India on the brink

Most religions bind their adherents into a community of believers. Hinduism segregates them into castes. And people excluded from the hierarchical caste system — the ‘untouchables’ — are permanently doomed to a life of scripturally sanctioned calvary. This hideousness doesn’t, however, hinder Shashi Tharoor from breathlessly exalting Hinduism as ‘a religion for the 21st century’. Having catalogued the Raj’s depredations in his previous book, Inglorious Empire, and demanded an apology from the current generation of British politicians for the crimes of their forbears, Tharoor, a prominent Indian parliamentarian from the opposition Congress party, declares in the introduction to Why I Am a Hindu that he will ‘make no apology’ for the ‘flaws’ of his faith. And when he touches upon caste, it feels, despite his sincerity, like an inconvenient detour, akin to those perfunctory chapters on the Amritsar massacre in apologias for the British empire. Those exposed to the rough edges of Tharoor’s (and my) faith will find that the claims made for Hinduism in this book bear no relation to their experience with it.