text: The strength of Hinduism is its flexibility. It is because of this quality that we have survived the millennia though the much more powerful — and much less flexible — imperial Rome, ancient Greece and Pharaonic Egypt are today dust, as the great Indian poet Allama Iqbal (died 1938) pointed out.
  Siddhartha Gautam became the Buddha because of one brilliant insight. He observed the world around him and recognised that suffering was inevitable for all creatures. From this he drew the correct conclusion — there is no god. For this rejection of the wisdom of the ancients, he was not merely accepted but worshipped in this land.
  No Hindu worships the primary gods of the Vedas today. Have you seen a temple to Indra recently? No. We have moved to other gods, the Puranic ones, and they too, one day, will be as irrelevant as Indra in India. The American iconoclast H L Mencken has written a terrific essay and a book on forgotten gods from Zeus and Jupiter to Osiris and Amun. None is worshipped today because all religions end in time and ours will also. But our values may live on and of them the strongest is our elasticity.
  Some see this tolerance as Hindu weakness but they are wrong. We are strong because we are inclusive. And we are also many because we are open, supple and flexible. More reed than oak.
  My Leuva Patidar caste of Kunbi peasants worships Krishna by the name of Ranchhod, a word that means he-who-fled-from-battle. It refers to Krishna's escape, when he ran away from Jarasandh's powerful general Kalyavan ('black Greek') and thus avoided death.
  All the Patels of Charotar, including Hindutva favourite Vallabhbhai, celebrate this act of pragmatism by Krishna (jai Ranchhod!) though the trishul-wavers will not understand it. For them martyrdom is better than 'cowardice', especially when it's someone else that's being martyred.
  The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh's Marathi Brahmins found their ideal national spirit not in other Hindus but in the Italians. Savarkar's text draws inspiration from Mazzini and Garibaldi, not the Patidars. That is why they prefer khaki shorts and black caps and un-Indian military-style salutes.
  And there are many great things in our culture that are ignored if not spat on, though they are unique and empowering, like Hindu flexibility.
  If there were one thing that needs to be communicated to the Sangh, it is this. I am hoping that Pranab Mukherjee does just this when he addresses the RSS's jamboree in Nagpur on Thursday.
  The former President's acceptance of the Sangh invite has offended some people who feel it legitimises the RSS (well, they're ruling India so I'd say that's behind us now). Former minister and current columnist P Chidambaram wrote: "Sir, now that you have accepted their invite, please go there and tell them what's wrong with their ideology."
  Perhaps that is what Mukherjee could do. Hindutva is a resentful ideology. Its three primary political demands are all negative: Ram Janmabhoomi (Muslims must give up their mosque), Uniform Civil Code (Muslims must give up their personal law) and the reversal of Article 370 (Muslims must give up their constitutional autonomy in Kashmir). Hindutva has nothing positive to offer Hindus. This is a fact. Name one thing. Even after taking a full majority it's all about things like cattle slaughter and making Muslims change their diet. What does it even claim it will offer the rest of us? Zero.
  But the problem with telling them about what is wrong with their ideology is that it will inevitably keep the focus where the RSS likes it: minorities.
  This is the space where the Sangh is surefooted because it sees Hindu society as victim and the RSS as its primary defender.
  This Prime Minister has written about the same occasion that Mukherjee is participating in — the Sangh Shiksha Varg — in his biography of M S Golwalkar. That essay has these lines: "Dr Hedgewar did not stay up all night to tell Guruji what the nation's condition was, how many bad things had entered Hindu culture after 1000 years of slavery… Sometimes I wonder if Doctorji had sat Guruji down and instructed him in Hindutva overnight. Had he told him the minor details of the ruin of Hindu society?"
  This narrative of ruin and slavery is an RSS constant. Mukherjee would do us all and especially the RSS a favour if he spoke a bit about how Hinduness is many things, which live and thrive. And some of these things may not be what the Sangh's followers are taught.
  There is nothing wrong in engaging with the RSS. Indeed the reality is that not enough people do and I wish more such people as Mukherjee were invited and would accept. It would help in interrupting the feedback loop that RSS members receive about who they are and what is wrong with this country.
  hinduism does not need lessons in tolerance from abrahmic religions like islam and christianity.
  Ra-owl Gandh\'s paid personnel - Aakar
  Mr. Patel, first of all, do you have any understanding of the Hindu religion (Sanatana Dharma), or Vedant, or the Bhagawat Gita? Are you familiar with...
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