The Hindu Manifesto is not a complex book. It is not a book on Hindutva. It is a simple book based on very deep and wide-ranging research by a sadhu scholar, Swami Vigyananand. You can actually feel the labour of seven years of research in creating this book. His research is complex, but his presentation is not. The Hindu Manifesto is not a manifesto for Hindu Rashtra nor a manifesto for Hindus alone. It presents to the world a comprehensive manual of governance based on Dharma, understood as duty in our respective roles and ethical behaviour based on belief in our innate nobility as human beings.

The book has 8 chapters that provide a Hindu view of different aspects of governance that could lead to an ideal society. The narrative is simple. The author quotes chosen gems of invocations, suktas, mantras and shlokas from different Hindu scriptures right from Vedic times to the time till invaders managed to damage our governance, knowledge base, and social systems to a great extent. Even those periods could not destroy those principles completely till the British came, dismantled it brick by brick and handed over governance to the leaders who were trained in Western models of governance with no training or understanding of their own rich knowledge system or systems of governance.

The author gives his very brief commentaries where required. At the end of each chapter, he has inserted annexures that give summarised information culled from philosophers, historians, and researchers. Some of the quotes will surprise you, and may even brighten up the day of so-called liberals and leftists. For example:

Women cannot commit sins; it is men who become the culprits and sinners. Due to being forced into submission and exploited due to their vulnerability, women cannot be deemed offenders (page 244).

The wife has a right to dissolve her marriage if her husband is considered unworthy due to factors such as his low character, residence in a foreign country, disloyalty to the nation, involvement in criminal activities like murder, departure from moral principles, lack of integrity, impotence, and unmanliness (page 247).

However, the same group of self-professed feminists and liberals would be disappointed that their pet theory of misogyny and women’s supposed inferior position does not stand the scrutiny of Hindu texts. On page 218, the author tells us about 28 Brahmavadini (female sages) who appear in the Rigveda. Scriptures tell us that the son is like oneself, and the daughter is like the son[…] A daughter is like a son; she will........

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