Shashi Tharoor debates why religion shouldn't be the determinant of nationhood in India.

At the Jaipur Literature Festival Adelaide 2019, Shashi Tharoor debated that religion should not be the determinant of nationhood in India. Tharoor claimed that the country has transformed dramatically since its independence, from politics to development in its industry - some may even call it a ‘revolution’. “And suddenly here we have, as of 2014, the rise of a party…under a leader whose ideology is fundamentally different from what India has seen in office before.”

Talking about the nationalist movement, Tharoor noted that this war against the British was not fought on the basis of ideological lines but was divided over one simple question -  “should religion be the determinant of nationhood?” Those who wished for it to be a determinant, created another country and those who denied this, continued to be a part of India. 

Tharoor claimed that this was the idea of India that was celebrated for seven decades and despite the differences “of caste, of creed, of color, of culture, of consonant, of conviction, of costume and of custom… we still rally around the consensus…in a country like India, you don’t really need to agree all the time so long as you agree on the ground rules of how you will disagree.”

Tharoor asserted that this principle has been questioned by those in power who carry a very different vision of India and in many ways, articulate an impatience with the inadequacy of democratic India to cope with the rapid forces of change. Tharoor added that his big worry with this government is that one will witness both a “nativist reassertion of an authentically Hindu ethos” and that one will also see a “dangerous willingness to dispense with elements of democracy”.