India’s soft power is all set to get a sheen when Dr Shashi Tharoor, an eminent scholar, a great orator, an accomplished politician, and an articulate advocate of India’s soft power will be speaking at the Auckland Writers Festival this weekend.

Dr Tharoor is in Auckland for two public-speaking events at the popular Auckland Writers Festival on Saturday (May 19) and Sunday (May 20) where he speaks about his two books – Why I am a Hindu and Inglorious Empires.

Indeed, the books and the subsequent talks related to the books are already making waves, especially on social media.

The Indian Weekender had an opportunity to speak with him about his two books, one of which seemingly appears to be constructing a new intellectual narrative for the Congress Party by “reclaiming Hinduism,” and propagating an alternative view on India’s soft power.

Dr Tharoor, categorically denied the suggestion that he was in any way constructing a new intellectual narrative for the Congress Party, despite apparent observations.

Similarly, he refused to buy the argument that India’s soft power is an exclusive property of any government of the day, purely because of the reasons that any government can rarely control constituents of soft power, such as movies, music, food, yoga, and other cultural ethos, and its acceptability around the world.

Expectedly, any conversation with Dr Tharoor, a passionate advocate of the alternative idea of India, than what is currently propagated by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government, is bound to precipitate a contest on the ideas of India’s soft power.

However, despite this inherent contest about what constitutes India’s soft power, and who is the better propagator at various global platforms, the overall value of India’s soft power will be on a high this week in Auckland, when people from all walks of life will get a chance to listen to him directly at the Auckland Writers Festival.

Here are some excerpts of the interview

IWK: Can you please tell us about the book Why I am a Hindu? What is it all about?

Mr Tharoor: This book is all about defining Hinduism for a very large silent majority of Hindus growing up in India, and indeed in many parts of the world who don’t identify with the aggressive form of Hindutva, which has now become the dominant articulation of Hinduism in India. I see Hindutva as a purely political ideology and Hinduism as a liberal, accepting, and eclectic faith.

This book describes the Hindu religion, as I grew up with it, as I read about it, the lessons of great mahatmas and preceptors of the faith that has been encoded over few thousands of years in the Hindu canon.

After describing Hindu faith, in the last section of the book, I talk about taking back Hinduism, which is a kind of plea to recapture the kind of Hinduism that most Hindus have grown up with.

IWK: Is it fair to say that through this book you are reconstructing a new intellectual narrative for the Congress Party?

Mr Tharoor: Well it would be presumptuous for me to suggest that. First of all, new is a contentious word, because many of these ideas have appeared in my earlier books. Those who are familiar with my writings they will know that I have been writing about Hinduism going back to 1989. In my book India from Midnight to Millennium in 1997, I share my personal reactions to the Babri Masjid destruction as a Hindu Indian.

Congress Party doesn’t ask me to write my books. I speak for myself.

IWK: So when you say “reclaiming Hinduism,” doesn’t it imply reclaiming for the Congress Party, which seems to have lost the plot?

Mr Tharoor: I am reclaiming Hinduism for myself and for Hindus like myself. The Congress Party embraces wide ranges of people of every conceivable faith. But having said that we in the Congress Party have a set of ideas not dissimilar to what I have talked about earlier.

When I talk about Hinduism, I anchor myself a lot in Swami Vivekanand, who in his historic address to the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893 said, “My religion has taught the world not just tolerance, but acceptance.”

I have read about it as a teenager, and it has stayed with me since then.

Actually, we all have been told about the virtue of tolerance throughout our lives. Indeed, tolerance is a virtue, but it is a very patronising virtue. The idea of tolerance says that I have the truth, you are in error, but I magnanimously indulge you in being right to be wrong.  Whereas what Swami Vivekanand had said, and what Hinduism talks about, is acceptance of differences.

It means, I believe, I have the truth. You believe you have the truth. I will respect your truth, please respect my truth.

My definition is that is also the democratic way of engaging with each other, in a multi-ethnic, multi-religious, multi-linguistic culture and civilisation like India.

IWK: If democracy is a parameter to judge the validity and strength of an argument then probably the results that we are getting in the recent elections, say in Gujarat and Karnataka are suggesting that they are not agreeing with this articulation?

Mr Tharoor: No, the Congress Party got two and a half percentage votes than the Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP) did. So the people of India do not disagree with this articulation. Of course in our first past the post system, the way in which votes fall will make the difference. The BJP’s votes, though fewer than the Congress in percentage were better concentrated in some constituencies so they won more seats.

IWK: Don’t you think you are trying to find solace from the first past the post system? This system has always been there and we all have to abide by the system and if Congress will have to come back to power then they will have to go through the same system?

Mr Tharoor: Sure! But why you would not want to find solace. When Congress offers coalition arrangement to Janta Dal Secular (JDS) that’s not solace! It is clear-cut realpolitik.

IWK: Mr Tharoor I see you are a man on a mission – On one hand we see you as a great advocate of India’s soft power, then, on the other hand, you are on a mission of constructing a new intellectual narrative for India’s Congress Party. So which one of these two missions you adore most?

Mr Tharoor: Look, I am an Indian first, and everything else including political affiliation comes later. I have started talking about India’s soft power when I was living in New York at the beginning of this century. Ever since then I have been articulating this idea through my speeches and articles and brought back the idea to India and started pushing it hard to a point where even our own Prime Ministers started using the term soft power in their speeches.

Having said that, soft power is not something that a government can control or leverage; it’s not public relations or good marketing exercise, which I am afraid our Prime Minister is better at.

Soft power is about what is India and how do people see India. It includes everything from the popularity of Bollywood movies to the success and proliferation of yoga, to Indian restaurants around the globe to Indian wellness to Ayurveda and Yoga, and Indian spirituality. All of these things contribute to India’s image of being something positive.

Unfortunately, in recent years that image of India has been undercut by an alternative set of headlines. The headlines about attacks on women, mob violence, cow vigilantism, all of these kinds of stuff seem to dominate the perception of foreign journalists, and that too undermines India’s soft power.

IWK: Well foreign journalists, most of the time find pleasure in writing everything terrible about India?

Mr Tharoor: This is a general problem of media, which thrives on sad stories. Sadly this is widespread in the media all around the world.

In some cases, you are right that they write about what they want to write even if we give it importance or not.

But it is very difficult to deny that some of the dominant news in foreign media is the news that is relevant in India as well.

IWK: Despite your argument, which seems to be a very persuasive argument, the fact of the matter is that the projections articulated by Prime Minister Modi are gaining more traction outside India, particularly among the Indian diaspora. 

Mr Tharoor: Look I want India to be well regarded. I have often said openly and publically that I am an Indian first. If India succeeds under Mr Modi, if our economy grows and people prosper under the policies of Mr Modi, I will be happy.

If people are not finding the ‘achche din’ that they were waiting for then it’s my duty as an opposition Member of Parliament to point it out.

The fact is that being in opposition is also part of the national narrative. We want India to succeed. We may disagree on whether India is succeeding or how it has to succeed. That’s part of democracy. What I don’t like and resent is having the legitimacy of our criticism being challenged, as if to say anything against Mr Modi or the government is somehow anti-national.

In fact, it is the very nationalist thing to want the country to be better than what it is today.