21 April, 2009

Dear Shri Bhagwatji,

I thank you for your letter in reply to my message of felicitations and for your good wishes. However, some parts of your letter are but a reiteration of the well-known Hindutva ideology which, at one level, identifies all the people of our country as Hindus and, on the other, all its associated organizations including the BJP which claim to be Hindu organizations consistently and persistently act against the interest of the religious minorities particularly the Muslims and the Christians.

The controversy over the word Hindu is not a linguistic or lexicological matter. Nor is your concept historically sound. For the last 5000 years the people of our country have been a mixed race: Neither they called themselves Hindu nor defined their faith or their religion as Hindu Dharma. This argument is irrelevant as it is historically, racially, culturally and even linguistically, therefore logically, inaccurate. We are all Indians but we are not all Hindus.

Today not only in day-to-day parlance, in political usage and mass media but also in academic textbooks and in scientific works the word Hindu means only those persons who proclaim themselves to be Hindus. Indeed some of them who have been for decades described as Hindus are now beginning to repudiate this enforced appellation, for example, the Dalits. I do not have to mention the Jains, the Buddhists or the Sikhs because they claim to be separate and distinct religions although they are all of indigenous origin.

May I add that national unity and emotional integrity in our country, so full of diversities and pluralities, are not served by imposing unwanted definitions and rejected appellations on others but in recognizing their separate religious and cultural identities and giving them equal opportunities for development and equal share in the fruits of progress i.e. social and economic and political justice.

Your Hindutva ideology neither shows love and respect towards non-Hindus nor builds any bridges; in fact it only blocks the channels of communication that exist and dismantles them where they exist.

I may add that I recognize the great and permanent contribution that Hindu philosophy has made towards forming our national ethos. The Muslims of India respect it as the religion of a vast majority of our people and share the common ethos as well as the composite culture whose core is Hindu. But they reject any approach which denies their religious or cultural identity and strives to assimilate them in Hinduism.

I would request you to make a clear distinction between national integration and assimilation. In the era of freedom are live in all identities and particularities demand their recognition and welcome national integration but all of them reject assimilation, with equal force.

With kind regards