Congress MP Shashi Tharoor digs up old post pointing differences between Hinduism and Hindutva

Congress MP Shashi Tharoor amid the ongoing Dharam Sansad controversy shared his old post from 2020 on Twitter on Wednesday pointing out differences between Hinduism and Hindutva and said that it is “still relevant.”

“Two years ago. Still relevant!”, the post was captioned tagging an old tweet that read, “An interesting, though incomplete, comparative table doing the rounds. #HinduismVsHindutva.”

Hindutva as characterized in the post shared by Tharoor states, “Hindutva is monolithic. In that, it is more like Islam and Christianity than Hinduism,” while “Hinduism is pluralistic. It is a union of many ways of life.”

The post further read that “Hindutva is a homogeneous racial-territorial category propagated by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar” while “Hinduism is a great union of various Indian cultures and traditions, with diverse roots and no founder.”

Comparing the origin of Hindutva and Hinduism, the post reads, “Hinduism is thousands of years old, while Hindutva was first proposed as a political idea in 1923 by Savarkar. Hinduism has many texts including the Vedas, the Puranas etc while Hindutva has one central political pamphlet, ‘Hindutva: Who is a Hindu?” published in 1928.

This post by Tharoor has come at a time when incidents of hate speech against a particular community have been reported during ‘Dharam Sansad’ in Uttarakhand's Haridwar.

Hindu religious leader Kalicharan Maharaj had allegedly used abusive words against Mahatma Gandhi and hailed his assassin Nathuram Godse. He had also asked people to elect a staunch Hindu leader as the head of the government in order to protect the religion during the conclusion of the two-day ‘Dharam Sansad’ (religious parliament) in Raipur.

The Maharashtra Police have registered a case against the Hindu seer for allegedly using derogatory words against Mahatma Gandhi. 

• Congress MP Shashi Tharoor
• old post
• differences