Thiruvananthapuram: It is a word that Jawaharlal Nehru had used to describe India, in The Discovery of India. But when Shashi Tharoor used it in his speech, he decided to take the safe path and explain the meaning, for he has been facing ‘attacks for using difficult words’. The MP then went on to explain the meaning of ‘palimpsest’ as the result of what a wall becomes when at first he writes a word on it, and on top of that Shibu Baby John writes another word without erasing his, and further on top actor Prakash Raj, N. K. Premachandran, MP, and M.K. Muneer, MLA, all write new words. India is palimpsest like that – ‘without erasing any contribution of the past you have built on it to create a world of the present’, Tharoor said at a commemoration meeting of the late RSP leader Baby John, roping in all the fellow orators on stage with that example.
Mr Tharoor, Prakash Raj, Premachandran and Muneer were all honoured at the meeting by Shibu, son of Baby John. All of them condemned the cruel attacks on girls in Unnao and Kathua, before passing on the mike to Tharoor who spoke on Tolerant India, Secular India. He prefers acceptance to tolerance, he said. Tolerance still implies a hierarchy, he says. “Acceptance says I believe I have the truth, you believe you have the truth, I’ll respect your truth, please respect my truth.”
India was all that till the British came and brought the idea of monolithic communal identities. When the partition happened, and a country called Pakistan was created for Muslims, Gandhiji and all the other leaders said but what remained was not a country for Hindus, it was a country whose freedom they fought for, it was a country for everyone. But ever since May 2014 it had been a different India, where a lad in Pune coming out of a mosque was killed by Hindus only because he was a Muslim, where Dadri killing happened.
And there is a PM who stays silent when Unnao and Kathua happened until he had to go abroad so his silence wouldn’t be questioned there. Mr Tharoor conceded that the practice of religion is too deeply immersed in the society for us to be secular in the western sense of the term. The problem comes when the government doesn’t keep its distance from religion, when it favours one. “Hinduvta is not Hinduism. My religion teaches me to respect and accept all other religions.” He still keeps a bead with a cross a nun gave him, he said. “We must celebrate the diversity. We must have unity yes, but not uniformity because we are all different and we are one.”
