Advani blog cites Tully’s praise of Hinduism

NEW DELHI - Secularism in India stems from Hindu tolerance as the religion of the majority community engenders respect for all religions, senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader L. K. Advani said Sunday in the latest post on his blog that cites eminent journalist Mark Tully.

In the post titled “Encyclopaedia of Hinduism and Mahakumbh”, Advani said Tully is “foremost among intellectuals” in understanding India’s concept of secularism very correctly.

“He (Tully) has emphasized again and again that ‘Secular State’ does not mean an ‘Irreligious State’. In India, he holds, secularism stems from Hindu tolerance,” Advani said.

Advani said Tully, who served as BBC correspondent in South Asia for 25 years, heard a debate on BBC World Radio service suggesting that no one should send Christmas cards because they were not secular and a short while later, picked up copy of an Indian daily carrying picture of a former West Bengal governor holding a Christmas party for children on the lawns of his house in the middle of Kolkata.

“The Governor was Gopal Gandhi, and he was following in the footsteps of his grand father who once said: ‘My Hinduism teaches me to respect all religions’”, Advani cited Tully as writing in his 1999 book “No Full Stops in India”.

The BJP leader also said Tully’s book “showered lavish encomiums” on the Kumbh festival and complained about the “failure of sections of English media to appreciate the faith of the devout”.

Advani also wrote about the special preview last week in Delhi of 11-volume “Encyclopedia of Hinduism” being published by Rupa in association with the India Heritage Research Foundation.

He said three volumes were displayed and there was a panel discussion on Hinduism in the Contemporary World.

“I was one among the 400 strong audience who listened with rapt attention to the enlightening and elevating discussion that lasted for over two hours,” he said, adding, “the tenor and content of that evening’s discussion reminded me of several such debates I had heard as a boy in my teens, still a student in Karachi.”

Advani said he had spent first twenty years of his life under British rule and recalled that a book much talked about in those days was “Mother India” by Katherine Mayo.

“If an Indian read the book, he would either start feeling ashamed of his own country, culture and religion, or he would start hating the British colonialists who had created a climate in the country where slanderous books such as this one had been proliferating,” he said, adding that Mahatma Gandhi had condemned this book as a “Drain Inspector’s Report” and several books were written in rebuttal to Mayo’s book.

Advani said Kapil Kapoor, the encyclopaedia’s chief argued that “western culture internalised by the elite of our country because of the educational system thrust on us during British rule has made us ashamed and apologetic about our tradition, ceremonies, and customs, and specially about our languages, particularly Sanskrit.”

He said Kapoor recounted a letter Thomas Macaulay had written to his father in 1836. “The effect of this (English) education on the Hindoos is prodigious. No Hindoo, who has received this education, ever remains sincerely attached to his religion. It is my firm belief that if our plans of education are followed up, there will not be a single idolater among the respectable classes in Bengal thirty years hence.”