Credit Image Source: Loris Cecchini Studio
Interviewee: Siddharth Kapila, Writer And Essayist
Interviewer: Kabir Deb, Interview Editor, Usawa Literary Review
Hello Siddharth! Congratulations on the success of your book. So, my first question is a shot in the gut. Why do you think people should read your book? Also, since it is a part-travelogue, part-memoir, what makes it different from the rest in the same category?
Thank you for your kind words, Kabir. I hesitate to tell anyone (apart from friends) why they should read my book, but since you’ve asked, I would say one reason is that the book is, at its core, an exploration of the Hindu faith, unfolding through my travels to key Hindu pilgrimage sites along the Ganga. As Dr. Shashi Tharoor so generously puts it, through this odyssey — spiritual, sinuous, scintillating — Kapila, our skilled travel guide, steeps us in Hinduism’s wonder tales, with which each droplet of the Ganga abounds; in so doing, he brings to life what the Harvard Indologist Diana Eck describes as the “sacred geography” of India, “knit together by countless tracks of pilgrimage”.
The fact that we belong to a country where faith deeply permeates everyday life is sufficient reason to read a book about it.
What sets it apart, I think, is the insider-outsider perspective. I was born and raised within the Hindu ethos but, at the same time, I am also a sceptic, so I didn’t just accept what I encountered on my journey–I questioned each one of them. And through my questioning lens, I walk into several avenues: the tension between tradition and modernity, the relationship between a devout mother and her sceptical son, and a personal coming-of-age story that examines caste and class privilege, tracing back to my teenage and childhood years even as I advance into adulthood. So, in addition to a travel memoir the book is also an inquiry into faith, identity, and society.
How do you think religion is perceived in India? Why do you think after the existence of Vedanta school of philosophy, Indians are so engrossed in becoming creators more than being a part of the creation?
‘Religion’ is a highly emotive and sometimes divisive word, which is why I chose ‘faith’ in the book’s subtitle. Organized religion, to my mind, is different but not entirely separate from ‘faith,’ and everyone has their own relationship with it. So, while ‘faith’—how often you pray, read scriptures, keep fasts, and observe rituals—is deeply personal, ‘religion’ carries stronger political undertones as it evokes a sense of ‘community’ and ‘identity.’
Often, these two terms overlap, but not always. We hear young people today say, “We’re spiritual, not religious,” implying they’re inward seekers rather than conformist actors. But words are often opaque and can mask more than they reveal; what matters are your actions. It is entirely possible to be conventionally religious—observing Hindu rituals, as Dr. Tharoor, whom I quote in my book, does—without subscribing to Hindutva. Likewise, one can be an atheist and yet wear their ‘religious identity’ on their sleeve.
But make no mistake: both organized religion and personal faith infuse everyday life in our country. It can be something as small as a driver taking his hands off the wheel to show respect to a passing place of worship or insisting that the menu at your child’s wedding be ‘pure vegetarian’.
As for the second part of your question, I think we sometimes tend to view history through a romantic lens, but people have always been people. Even though Hinduism has many strong philosophical fundamentals, I am not convinced that the average believer during the time of the Buddha or when the Upanishads were composed was any more introspective than the average person today. People of the past were likely just as complex, contradictory, and multifaceted as we are, with similar basic impulses and capacity for reflection.
If by ‘creators’ you mean that people nowadays tend to view God as a separate entity rather than as an all-encompassing force entwined with our own existence and the cosmos—as the Upanishads propose with the idea of Oneness between the Cosmic Consciousness (Brahman) and the soul (Atman)—then I am not sure very many people ever truly grasped such high-level concepts even when they were first conceived. As a Swiss backpacker who I met in Varanasi remarked, “Even in Hinduism, you have humanlike deities and accessible stories from the Mahabharata and Ramayana, whereas the Upanishads go up into philosophy, hai na?”
Many have argued that political Hinduism is an attempt to Abrahamicize/homogenize the complexity of Indic beliefs. Hinduism is and remains a ‘way of life’, and as I say in my book, it is not bound to a single holy text—or, arguably, to any text at all. So in a sense, it has a freewheeling, ‘universal’ quality. Hindus might see God as a Shivlingam, a Durga deity, or even in places of worship of other faiths such as churches or Sufi shrines. Or nowhere external at all. While some say this flexibility echoes pre-Vedic animistic practices, others insist it is evidence of the variability within Hindu beliefs.
In the book, I discuss such attitudes I had absorbed growing up. I talk about the holy texts of Islam and Christianity. Both say they are the only true religions—“true” in that they claim a universal truth applicable to all people for all time. I write that I found this to be a chauvinistic attitude because Hinduism, by contrast, has never been overtly prescriptive. There is no single ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ way to believe in God. A good example of this is the Nasadiya Sukta, the Rigvedic creation hymn, which reads:
Whence all creation had its origin,
the creator, whether he fashioned it or whether he did not,
the creator, who surveys it all from highest heaven,
he knows — or maybe even he does not know.
From this alone one can reasonably argue that Hinduism resists certitude, favouring scepticism and philosophical plurality.
But, pertinently, I also note that “even if Hindu views on God may be ‘universal,’ down here in the world of mortals, we’ve often been the most exclusivist people of all! We’ve excluded people on home soil like few others. And while it’s true the Semitic faiths draw clear lines between themselves and the ‘Others,’ we Hindus do the same—perhaps not as much abroad, but certainly at home. We continue to exclude from within, often with the support of scripture.”
Here, I’m referring to the fractures of caste in our society. One might say, then, that our tendency to think of ourselves as more open-minded is also born of a kind of chauvinism because Hindus, too, exclude ‘others’—just in different ways.
Even when liberalism is a new term of the West, freedom has the fundamental concept of Hinduism and India. Where did we go wrong in understanding our own civilization?
Liberalism in the West arose from a specific social and political evolution. Ideas like individual rights, free speech and attendant democratic ideals took shape within that context. In India, while I believe there was, and largely remains, an inherent openness to interpreting the vast galaxy of divinities and stories within the Hindu pantheon, I’m not convinced that societal freedom in the past was as widespread as our sacred stories might lead us to believe.
Take, for example, the character of Draupadi in the Mahabharata. Many are intrigued by her having five husbands. But as mythologist Devdutt Pattanaik said in a recent article, she did not ‘choose’ to marry all five; she was instructed to do so. According to one story, suggesting that women were judged more harshly than men for having multiple spouses, in her previous life Draupadi demanded so much sexual attention from her husband that he cursed her to have five husbands in her next life.
Another oft-cited example of freedom is the Kamasutra. But even here, certain feminist scholars have pointed out that the text privileges male pleasure and upholds traditional gender roles.
Indian culture is layered and diverse, often containing conflicting ideas from different regions and times. There is a multiplicity of voices including those that challenge traditional male dominance, even though they aren’t always the most visible. Understanding freedom in India means recognizing this layered complexity—valuing diversity while acknowledging the pervasive influence of patriarchal traditions.
My intent was to capture a spectrum of conversations across faith and experience with fellow pilgrims, sadhus, pandits, and others. What interested me was less the pursuit of ‘historical fact’, but rather the rhythm of oral histories: the way legends, anecdotes, and asides circulate and endure. Raised in a deeply religious household, I grew up hearing many of these stories, but I often found myself questioning their assumptions. In tracing my spiritual lineage, I wanted to understand how our beliefs shape us even as we push against them.
I think there’s a degree of hypocrisy in many of us. Even non-practicing Hindus, particularly those from upper-caste backgrounds, often continue to benefit from social structures they may claim to oppose. We might get married through traditional ceremonies to appease family expectations, or continue forming relationships within our caste networks. Moreover, we seldom question our everyday discriminatory practices—like treating domestic workers poorly without acknowledging the hierarchies that have fashioned these unequal relationships. In my book, I observed that while we may call our servants ‘helpers’ in urban areas now, they almost always eat separately, as before. This is the caste-system in action.
If you belong to a higher caste, regardless of your ‘personal beliefs’ you inherit privileges from centuries of social entrenchment that go far beyond religious life. In politics, this dictates whose voices are heard and whose are ignored. The link between Brahminism and power isn’t new either. Even under Mughal and British rule, local rulers and officials were often from upper-caste families. Caste hierarchies have stayed strong no matter who was in charge.
If the river Ganga is so important to the Indian and especially, Hindu civilization, why do you think the politics and belief of India always overpowers the rising pollution of Ganga?
Because there’s a deep disconnect between belief and action. On this point, I recount a conversation with an Afghan seeker in the book:
“I think what you call the messiness of India is your strength,” he said. “It’s because everything goes, that so many cultures coexist here… In your religion, the rocks are gods, the trees are gods, the rivers are gods, and animals are also gods. This is why you can’t just rip them out. If you believe there is consciousness in everything—if there is Brahman in everything—then you can’t just kill it.”
“Yeah, I get that”, I replied. “But maybe our religion has the opposite problem. We worship nature so much that we end up taking it for granted. We bathe in the Ganga because she’s pure, but we don’t think twice about polluting her. It’s like thinking, how can you not take liberties in your own home? In your own body? If you can’t take liberties with your mother, with whom can you?”
You see this disconnect most clearly in Varanasi. I’ve seen the corpse of a monkey floating in the water, with sadhus calmly bathing nearby. Once, I asked a sadhu, “In a time with no sanitation, it made sense to bathe in flowing river water. But today, when the water is so polluted, does it make sense?”
“The Ganga is pure”, he said. Pavitra. “She can never rot.”
That answer says a lot. What we have here isn’t just reverence but the ritualization of respect. We perform gestures of devotion, but these can be divorced from their real-world consequences. We chant that the Ganga is Mother yet treaty her like a dumping ground. It’s as if the idea of her purity has become so absolute that it overrides the need to protect the river’s physical form. This, I think, is the danger of myth, when it becomes detached from reality.
Most NRIs have an opinion on Indian socio-political climate which is not progressive for those who live in India. Your perception aligns with the local people of communities which have been living near Ganga for centuries. How does diaspora or even a green card change the perception of Indians towards their own country? Why is there a sudden rise of extremism in the minds and voices of people who live in the West?
I think we should be cautious about generalizations. Not all NRIs think or behave in one way. But yes, there does seem to be a visible rise in nationalist or even chauvinistic sentiment among certain sections of the diaspora, and there may be a few reasons this might be happening.
One, I think, is a sense of historical grievance—especially among some upper-caste Hindus—rooted in a perception of having been ruled or suppressed by successive “outsiders”: first Muslim rulers, then the British, and more recently, a political establishment seen as favouring minorities through so-called appeasement. For some, this current political moment feels like a long-awaited restoration, a chance to shape the narrative and revert to what they believe was lost. What some of us in India experience as chauvinism is, by others, seen as a type of cultural renaissance.
I saw this sentiment firsthand in Varanasi during the construction of the Kashi Vishwanath Corridor from 2019 until 2022. Some residents spoke about the city’s makeover as a return to a past glory—a way to give Kashi back its grandeur, “lost through centuries of Muslim invasions.” Others supported it as a timely modernization, aligned with the full vision of Lord Shiva’s majesty and the pride of a resurgent Hindu nation. As one Swamiji said to me, “At long last, someone has chosen to revive Hindu grandness.”
There’s a paradox at play here, too: being physically removed from the daily realities of Indian life can create in one’s mind a kind of nostalgia or idealism—one that doesn’t necessarily square with people’s struggles on the ground.
For me personally, though, such attitudes were strange to witness. As I write, “While I’d embarked on a spiritual quest I felt had only just begun, Varanasi and my country were deep into a new political-religious chapter.”
Sexual liberation has been addressed in the texts of India without being apologetic. Even then, we still have not given a positive signal towards same sex marriage. And the abrogation of Article 377 has not benefited the queer community on the ground level. What makes Indians so afraid of sexual liberation?
It’s a fear rooted in the same thing you find elsewhere—a discomfort with anything threatening the social status quo. A weakening of patriarchy is often seen as a weakening of tradition itself and so much of organized religion has been built on patriarchal, heteronormative foundations. In India, this fear is compounded by the belief that sexual freedom and queer rights are Western imports. They’re seen as part of an individualistic culture that goes against the sanctity of the family unit.
But queer people have always existed in every society, including India. What’s new is the visibility and confidence. More and more people are coming out, and simply standing up and asserting our identities has become political.
On this very topic, I write in the book:
“A few words about Hinduism and homosexuality here: I tell you, it’s weird! And I’m not being glib for the heck of it. It’s true that there’s no central authority at the top passing decrees to execute gays. And we indeed have a long history of literature and imagery rich with representations of gender fluidity, from the Ardhnarishvara avatar of Shiva represented as equally half-male and half-female, to the character Shikhandi in the Mahabharata who is born female but raised as a man, and even married to a woman. And yes, there are chapters on the bending degrees of sexual expression in the Kamasutra. But make no mistake. We Hindus are a prudish bunch. We like to pretend that things that appear different from the ‘normal’ don’t actually exist. What exists in our minds in bucketfuls, however, are notions of dharma and karma and the attendant ideals of manhood and family.
Dharma stipulates the four stages or ashrams in a man’s life. In the first, brahmacharya, a man is a boy and student. In the second, the grihastha, he has a family and takes the mantle of a householder. This is followed by the vanaprastha, during which, after having fulfilled his family obligations, he begins to extricate himself from attachment to both people and things. And in the fourth and last stage, sanyaas, man undertakes complete renunciation.”
This framework leaves very little space for those who live outside the heterosexual, family-centered mould. So, while we may have a long tradition of sexual and gender fluidity in our texts, in practice we’ve never integrated this diversity into our social fabric in a whole and legitimate way. Respect is reserved for what fits within the expected structure—all else is either ignored or ritualized without proper understanding. I think we’re still learning to live with open identities.
For you, what is faith? How and why is it important for the Indian society? If you dare to say, how is your faith different from the rest of the Indians?
While writing this book, there was a point where I almost quoted Walt Whitman: “Do I contradict myself? Very well, I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes.” That line stayed with me because I think faith is just this—deeply personal, contradictory, evolving. It shifts with age, experience, and how the world changes around you.
On my travels, I met a young man from Peru who told me what had brought him to India. He said he had learned to commune with the divine through Ayuhasca, a hallucinogenic plant guided by shamans in the jungles of Peru. Now, he was in India to try and marry what he called the shamanic path with the Yogic path and the Bhakti path. That openness to weaving traditions and finding meaning in the directions life takes you resonated with me.
By the end of my journey, I had come to see faith in two ways: at the collective level, it offers a sense of identity, belonging, and community. At a personal level, it acts as a kind of mooring—something steady to hold on to. As Marx famously said, it’s “the heart in a heartless world.” And as my mother—a central figure in my book—once told me, “Even if it’s a delusion, prayer gives me comfort!” That stayed with me. Her faith may differ from mine, but I saw it gave her joy. Who was I to question that?
But now that I’m over 40, I also see how age tends to settle you. You become more certain of who you are—or at least, more at ease with the questions you carry. As I write in my book, I came to see where I stood on the spectrum of faith– curious and questioning. That hasn’t changed. But what did change after my journey was the depth of my understanding. I saw more clearly how faith gives comfort to people—not just by changing how they see things, but what they see altogether.
We all saw this during the COVID pandemic. One would’ve thought that fighting an invisible virus with hand sanitizers and vaccines would’ve lessened the hold of faith somewhere. But, no. The reverse happened. Devotees at temples, shrines and mosques only increased once social distancing rules were relaxed. How peculiar that even in an age governed by scientific thought, with climate change and AI looming large, God is in no need of saving!
So is my faith different from others? Who am I to say? But then, no two people’s faith is exactly the same. We contain multitudes.
Could you recommend five of your favorite books which you think readers of our magazine should go through?
Here are five that have stayed with me.
A Fine balance by Rohinton Mistry – Mistry portrays quotidian middle-class Indian life so effortlessly that you flow with his prose. And as you’re sailing along, out of nowhere, he drops instances of the everyday cruelty we inflict on the most vulnerable in society, leaving you gasping. I was fearful to turn the page. Then, I re-read the book.
My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell —Just before W.W.2, an English mother takes her children from Britain to the Greek island of Corfu. What ensues is the most hilarious and colourful story of the family’s stay there. At once comical and genuine, this autobiographical book taught me a lot about vividly depicting places and family relationships. I still return to it if I need a pick-me-up, and it never fails to provoke laughter.
Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin – Being a black gay man in the USA in the 1950s couldn’t have been easy. But being a black gay man writing a novel with a white gay man as the protagonist was groundbreaking. Giovanni’s Room weaves a compelling love story touching on themes of morality and passion while journeying deep into the recesses of the mind.
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger – I first read this all-time classic bildungsroman on the 6-hour toy train ride from Shimla to Kalka. I was so absorbed in it that I hardly looked out the window! I’ve re-read it 4 times since and loved it just as much on every reading. It showed me that often, the best writing is the simplest.
Brotherless Night by V.V. Ganeshananthan – This layered, and quietly powerful novel set during the Sri Lankan civil war is one I read recently. It reminded me that rereading a good book can feel like discovering it for the first time. I know it will stay with me.
What do you think about our feminist magazine, Usawa Literary Review?
The name itself—Usawa, which I learned means “equality” in Swahili drew me in. That Usawa is dedicated to amplifying underrepresented voices aligns perfectly with my view about what all good art must strive toward: reveal what is not readily apparent and, importantly, challenge orthodoxy in the broadest sense.
Thank you very much for reaching out to me!
Siddharth Kapila is a lawyer turned writer. He has written for The Wire, Livemint and The Indian Express, among other publications, with a primary focus on the Hindu faith and culture. He holds a Legal Practice Course (LPC) postgraduate diploma from The University of Law, London, a BA in Law from Cardiff University, UK and a BA (Hons) in Economics from Delhi University. He was born and raised in Delhi.
Kabir Deb is the Interview Editor for the Usawa Literary Review.
