The future president of India speaks to dead people. This is almost worse than her shady past. And very worrying that India’s first citizen should represent the obscurantist and weird underbelly of the Hindu religion instead of its magnificent philosophy and enlightened idea of faith. That idea simply put is: ‘This is our understanding of the way the cosmos works, but if you have a better idea, please come and tell us.’ In these jehadi times, when Islamists run around the globe killing innocent people to prove that their Prophet and their book are the best, now and forever, the Hindu idea becomes even more relevant. What grander idea of faith can there be than that everyone is entitled to their own truth? What we do not need is a president who sees dead people and makes it sound as if this is routine Hindu practice.

Shortly after I watched Pratibha Patil pronounce on national television last week that she was accustomed to having little chats with her dead guru, I went to lunch with a man who has spent ten years trying to convince American academia that what is being taught as Hinduism in American universities is rubbish. His name is Rajiv Malhotra and he took early retirement from the world of business to try and do something good for mankind. He was not sure how to channel this desire and it was by chance that he stumbled upon what has become his mission in life: rectifying the false idea of Hinduism that is being taught in American universities.

... contd.