I was recently involved in two conversations with two very different people about religion. They both claimed that they knew the authentic Hinduism.
The first was a man in the café where I eat breakfast every morning. He proved to me that, irrationality, extremism, ultra-nationalism and xenophobia exist everywhere. It is not only confined to Rush Limbaugh, Allan Jones and Fox news, but exists even in the outskirts of small town India. He told me that Hindus are the Indigenous peoples of India and that Muslims, Christians, Jews etc only exist because they forcibly converted millions of Hindus after invading the country. He told me that I should be scared of Muslims and Christians in Australia because one day they would force me to convert at gunpoint. He felt that all those who left India had betrayed the country and that he would rather die in the emergency room than be treated by a non Indian doctor. As you would expect from me I entertained his psychosis for far too long and sat and argued with him late into the night.
When so many rational, compassionate, and decent Hindus exist, there is obviously no way that he or his views could represent the true Hinduism.
The second conversation was the polar opposite. An intelligent conversation with a respected and admired doctor. He suggested that Hinduism was extremely broad and nowhere did it suggest that you had to believe in a certain god or live in a certain place or undertake certain religious practices. The only thing that his Hinduism required was a set of core values that involved working toward social justice, believing in equality and respecting all peoples. In this reading one can be a Christian or a Muslim and so long as they shared those values they were automatically Hindu whether they knew it or not. This Hinduism is more a philosophy than a religion, and it is one that I feel much more comfortable with.
However, when so many irrational Hindu’s exist why should this represent the true Hinduism? Didn’t they all read the same texts and come from the same tradition?
The name Hindu was given by an external power to a hodgepodge of religious traditions that existed around the Indus river. There is no central power in Hinduism, and as a result I propose that there is no true or pure Hinduism. Each person has their own philosophy and so calling oneself Hindu seems meaningless, so I don’t.
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sanjay said:I thought it would suit your philosophy and thinking that we as Hindus are not restricted by a book/ set of rules and/or a person telling us what to do or what not to do. 'excellent fulfilment of duties in different stages of life' is such a broad and deep definition of Hinduism and yet so beautiful and unbinding. Each person does not have a different philosophy but a different interpretation. By definition I am a Hindu and proud to be one because I try to follow Hinduism - Hindu philosophy to the best of my abilities. And I call myself Hindu by choice not because I do not want to be Christian or Muslim. OR are you moving towards extreme 'right' - traditional, conservative, (I will not mention 'fascism') or extreme 'left' where the role of the individual is undermined and where a state plays a larger role in people's lives when you are talking about 'supreme power'?
ReplyDeleteI can't refrain from commenting that I found it to be very unfair to pass a judgement on this wonderful oldest religion/ philosophy and call that philosophy a 'hodgepodge of religious traditions' and 'calling oneself Hindu is meaningless'.
Sanjay
below is a blurb on Hinduism from internet -
ReplyDelete1. "About 80 percent of India's population regard themselves as Hindus and 30 million more Hindus live outside of India. There are a total of 900 million Hindus worldwide, making Hinduism the third largest religion (after Christianity and Islam). The term "Hinduism" includes numerous traditions, which are closely related and share common themes but do not constitute a unified set of beliefs or practices.
Hinduism is thought to have gotten its name from the Persian word hindu, meaning "river," used by outsiders to describe the people of the Indus River Valley. Hindus themselves refer to their religion as sanatama dharma, "eternal religion," and varnasramadharma, a word emphasizing the fulfillment of duties (dharma) appropriate to one's class (varna) and stage of life (asrama).
Hinduism has no founder or date of origin. The authors and dates of most Hindu sacred texts are unknown. Scholars describe modern Hinduism as the product of religious development in India that spans nearly four thousand years, making it the oldest surviving world religion. Indeed, as seen above, Hindus regard their religion as eternal (sanatama).
Most Hindus respect the authority of the Vedas (a collection of ancient sacred texts) and the Brahmans (the priestly class), but some reject one of both of these authorities. Hindu religious life might take the form of devotion to God or gods, the duties of family life, or concentrated meditation. Given all this diversity, it is important to take care when generalizing about "Hinduism" or "Hindu beliefs."
The first sacred writings of Hinduism, which date to about 1200 BC, were primarily concerned with the ritual sacrifices associated with numerous gods who represented forces of nature. A more philosophical focus began to develop around 700 BC, with the Upanishads and development of the Vedanta philosophy. Around 500 BC, several new belief systems sprouted from Hinduism, most significantly Buddhism and Jainism."