quietly acknowledges a different grammar of identification already at work — one not entirely unlike those moments during the communal riots when individuals were compelled, often anxiously, to name themselves before they were seen as someone else.
The danger does not lie in affirmation. But when belief begins to occupy the space of explanation, it acquires an authority that is difficult to delimit. A worldview that leans too heavily on inherited cultural certainties —however humane its intentions — can render logic and scientific inquiry seem optional, even negotiable. And once belief begins to negotiate with knowledge, it seldom does so on equal terms. Here one remembers Carl Sagan, who noted, with characteristic restraint, that one may indeed pray over a cholera victim or administer tetracycline.