Ideas Of India: Hinduism Is Capacious Like Banyan Tree And Ideologues Of Hindutva Don't Like That, Says Vinay Lal

Historian and professor Vinay Lal spoke on 'The Many Identities Of India -- A Plularist Vision' at ABP's Ideas Of India Summit and kept his views on Hinduism Vs Hindutva among many other topics.

Historian and professor Vinay Lal spoke on 'The Many Identities Of India -- A Plularist Vision' at ABP's Ideas Of India Summit and kept his views on Hinduism Vs Hindutva among many other topics.

Historian and professor Dr Vinay Lal shared his views on the distinction between Hinduism and Hindutva as he spoke on the 'The Many Identities Of India -- A Plularist Vision' at ABP Network's Ideas Of India Summit. He said, "Hinduism is capacious like the banyan tree and that is exactly what the ideologues of Hindutva do not like. They want a religion which will look very much like their adversary, they want a religion that will look much more like a monotheistic religion, a religion that has one book."

"There is a kind of capaciousness which is the very strength of Hinduism. This is what has made it distinct entirely," he added.

Speaking about secularism in India, he said at the outset that Indian secularism is different. He said, "In India when we speak of secularism we have never really spoken of it strictly in the sense of separation of church and state. Whether such separation was actually achieved in the West itself is a different question. In India, that was never our understanding of secularism, the understanding of secularism was very different which would include such things as the fact that if a state was giving money to support Hindu education then it would have to do the same for the adherence of other faiths."

"The way we want to think about secularism here is far from divorcing it from religion. We should be thinking of how our secularism is itself derived from the practice of our own respective faith," he added.

Citing examples of Mahatma Gandhi and Maulana Azad, he said, "Mohandas Gandhi, who the liberals like to believe was a secular -- they have turned him into a secular in a very modern way which he was not-- Gandhi was always a devout Hindu and he held himself to be one throughout. But he derives his secularism from his Hinduism, much like Maulana Azad was a devout Muslim but he derived his secularism from being a devout Muslim."

Speaking about India as a nation-state and India as a civilisation he said, "A nation-state is different from civilisation. India as a nation-state is a very young entity and as a nation-state, it can only be like any other nation-state. There can be cosmetic differences but it is only one way of being a nation-state, being muscular, being protective of your borders, being intolerant of immigrants."

Elaborating on the country and the current government, he said, "The government's present project also involves the collapse of civilisation into the nation-state because fundamentally there is a realisation that it is only as a nation-state that you can earn any kind of capital in the world. You can no longer or any kind of cultural capital by proclaiming yourself a great civilisation. This is the realisation of Mohandas Gandhi's assassin Nathuram Godse. He made it very clear that one of the reasons Gandhi had to be eliminated was because he was an obstacle to the emergence of India as a muscular nation-state."

Speaking on the subject of democracy and whether the ideals brought in from France, America, and England would work here, he said, "I don't belong to the school of thought that says that if ideas are coming from abroad they have to be rejected."  

"I believe when there are certain ideas which suggest aspirations of the people, then it's very clearly the case that something like democracy can very much work here as it has worked elsewhere. I don't think it's a fertile way to think that democracy is foreign," he said. 

He concluded by quoting Mahatma Gandhi, who said: "I want the winds from every place to come into my home but I don't want to be blown away by any one of them."

In his recently published book 'Insurgency and The Artist', Professor Vinay Lal explored art contemporary to India's freedom struggle. 

Dr Vinay Lal is a professor at UCLA, he joined the university's history faculty in 1993 and has since held several fellowships He was elected a Fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science in February 2000.

ABP Network’s ‘Ideas of India’ has brought together on one stage the brightest minds cutting across sectors from within and beyond the borders of the country. In 2023, the grand second edition of the immensely successful ‘Ideas of India’ summit is woven around the theme of Naya India: Looking Inward, Reaching Out.

The summit this year, now on Day 2, primarily addressed the question - Where does India stand at this moment in history, with its burgeoning economy successfully tackling the energy divisions of yet another war in Europe, with a post-pandemic recalibrating world looking up to her as a global leader and a whole new generation of Indians impatient to lead across sectors?

Eminent personalities like former UK Prime Minister Liz Truss, Infosys founder and chairman emeritus Narayana Murthy, Union Ministers Nitin Gadkari and Ashwini Vaishnaw, Chief Ministers Arvind Kejriwal and Bhagwant Mann, Bollywood legends Zeenat Aman, Asha Parekh presented their idea of 'Naya India' from the stage over the two days of the summit.