My Hinduism is Vedantic & inclusive; Hindutva is exclusionary: Karan Singh

The life and times of veteran Congress leader Karan Singh came up for threadbare discussions at an event in the Capital where his first-ever biography was launched on Friday.

Authored by historian Harbans Singh, “A Statesman and a Seeker” spans the journey of the man, born heir apparent to the state of Jammu and Kashmir but one who gave up his life as a Regent and Sadar-e-Riyasat of J&K to engage in the task of building a newly independent India.

At the launch where Congress MP Shashi Tharoor and cultural historian Malvika Singh engaged him in an intense conversation, Karan Singh, former J&K Governor, spoke of many lesser known aspects of his political and personal life.

At one point he dwelt deeply into the question of what spiritualism and religion meant to him. Founder of the Virat Hindu Samaj, a reformist movement he had launched in the aftermath of the 1981 Meenakshipuram conversions, Singh today revealed that he withdrew from the campaign after noticing that the Vishwa Hindu Parishad backed by the RSS was already working on the cause.

“I did not want to be in conflict with them,” he said, adding that when he came to Delhi from J&K he was cautioned about his inclinations towards the Gita.

“When I came here (to Delhi), someone said to me that now you have to stop talking about the Gita because you are in the Congress. I said ‘main raaj chhod ke aaya hun dharam chhod ke toh nahi aaya’ (I have left the princely state not my religion),” Singh said.

On questions from Tharoor about whether he ever thought spiritualism and religion were an escape from politics, Karan Singh answered in the negative.

“I came from a Muslim majority state and we Dogras would go to temples as well as mosques. I was brought up in an environment of inter-faith harmony. And therefore my idea of Hinduism is inclusive, which means Ekam Satya. That truth is one and the wise call it by many names, that there are many paths to the divine. Most religions say their path is the only path. Only Hinduism offers choices,” said Singh adding his Hinduism is Vedantic whereas Hindutva is exclusionary.

The former cabinet minister, who was handling the health portfolio when Sanjay Gandhi was pushing sterilisation, also spoke of the latter raising vasectomy and tubectomy targets at the time.

While speaking of how his late wife Asha would go around in private cars to paste anti-government posters at the height of Emergency, Karan Singh said he, as health minister, had fixed reasonable sterilisation targets. “The targets I fixed were doable. Unfortunately Sanjay Gandhi started raising the targets and all north Indian chief ministers went overboard trying to improve their numbers...I wrote a letter to the CMs cautioning them against coercion which is why the Shah Commission exonerated me,” recalled Singh.

He mentioned with pride that he was one among the only three Congress MPs who survived the 1977 anti-Indira Gandhi wave. “That was because the people realised who was responsible for the problem,” he said.

The conversations today also revealed that it was Karan Singh as tourism minister in the Indira Gandhi Cabinet who initiated the transformation of royal palaces into luxury hotels and later as chairman of the wildlife board recommended that India’s national animal be changed from the lion to a tiger.

“The lions were found only in Gujarat’s Junagadh whereas the tigers were found all over India. So the Board passed a resolution recommending a change of the national animal and that is how Project Tiger began,” said Singh revealing also that he went by the name Tiger at home but that was not why he suggested the national animal be changed.