Siddharth Yadav | PUP21345

Faculty of Planning, CEPT University

The Battle of Belonging by Dr. Shashi Tharoor – Book Review

It would be safe to assume, that the title of the book is inspired by the ongoing debate around the
sense of belonging that seems to have been lost, as is felt by many of the citizens today.

Tharoor’s attempt to understand, portray and provide followable steps to tackle the said problem has
been very well scripted in the book. The primary question that the book has tried to answer is “Are
some Indians more Indians than others?”. The book gathers various milestones in the history of the
country chronologically to give an understanding of the build-up, so to speak, to the current political
climate and discourse. All of which is linked to the history of the country and the ideas that run with
it.

As a general overview of the book’s entire flow from the beginning, it seems as if the ideas presented
are a rebuttal to the ideas that are perhaps misunderstood and/or misrepresented. I would not dare
use the word criticism because I would be stepping into too larger shoes. However, my personal
impression of the book is that perhaps it takes a truncated view of what people crudely dub as “Hindu
nationalism”.

Starting with a factual error as observed in the Section Three of the book titled “The Doctrine of
Hindutva”, where the author credits Vinayak Damodar Savarkar for coining the term “Hindutva”. It
was not Savarkar who invented the term, but Mr. Chandranath Basu who in 1892 wrote an essay on
the subject of “Hindutva” specifically.

The book, if I may say so, completely misses the scholarship of decoloniality because unfortunately,
Bharat’s experience with colonialism is being approached with a blinkered vision, as referring to a
general school of though. Because the idea that Hindu nationalism is fundamentally exclusionist and
comes to the detriment of religious minorities of this country, is to impose the guilt and framework of
European nationalism on Bharatiya consciousness. It would be grave injustice to the people of this
land, to claim the worries of a “Hindu Rashtra” would be exclusionist in nature, because
accommodation is something native to the spirit of this land. Unlike western assimilation, it requires
you to convert to their way of life in one form or other, either overtly or covertly in order for you to
be accepted as part of the particular society. It is this country that makes it possible for people to keep
their culture alive in in the most perhaps pristine form possible so long as it does not come in the way
of others.

Dharmic Civilisationalism is what is crudely dubbed as Hindu nationalism. I believe whenever the topic
of public morality has been referred to in the constituent assembly debates the reference has been to
the huge reservoir of this country’s public morality drawn from the vast ocean of Dharma, which
essentially native to this land and culture. It is possible to simply reduce and muddle the Indic
reawakening as identity politics. That would be, in my humble opinion, that would perhaps be the
most superficial way of looking at it. Because scholarship, psychology, political science and history
scholars and students strike a very clear distinction between Identity and consciousness. Effectively
to say, you can be a Hindu in name and still think like a foreigner and vice-versa. For further example,
if there has to be a distinction to be drawn between Aurangzeb and his brother Dara Shikoh, Dara
Shikoh would inarguably be more Hindu in nature and consciousness as he was closer to the Hindu
spirit notwithstanding his identity, while Aurangzeb’s both identity and consciousness were one and
the same and completely antithetical to the spirit of this land and accommodative spirit.

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 Siddharth Yadav | PUP21345
Faculty of Planning, CEPT University

The fact of the matter rather is, this land has accommodated and accepted several races form around
the world but have ultimately become a part of this land simply because their way of life has found a
way of coexisting with natives without having a fundamental principle which sees them as second-
class human being, forget second-class citizen s welcome in this land so long he does not threaten to
sever the native roots to their land.

The book has very well tried to explain the ongoing debates but at the same time a broader and more
nuanced perspective is not seen in terms of explaining several terms and concepts.