My ramblings about Hinduism
Prabu Karthik has a nice post about Hinduism here. He has nicely noted all that's lacking in current day's religion. Prabu and I share a lot of the same thoughts (or so I think). I have thought about the current state of Hinduism a lot myself but everytime I start a clean stream of thought it gets entangled in the deep history of the country. While Christianity can be seperated from our history, Hinduism is woven deeply in to everyday lives of the people living in this nation for God-Knows-How-Long.
But here are my thoughts.
Define Hinduism : The first problem we have is how do we define our own religion. What is Hinduism ? None of our religious texts talk about Hindu religion as a whole. What does this point to ?
The fact that Hinduism is not referred to in any religious text should tell us the word Hindu had no religious connotation. It had a nationalistic idealogy behind it. Everyone who lived west of Indus were called by Hindus (by some vagabond writer from Rome/Greek or wherever...)
But since then it has metamorphosed in to a religious identity. When it was first coined Hindus included people who practised Vedic religion and scores of other regionalistic practiioners of other Gods and Godesses. This regionalistic practioners included Tantric practioners and those who worshipped karuppuswamy, karuppannasamy etc etc.
But with one word they were all lumped and grouped together. This was the first start of caste problems that is tearing our society apart now. Since Vedic pracitioners never mingled with these non-vedic people (for they did not believe in vedas) they were treated as untouchables (Harijans as Gandhi called them). I digress but this will make for an interesting post by itself.
But the current Hindu religion has successfully imbibed many practises, religious functions from other religion. Even the most famous religious function of them all, Deepavali, is supposed to have non-vedic origins (Jainism is supposed to be the originator of Deepavali).
Islam and Christianity arrived much later and hence escaped the lumping and grouping. As a true Hindu who believes that there are many paths to the ultimate reality, my question is why shouldn't we call the practioners of Islam and Christianity in this land as Hindus. Why cannot we revert the meaning of the term Hindus from it's current religious identity to a Pan-National identity ? If u look upon Hinduism as a pan national identity then Prabu's points will only apply to one facet of that identity, namely, Vedic Hinduism.
Ciao till next
But here are my thoughts.
Define Hinduism : The first problem we have is how do we define our own religion. What is Hinduism ? None of our religious texts talk about Hindu religion as a whole. What does this point to ?
The fact that Hinduism is not referred to in any religious text should tell us the word Hindu had no religious connotation. It had a nationalistic idealogy behind it. Everyone who lived west of Indus were called by Hindus (by some vagabond writer from Rome/Greek or wherever...)
But since then it has metamorphosed in to a religious identity. When it was first coined Hindus included people who practised Vedic religion and scores of other regionalistic practiioners of other Gods and Godesses. This regionalistic practioners included Tantric practioners and those who worshipped karuppuswamy, karuppannasamy etc etc.
But with one word they were all lumped and grouped together. This was the first start of caste problems that is tearing our society apart now. Since Vedic pracitioners never mingled with these non-vedic people (for they did not believe in vedas) they were treated as untouchables (Harijans as Gandhi called them). I digress but this will make for an interesting post by itself.
But the current Hindu religion has successfully imbibed many practises, religious functions from other religion. Even the most famous religious function of them all, Deepavali, is supposed to have non-vedic origins (Jainism is supposed to be the originator of Deepavali).
Islam and Christianity arrived much later and hence escaped the lumping and grouping. As a true Hindu who believes that there are many paths to the ultimate reality, my question is why shouldn't we call the practioners of Islam and Christianity in this land as Hindus. Why cannot we revert the meaning of the term Hindus from it's current religious identity to a Pan-National identity ? If u look upon Hinduism as a pan national identity then Prabu's points will only apply to one facet of that identity, namely, Vedic Hinduism.
Ciao till next
posted by Karthik S at
8:23 PM
3 Comments:
Why particularly pick "Pan-National identity"? As if nation is the "next level up" following religion, like the way it is in movies. ("Naan Hindu illa, Indhiyan!".)
By
Anonymous, At
3:51 AM
zero,
by pan-national I meant people who share the same culture and practises even though they may worship differ Gods. Even worshipping method for Christians and Muslims have been changed to incorporate our culture. Many christians wear kungumam, tie thali etc. therefore let us keep the meaning of Hindu in it's original format. Hindus are those residing in the land known as India today. that's about it.
By
Karthik S, At
10:43 AM
As for the last paragraph, I think it should be the cultural identity, not the national identity. I believe that the national identity doesn't need any religious label.
Fr. Paul Poovathingal is a good friend of mine and a PhD scholar in "Karnatic music and Christians". The first sentence in his thesis work says this: "Every Christian in this country, although they are Christian by faith, is a Hindu by culture".
By
Jo, At
1:11 PM
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