THE HINDU WAY OF DEBATE
There was an interesting discussion on Pavan Varma’s book, The Great Hindu Civilization, between Shashi Tharoor and the author, organised by the Kalinga Literary Festival. Infact, Tharoor himself has written a book on a similar subject (Why I am a Hindu). Tharoor began by saying that since he agreed with what Pavan had written it would be more of a love fest, for there was a lot of resonance in their thoughts. However, the only mild criticism he had—calling it an “immodest complaint”— was that Pavan had totally ignored his work while quoting others like Amish Tripathi. To which Pavan immediately responded that it was an omission, perhaps because he took the congruence in their thinking for granted. As Tharoor was late for the event, detained in Parliament, he logged on while he was in the car itself, leading Pavan to quip that his book launch seems to be a “moving experience” for Tharoor. The lighthearted exchanges apart, this was indeed a conversation worth watching between two articulate writers on a topic that is much under the scanner today. In fact, in his book, Pavan does take on both the left liberals from Nehru to Amartya Sen, Romila Thapar and Wendy Doniger as well as right wingers like Dina Nath Batra who claim that the invention of TV dated back to the Mahabharata, the birth of the Kauravas was the result of stem cell research and so on. Both the under-representation and mis-representation do a lot of harm to Hinduism. As Pavan says, “I don’t believe in Hinduva but in Hindu Satya.”