‘Violence never a Hindu way of enforcing ideas’

How do we progress towards good Hindu leadership,” asked a voice in the crowd, of scholar Wendy Doniger, who was present at the Times LitFest in virtual body and spirit on Skype.
The author’s book, Hindus: An Alternative History, was recalled by Penguin last year after fundamentalists challenged her narrative which they claimed was inauthentic and blasphemous. To avoid a potential conflict, she stayed away, but it was a packed house nonetheless as Doniger engaged with the ‘Argumentative Hindu’.
Is it contradictory, inquired festival director Sagarika Ghose, to destroy a book in the name of Hinduism, when Hinduism has never been censorious?
Doniger agreed. “Hinduism accommodates all kinds of voices, it even allows people to joke about Hinduism,” she said, conceding she was speaking on Skype because of the stand taken by fundamentalist.
“If you dislike the book, you kill the author — this is unprecedented in India. Christians have burnt people at the stake. Hindus have never used violence to enforce ideas, even if they may have punished those who strayed from their rules.”
The Hindu idea of blasphemy, she said, is a Christian import brought by the British.
“Hinduism has a thousand spirits, but Hindutva picks just one — a sanitised, anti-erotic thread and makes it the definitive representation, which it isn’t, just as the Gita is one among several Hindu texts,” she claimed. Someone wanted to know how good Hindu leadership could emerge. “Hinduism, unlike other leading monotheistic faiths, has no leader, like the Pope,” Doniger explained, “There are several Hindu leaders, but no one individual. The trick is to ensure a Hindu leadership doesn’t evolve,” she said.
That India was beginning to be ruled by an escalating ‘Hindu leadership’ was a development that had to be halted. “When I last looked, India was a democracy, not ruled by religion,” she commented. That an exclusivist Hinduism was gaining ground, she reckoned, was fuelled by politicians, but she hoped the tide would turn.